Parents working from home - how to balance ‘school day’ with work and exercise for family

 DCU hosted the second of their four-part Facebook Live Broadcast series with Dr Sarahjane Belton hosting today’s session and answering a series of great questions on how adults and kids can stay active during COVID-19.

Like many people Dr Belton is working from home, combining her role as parent with her work commitments as Head of the School of Health & Human Performance at DCU.

Today’s series focused on tips for parents. Such as whether a ‘school day’ structure is really required,what they can do with their children other than study, and how important it is to also take steps to take care of their own physical and mental health at this time.

Here are some of the main tips from today’s broadcast:

Find Balance

It is very challenging to try and combine work along with setting school work for the children.

Don’t try and emulate a full school-day with them. Try and find balance and aim for quality as opposed to quantity- do what you can.

Try and get a routine going

While everything right now does not feel “normal”, it is important to try and get into some sort of routine.

It will help to alleviate stress and lower anxiety levels as well among children. Try and combine some exercise and learning in a fun way.

Make sure you have the input of your child/children in this. Use the building blocks of study and movement to get a routine going.

Activity

Try and aim for 60 minutes of moderate activity per day for kids and at least 30 minutes for adults.

If you have access to an outside area, use that and if you are in confined space, check out all the super resources that are online for exercise classes.

Try and do it in a fun, creative way and focus on the positive- using it as a time to make new habits.

Pick a time of the day

Some of the questions sent in asked if there was an optimum time of day to exercise- the answer is no.

Sarahjane highlights that the main thing is that children feel they are an active participant in all of this and have a choice as to when to exercise.

Come up with a plan as to when you will get moving together.

Little and often

All of our routines have been impacted and the movement metrics of people are down overall- this means the general movement you carry out during the day such as walking to work, meetings, shops during breaks etc.

In light of this, try and build movement into your day and adopt the approach of little and often- moving between completing tasks etc.

Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS)- improve them!

What is FMS- these are the basic building blocks of movement- skipping, hopping, jumping. Use everyday items around the house to improve the fundamental movement skills of your child and even your own!

Try using everyday household items to challenge yourself as well as the kids and create age appropriate tasks for this.

Try and get your work-out in with the kids

One of the many questions, related to parents asking how they can get their own work-out in?

The question also highlighted that their time in the evening is gone, as they are catching up on work.

Dr Belton suggests combining your own work-outs with that of the children and combining to do activities together.

You can watch Dr Belton's Facebook Live video on DCU's main Facebook page here 

Check out our third in the series of Facebook Live broadcasts on how adults and kids can stay active at home during COVID-19 next Wednesday, April 8th.

Further details to follow later this week on all of our social channels.