Fitness and Exercise in Kids with Special Needs

by jphilo | Nov 13, 2013 | Different Dream, School/Education, Special Needs Parenting

Fitness and Exercise in Kids with Special Needs

Today’s guest blogger is Seth McNew, a fitness and exercise coach. He’s here to offer ideas about how parents can encourage children to become more active and stay fit.

Childhood obesity rates are growing at a dangerous rate, with one out of every three kids in America considered overweight. This is not just in the United States, this epidemic is in Canada, Australia, the U.K., and many other countries around the world.

Fitness and Exercise for Kids with Special Needs

Now apply this to the community of kids with special needs. With little research and nutrition data available specific to special needs exercise, and it being much harder for to participate in organized sports and group physical activities for many reasons, it’s no wonder that the rate of obesity is even higher among this population than in the general public.

However, through targeted exercise and play ideas, as well as healthy habit creation, we can change stereotypes and statistics and get our kids fit, healthy, and happy. This is not about special diets or one-stop cure-all exercises. This is about finding fun and motivating ways to exercise, with activities for special needs children.

Fitness and Exercise Sample Activity

Here is one example of a simple and fun exercise to do at home:

The Bear Crawl: Animal moves are a favorite for all kids and easy to learn. Start by bending forward and lowering the hands to the ground. Then, try to keep the legs straight as he or she shuffles back and forth across the room. Make it fun by growling like a bear! The more fun the activity, the more reinforced the movements will be. See similar activities for special needs children in this post.

Other Fitness and Exercise Activities and Resources

Do you and your child have favorite activities to encourage fitness and exercise? Do you know of other good resources on this topic? Please share them in the comment box!

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Top Photo Credit: www.freedigitalphotos.net

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I’m Seth McNew. I’m fortunate that I get the amazing opportunity to work with this incredible population and help our community to reach better fitness goals, encouraging lifelong health in kids with special needs. As a long-time youth sports coach, as well as a certified personal trainer, I have been working in athletics and fitness all of my life. During my early days of fitness instruction, I was asked to help with a local elementary school’s special needs class to facilitate an exercise program. I saw a need and a possibility and have been running the Play Through Autism program since then. Check out this video to learn more. I hope that you will be able to use this resource to acquire some fitness techniques and ideas that will help you and your child to exercise.

Author Jolene Philo

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IEPs, Sports, and Kids with Special Needs

Today, I’m happy to introduce my friend and guest blogger Naomi Norris. She’s here to share how she and her son’s school used IEPs to encourage her son to get involved in his middle school cross country team. If you read the story and would like to leave a comment for Naomi below, it will be passed on to her.

I was very proud as I read the digits on the official timer as each runner crossed the finish line…18 minutes, 10 seconds. That’s his best time yet! His first time was over 27 minutes because he had stopped to scream at his aide a couple of times and had a fit over some bugs flying around. This was a good time, and though he had stopped twice, he finished ahead of over forty other boys.

My son, Joshua, was born with a severe Pierre Robin Sequence, which caused him to be trached and tube-fed for his first 3 years of life while he underwent a series of corrective surgeries. He used a walker for 1 1/2 years and is small for his age. Josh is both autistic and mentally-challenged, requiring a full-time aide at school. Though he has these weaknesses in his life, he has an incredible personality that people love.

Until this fall, Josh had ridden the bus home each day after school, only to play video games and watch PBS until bedtime. Last spring I became concerned over this pattern developing in him. So when it was time to write a new IEP, I decided to include cross country in it. At the time, my husband was not on board with the idea. But the school agreed, and when the 7th grade cross country team assembled this fall, Josh Norris was on it. The only glitch was finding the right aide to run beside him. We knew of a young man who plays soccer and runs to stay in shape and asked if he would be willing to volunteer. He agreed, was approved by the school, and goes to every practice and meet with Josh. He is allowed to run with Josh in the meets, and even hold onto his arm or hand to lead him along. The goal is that by ninth grade, Josh will run independently and even be an asset to the team.

Josh was not happy about the change in his routine. He fought with his aide, hitting and kicking and throwing fits for the first week of practice. And did I mention his bug phobia? Dragonflies are especially terrifying to him, so he would rather stay indoors. Even so, after the first week, he started to enjoy being on the team. The other boys and coaches treat him well and seem to enjoy him. At one meet, he became irritable and upset halfway through, giving his aide some trouble. I watched as a young teammate ran alongside him, put his arm over his shoulders, and ran with him until he calmed down. Josh finished the race and even passed several boys before the finish line. Needless to say, Dad is now on board!

A woman approached us wanting to meet Josh after one race. She works for another school district and wanted to know how we got the school to agree to this. She fought for autistic kids in her district to be able to participate in school sports and lost. I told her to have the parents request it in the IEP. The school will be more likely to comply if it’s there. There’s always a way to make it work. Parents sometimes forget that they need to fight for their kids’ legal rights. Our school was very happy to make it happen for Josh, and we are grateful.

Final Note: For any parents struggling to raise your autistic child, I want to encourage you not to give up hope. Josh is my third child with autism. My oldest daughter couldn’t speak until she was 5, graduated high school with honors, and is now doing well in college. My 14-year-old son with autism struggled with horrible outbursts of profanity for years. He just started his freshman year of high school without a one-on-one associate and is completely off medications for the first time. He has a 3.4 GPA and is on the football team. Now we are focusing in getting Josh on track for life. We have always accepted our kids’ physical and emotional shortcomings, but have never underestimated them. Each child has had incredible strengths…these are what we have focused on, while continually teaching them self-discipline. Our children has been a wonderful gift from God, and we are grateful to Him for allowing us to have been their parents.

We don’t let autism ever get in the way of teaching them what’s really important in this life.

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop-up box and the second at the bottom of this page.

Naomi Norris explains how she used IEPs to get her son with autism involved in cross country & how being on a sports team helped her son.

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Naomi Norris lives in Iowa with her husband Rob and their four children. She is a stay-at-home mom who sometimes works with her husband in their real estate investment business. Her faith in Jesus Christ is first in her life, allowing her to be the mother and wife she has needed to be over the last 20 years. She has five children. Three of them have been diagnosed with autism and one died of a neurological cancer at age 3. Naomi and Rob have taken all their children overseas to expose them to different cultures and show them what true poverty looks like in the world. Naomi and her daughters are heavily involved in helping save the lives of orphans in Congo, Africa through orphan sponsorship and teaching orphans AIDS prevention.