Long Neighborhood Walk
Recently, my 6 year old daughter E has been having trouble falling asleep quickly. She gets very active at night sometimes and it takes a lot for her to simmer down. Additionally, my wife has been putting E and our 4 year old son C to bed the last few months and sometimes they get more riled up during story time.
I was brainstorming with my wife about figuring out a solution and besides starting the bedtime routine earlier in the night (which worked well yesterday), we decided to try and incorporate more exercise during the days E doesn’t have any activities after school. The more activity she gets, the more likely she is to feel sleepy at bedtime (same goes for me!).
After school today, we decided to take a family walk around the neighborhood before heading out to pick C up from school. Baby L was in the stroller and my wife packed a picnic for E so we can make a pit stop somewhere to take a break. We wanted to take the route that has some inclines to get some extra work in the walk and our bernadoodle loves the route because we usually take him on it daily.
E already starts to feel like it will be a long and tough walk through the neighborhood, but I reminded her that the hikes we do in the warmer months are much longer and tougher. She felt more comforted by the thought and just having the belief that she can finish this walk easily was enough for her to stay motivated. We finished the tougher parts of the walk and stopped by a park to have a short picnic and snack break. Afterwards, we continued on the walk and made it home. It was about 2-2.5 miles and E finished it with no issues. She even ran in short spurts.
I’m glad we can try to stay active as a family together. I want to instill that into our kids and hopefully they find something active they can do daily. I’m also glad that giving E some perspective on the tougher things she has done gives her confidence to tackle what is in front of her. It’s now about setting higher goals for her to reach and reminding her of all the great progress she has made in her life. That way she will keep going higher and higher - one walk at a time.
