First off, I would like to thank the Montessori Family Alliance for hosting me for an in-depth discussion on physical wellness and the family. I was the anchor leg of a three-part series focusing on promoting healthy habits in the family. The first two components featured the importance of sleep and nutrition, and I integrated the two into my discussion. For those who missed the presentation, I thought including the slides distributed to the audience with some of my talking points would be helpful.

When describing the benefits of physical activity, I described it as planning in reverse. What health outcomes did we want at the later stages of our life? We typically want many years of life, but more importantly, we want quality within those years. To have quality years as we grow old, we need to be able to perform daily tasks of living independently. This means ample muscle mass to stay mobile and play with our grandchildren. Second, we need good bone density to prevent significant injury from a fall. Third, we want to be as disease free as possible from cardiovascular, neurodegenerative, cancer, and metabolic diseases. Fourth, we want good mental health, free of anxiety and depression. Finally, we want to stay mentally sharp and preserve our cognitive ability. To have all these things as an elder, we must begin the journey as a child. 

Physical activity does fantastic things for our body and mind! If there were a drug that gave all the benefits of physical activity, everyone on Earth would be prescribed this drug. However, physical activity is often not prescribed, or at the very least, not as encouraged as it should be for its panacea of benefits. The most staggering statistic from the World Health Organization is that regular physical activity reduces the risk of all-cause mortality by 20-30 percent. That means exercise reduces our risk of dying from anything by 20-30 percent!

I am not a fan of reinventing the wheel. So, when it came down to recommending different types of physical activity for children, I turned to the source (Dr. Montessori) for help. Using the planes of development, I looked at each plane's characteristics and sensitive periods to create suggestions for physical activity for the child as they grow. While every child goes through the planes of development, the speed at which they do so is variable. Therefore, parents must follow the development of their children as they engage them in physical activity.

The first plane is split into two distinct parts: the absorbent mind and the reasoning mind. The newborn to the age of three needs thoughtful exposure to sensory experiences. This time is about stimulating the senses, which goes beyond the five senses and includes vestibular (movement) and proprioception (body position). As they move to the second part of the first plane, the child craves social interaction with peers (instead of just caregivers). They are using their hands for learning, developing their imagination, and making decisions for themselves. This is the perfect time for active play, including games that promote imagination and have rules. Negotiating how to play a game in real-time is tremendous work and is the foundation for any cooperative work they will do in the future. As a parent, I imagine the second half of the first plane and the first half of the second plane is the golden age of playing with your child. I hope I am wrong and get many more years of play with my son, but I think the call for more independence in the second plane will win out.

Looking at the second plane, there will be a point when our little buddies begin turning into pre-teens who care as much about their peers as they do their parents. They crave independence, different people, and new experiences. They are developing their moral compass and are especially sensitive to injustice. They may also look up to adults or fictional characters described as "hero worship." Finally, these children are more inclined to tackle big work and challenges as they push the boundaries of their abilities. This is the perfect time for sport. New people (teammates), new experiences (games, matches, practice), moral compass and injustice (sportsmanship, adherence to rules), hero worship (plenty of great athletes to look up to), and big challenges fit seamlessly with the qualities of sport. We will talk more about sports in the next slide.

In the third plane of development, we see the child becoming an adult. There is more social independence as the human asks, "Who am I?" These people express themselves creatively, look for purposeful activity, and make decisions for themselves. Teens in this age range are vulnerable to peer perceptions, good and bad. In the same way that the brain is pruning unused connections in the brain, individuals will likely stop doing the things they don't enjoy as much and double down on what they like. This is a crucial time to introduce exercise to the individual because now is the time to begin accruing all the health benefits we want as we age. Bone density and muscle mass are built in the third and fourth plane, and like a silo, we want to accumulate all we can. As adults, we are trying to hold onto as much as possible, but unfortunately, due to the aging process, we will continually lose lean tissue and bone mass as we grow older. If we accumulate a lot of lean tissue and bone mass when we are younger and do a good job of holding onto it as we grow older, we have a better chance of remaining independent as an elder. Teens need to have agency in how they exercise, but they also need to be exposed to the many ways we exercise to find what they enjoy. Adherence and consistency are critical, and we will only do what we enjoy for long periods of time. As adults, we want to coach and work side-by-side with our teens instead of using the top-down approach if we want the teen to have these exercise behaviors lifelong.

Speaking of lifelong sport and exercise, that is the goal of the fourth plane. The individual is an adult making their own choices with total independence to pursue their interests. The adult is trying to answer the question, "What do I need to do to make the world a better place?" The adult is finding their purpose in life. This requires the adult to be strong independently while having the ability to collaborate. This requires the adult almost to be selfish when considering their health. To best serve others, one must be capable of doing so, which means we want to be healthy. Therefore, lifelong health is intrinsically tied to lifelong physical activity from play, sports, and exercise.

The sports recommendation for the second and third planes may seem distressing to some. What if my child could be more sporty? The good news is that your child can engage in various sports that emphasize different skills. Someone who is sport adverse typically thinks of the situation or type of sport they dislike first instead of thinking about the seemingly limitless possibilities. If you ask Google how many sports there are, the answer is well into the hundreds. With so many options, we should not focus on stereotypes or our dislikes but on what our child might like and give it a shot. If they like it, that's great, and if they don't, try a new sport. Even if they find a sport they like, it's still beneficial to continue trying new sports instead of hyper-focusing on only one. We will discuss that more in the next slide.

Sports can be broken into two different categories: team-based or individual. Team-based sports will undoubtedly expand your child's ability to collaborate and work in team settings, which are essential skills for life. Within the team setting, the child learns about taking responsibility. Their effort and performance influence the success of the whole team. Their actions have consequences, which is an important life lesson. Depending on the role the child takes within the team, whether a leader or role player, their contributions dictate the team's overall success.

Exercise can similarly be broken into two types: cardiovascular training and resistance training. Within cardiovascular training, we have short-distance, high-intensity modes like sprinting or long-distance marathon-style running. Similarly, in resistance training, one could focus on muscle mass accumulation or focus more on strength; however, they are not mutually exclusive. Both cardiovascular and resistance exercises are vital for health in different pathways. Some modes of exercise try and combine the two. Either way, there are so many ways to do "cardio" or "lift weights" that we can undoubtedly find something enjoyable. We may even exercise to improve at sport while happily taking all the health benefits as well. In every sport, it is advantageous to be fast, strong, and have endurance, which can all be increased with exercise.

Contrary to its nomenclature, individual sports are not done in isolation. While they might compete individually, the individual trains with a team almost always. Many of the benefits of team sports still apply to individual sports, just to a lesser extent. However, individual sports have an added emphasis on self-reliance. All the joy and glory of success are based on one's effort, as well as failures and hardships. To some, though, they prefer being in complete control of their destiny and don't mind failing if it is of their own accord. People's personalities, temperaments, and neurodiversity may influence what types of sports they may like. Still, it is beneficial to try a variety of sports that stretch our cognitive and physical abilities.

Finally, there are other factors we must consider when our child is exploring different sports options. One factor is our environment, which dictates the availability of some sports over others. For example, living on a coast may doing a sport like surfing plausible and appealing, but it isn't easy to practice if you live in a landlocked area. Skiing is fun for many, but it's practiced in snowy mountainous areas. While it is not impossible to overcome environmental limitations (one of my wife's favorite movies is Cool Runnings), it certainly makes participation in that sport more challenging. Another factor that most families must consider is the cost of the sport. One of the reasons soccer is the most popular sport in the world is its relatively low cost for participation, making it accessible to people of virtually any socioeconomic class. The same cannot be said for sports like hockey (at least in the US), often club sports with expensive league and equipment costs. The culture of the place you live will also dictate which sports may be available to play. For example, Sepak Takraw is an exciting sport, but I have only seen it on YouTube, never in person, because it is popular in Asia, not the United States. Practicing an unpopular sport within your country or state with others requires much luck.

When someone says the expression “a jack of all trades is a master of none,” they never include the second part of the saying. The second part of the saying is a universal truth for our children and sports. We want to give them as many different experiences as possible to expand the possibilities of what they might enjoy later in life. Specialization within a sport is the opposite of this and is potentially harmful to the child through overuse injuries, which account for half of sports injuries seen in young people. For example, a young pitcher in baseball is supposed to throw only around 50 pitches per game about once a week. However, it is common for that child to play on several different teams and pitch for all of them, thereby pitching well over that 50-pitch count. As a result, they don’t give their body adequate time to rest and heal, and the accumulation of damage from a specific movement done at full force repeatedly is too much for a joint, tendon, or ligament to bear, and the child gets injured.

We should play various sports to avoid overuse injuries and mental burnout from doing the same thing too much. One sport will help the practice and understanding of another sport both mentally and physically. For example, the pivot steps needed in the post for basketball or almost identical to the pivot steps used in net play in tennis. Plus, we benefit from playing a team sport one season and an individual sport another. Mentally, playing more than one sport allows us to understand the overall concept of sports in general. Most team sports are inherently invasion-style games where offense and defense change back and forth. Concepts like spacing and player orientation transfer from one sport to another. Over my years of coaching, it has become evident that soccer has crossover into basketball, specifically with court awareness and defense.

Unfortunately, many parents believe specialization will lead to college scholarships or the Olympics. While we cannot ignore the fact that high-level athletes have put thousands of hours into their craft, we also cannot ignore the fact that those individuals playing at the highest levels could be doing that with any sport. In addition, there are many examples of top athletes who played various sports and found their niche much later in life. Specializing in a sport increases our child’s chance of injury and burnout more than their chance of playing the sport in adulthood. The expression we should use more often is “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” regarding kids and sports.

This slide is pretty self-explanatory. Children have a great B.S. detector when it comes to hypocrisy. The saying “do as I say, not as I do” is always met with resistance, and for good reason. What is the worth of doing something the messenger does not do for themselves? Advocating for physical activity without regularly participating sends a mixed message that your child will have no problem reminding you. The good news is that it doesn’t matter what the adult chooses to do for their regular physical activity and exercise. What matters is the consistency in which they do it. Our children do not have to follow in our footsteps, even though it’s nice when you can share the same activity together. What matters is that they have a concrete example of physically active adults.

This one is another self-explanatory slide. A great piece of advice Cassie gave during the webinar was that she had families that required their children to do one physical activity and one mental activity after school. So, for example, the child could play soccer and also play an instrument. On the other hand, maybe the child does track and field and paints. Either way, encouraging variety within this framework will give the child many options to pursue as they age and decide what they like to do.

Again, I want to thank the Montessori Family Alliance for putting this webinar series together and inviting me to speak about the benefits of physical activity. Thank you to everyone in attendance; from my understanding, we had a decent-sized audience. Finally, thank you, the reader, for taking the time to review the webinar summary and your continued support of Montessori Physical Education.