Immediately Help Your Child Improve by Doing 3 Simple Things Better
Unquestionably, you’re reading this because you want to help your child improve in school, sports, or in other extracurricular activities. If you are anything like me, a catchy headline like this is enough to tempt you to dive into every detail of your child’s performance to figure out a new hack to help them get better.
However, the truth is performance improvement hacks only work if you master the simple fundamentals first. Therefore, the best performance improvement hack is to do the simple things better.
A clinical research study on the factors that improve a child’s performance (Lancet Child & Adolescent Health Journal) makes this “do simple better” point very clear.
The participants in this study included 4524 US children aged 8–11 years. The researchers compared the collected data to the Canadian 24-hour movement behavior guidelines. The guidelines tracked were as follows:
1) Uninterrupted 9 to 11 hours of sleep per night for those aged 5–13 years and 8 to 10 hours per night for those aged 14–17 years, with consistent bed and wake-up times
2) An accumulation of at least 60 minutes per day of moderate to vigorous physical activity involving a variety of aerobic activities. Vigorous physical activities and muscle and bone strengthening activities should each be incorporated at least 3 days per week
3) No more than 2 hours per day of recreational screen time
Researchers found that only 5% of the children met all three guidelines. In addition, those in the 5% had superior performance in memory, thinking, and language test over the children who met none of the guidelines. What’s more, performance improved with each additional recommendation met.
The takeaway from this research is a simple prescription for parents. If you want to immediately help your child improve in school, sports, or in other extracurricular activities, consistently make sure they get:
- 9 hours of sleep.
- 60 minutes of exercise.
- Less than 2 hours of screen time per day.