Exercise time out

I had a very interesting conversation today and what else do you do with interesting conversations except blog about them. I have been hearing a lot of what I believe to be Mom’s trying to understand boys energy level and how they can get them to calm down. Do they really need to calm down? There are so many places where boys have to be calm, in school, restaurants and the list goes on but in those rare occasions that boys get to be boys they sometimes release all of their energy in one place and that might confuse or scare an adult watching them by saying they need to calm down.
I do not think they need to calm down and I think they need to be encouraged to get that energy out in the right place and time. In this conversation I had today, I came up with an exercise time-out. This is where you either suggest to your boy a few activities to do or they can come up with them by themselves depending on age and when the energy level gets too high and you can see the frustration starting to kick in, its time for an energy time-out. This can be as simple as running around the yard for 5 minutes, running up and down stairs if you have them or riding a bike. This time-out is designed to get the energy out before your boy does something with the anger. In time, they can help you figure out what they need and how they can get to do these exercise time outs. Make it fun and remember boys will be boys and they are full of energy. Lets work to get that energy out in a positive manner and help them learn something about themselves at the same time!