As we get older, movement can sometimes only get harder. Especially for teens & adults where physical abilities is impacted from a young age. For many of the middle school students I work with who have ADHD and who are Autistic; attention and focus, emotional regulation, problem solving and social skills are all impacted. Building movement into therapy sessions, integrated it at home after school, and highlighting the importance of it, is one way to promote these skills.

Maintaining motivation to workout is hard for everyone. But it can be even more difficult for someone with special needs. That’s because motivation, and understanding that working out for your overall health and well-being, are very abstract concepts. They require skills like being able to look into the future and there needs to be a general understanding of what “health” means and looks like for oneself. Not only that, but progress isn’t always very obvious, so intrinsic motivation needs to kick in which is a higher order thinking skill. So, how do you maintain motivation?

Let’s be honest. Motivating youth to do workouts after school or on the weekends can be hard enough, and now not only are doing their workouts at home, but they are also taking their classes online at home! With so much times at home, how do you encourage your child to workout?