Watch Them Grow

As parents we want to do everything we can to provide our kids with what they need to live healthy, happy lives. A trampoline can not only provide ultimate outdoor fun for your child, but a variety of health benefits and a boost to help ease the stresses of school.

Confidence
Bouncing on a trampoline can very much improve mental health. In recent years, mental health has become almost as important as our physical health. If we become too anxious or stressed out, it can be as hard to complete a task as when you are face with having common cold symptoms.

Learning ways to prevent overwhelming stress is vitally important for kids and can be easy as taking a break from homework that won’t seem to finish itself. A trampoline can provide a child with the confidence to finally solve that nasty math problem. For instance, we as people feel good from accomplishing tasks.

For a child, this may be seeing a parent or sibling do a simple seat-drop on the trampoline and thinking, “Woah! Cool I wanna try that!”. Once this child becomes the seat-drop master, their self-esteem skyrockets. In turn, this confidence can willingly help in the classroom or on the playground.

Resilience
Resilience applies to stress and as a general term to persist. A trampoline can help build both meanings. Building resilience to stress can be related to gaining confidence and self-esteem as stated before. Furthermore, when we stress our bodies, it correlates with better coping with mental stress as well.

The more we exercise, the better the blood flow to the brain, which helps problem solving skills that can help to find answers to stressful life events. Children especially, will persist on jumping and not even notice that they are working their bodies because their mind is focused on the fun they are having.

Eyes on the Prize
A well gazed upon health benefit of bouncing on a trampoline is the elevation of ocular motor skills. Ocular motor skills, in simple terms, is the ability of our muscles and eyes to work as a team. This means that when kids have under developed ocular motor skills, it can lead to reading, writing, and staying focused.

Although in Dr. Kenneth A. Lane’s 2005 book, “Developing Ocular Motor and Visual Perceptual Skills: An Activity Workbook”, he suggests activities that can help improve coordination through body awareness (97-98). Bouncing on a trampoline increases ocular and vestibular skills – a sense of balance that comes from the inner ear – which helps with coordination. A great activity that Lane mentions, is to play catch with a beanbag while your child bounces on the trampoline.