Why You Should Walk with Your Kids ... Especially Now

In Northern California, two little boys charge purposefully down the sidewalk in front of their mother. “We have 15 minutes left of PE,” mom Erin Stolle says. “And we’re getting it in with family walks.”

Across the country in Pennsylvania, Mary Shoemaker’s sons pose atop a boulder, arms raised up in victory. “Daily hikes are keeping us sane,” she confides.

And all last week, despite the March chill, families walked up and down the one-mile stretch of Long Beach in Sag Harbor and clots of people strolled their Hamptons neighborhoods, greeting neighbors from a distance.

Across the country and throughout the Hamptons, families are walking together in droves and perhaps all of this family walking is one of the unexpected benefits of our new reality.

For starters, walking has incredible benefits for your body. A regular walking practice has been shown to reduce your risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, dementia, and several types of cancer. Walking is also a powerful mood booster, an effective tool in the battle against depression, and an excellent antidote to a crappy day. Finally, walking is great for your mind -- a 20-minute walk has been shown to enhance decision-making, improve executive function, and fuel creativity.

So walking has benefits for your mind, body, and mood, but what about the benefits of walking with your kids? 

If your kids are young, walking together teaches them, through actions rather than words, the value, importance, and fun of movement. Erin’s boys, who were racing down the street in Northern California, didn’t need a lecture about the importance of exercise. They were simply having fun.

Mary’s boys, standing atop that boulder, didn’t experience a sense of accomplishment from leveling up in a video game. They experienced the satisfaction that comes from literally leveling up. “I’m planning theme walks for each day that the kids are out of school,” Mary says. “Yesterday, we collected worms and went home and learned about them. Tomorrow, I’m planning a scavenger hunt.”

Perhaps more importantly, walking creates the perfect environment for conversation and connection with your kids. Walking together provides time and space, free of distraction, which is exactly what kids need in order to open up to their parents, according to Lisa Hillman, a therapist who specializes in working with children, teens and families. “What we hear most from the kids in our practice,” she explains, “is that kids feel that their parents are busy and distracted. Even if it doesn’t seem that way, kids crave their parents’ full attention.” So it’s not just that walking gets your kids away from their screens, it gets you away from your screens too.

Mom Laura Miller concurs. “When my daughter and I walk together, we talk about everything, from challenges with friends, to what plants are edible to what my favorite toys were when I was a kid.”

Anyone with teens knows that we often have our best conversations while driving. Shoulder-to-shoulder conversations help kids to open up in part because they “don’t see our reactions -- or what they perceive as our reactions,” says Holistic Psychotherapist Keri Cooper. Ask your kid to sit down and “talk” and immediately their defenses go up. Ask them to take a walk and “there’s less pressure on the conversation. You can chat about mundane things, and it during those mundane conversations that we often learn the most about our kids.” Without our usual school pick-ups, after school practices, dance classes, gymnastic classes, or baseball practice, we’ve lost those moments, at least for the time being. That’s okay. Walking together fills that void. 

Embrace the silence while you walk together. “Parents tend to feel that you need to be in a conversation with your kids in order to be connecting but that’s not necessarily the case. Just being together in nature and sharing an experience nurtures your connection,” explains Dr. Sharon Saline, Psy.D. 

Finally, walking is something family members can do together and shared experiences are the glue that holds families together. Bring Rover and now you are really, truly, all in it together.