How to Keep Couch Potato Kids Active During Commercials

Although many children enjoy watching commercials just as much as they enjoy the television shows themselves, commercials provide a great time for your child to get up and be active instead of staying on the couch. Here are some ideas for how to motivate your child to spend commercials being active.

Activity During Commercials: Turn off the TV

The best way to motivate activity during commercials is to make a rule that as soon as the commercials begin, the TV needs to be turned off. It can't be turned back on until the required physical activity has been completed. This motivates your children to actually do the task because if they finish it early, they can watch some of the commercials, but if they finish it late, they will miss some of the TV show when it comes back from commercials.

Activity During Commercials: Make a List of Potential Commercial Activities

With your kids, sit down and make a list of things they could do during commercials that would get them moving. Each task should have a definite benchmark for completion, and should be able to be completed in 2 minutes or less. Some ideas for activities are as follows:

Do 100 sit ups or crunches
Do 50 jumping jacks
Go outside and run all the way around the perimeter of the house (once or twice, depending on the size of your house, or once around the backyard if it is hard to get all the way around the house)
Do 50 push ups (or less if your child has a hard time with that)
High-knee jog to their bedroom and back (or to another location if the TV is in the bedroom)
Do somersaults to the other end of the room and back (more than once if it is a small room)
Anything else your children would enjoy doing

Activity During Commercials: Keep them Accountable

If you have more than one child watching TV, they can provide encouragement and accountability to each other because one can tattle on the other if they do not do the required activity. Other accountability methods include keeping a log of what activity is done each commercial, or coming into the room where you are when they do their physical activity during the commercials.

Activity During Commercials: Provide Encouragement and Rewards

Lastly, when your child follows through and participates in physical activities during commercial breaks, you should provide a lot of encouragement and support for them. Anything from verbal praise to noticing them and smiling, or giving them stickers or some other material reward will provide then with encouragement to continue.

Activity During Commercials: Model Good Behavior

If you are encouraging your children to be active during commercial breaks, you should do the same and model this good behavior. Even when your children are not around, get into the habit of doing one of their activities during each commercial break so that you can tell them what you did, and so you are in the habit when they are around. A good role model goes a long way for children!