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Week 7

Problem solving

In the course of everyday life, you’re going to experience lots of decisions or situations that make being active more difficult. You’ll need good problem-solving skills to find solutions to these situations. Everyone uses problem solving skills every day without even realizing it. People deal with all types of problems, both big and small. When you have problems come up, we want to teach you a strategy to help to solve these problems. We use the acronym SOCS to remember this strategy, which stands for

Situation

Options

Consequences

Solution

The goal of this technique is to help you reflect on a problem or situation, determine alternative options and strategies, recognize consequences, and choose an appropriate course of action.

Let’s go through an example of this:

Situation: Let’s say the Situation is someone in the family has been skipping their physical

activity.

Options: Possible Options to stop this situation from happening may include:

· Go for an after dinner walk as a family,

· Try several new physical activities to see which ones are most enjoyable,

· Turn off screens

Consequences: What are some Consequences from the Options we discussed?

· If the family goes for an after dinner walk and the person has a good time, they may be likely to do it again.

· If they try several new physical activities, they may find something else enjoyable the family can do together.

· If screens are turned off, they may find that they have more time in their day to be active!

Solution: which of the potential Options do you think would be best for your family?

What is a problem your family is currently experiencing? How can you apply SOCS to this? We have a work sheet to help walk you through each of the steps.

Tempting situations - Strategies to engage in physical activity the holidays

What situations are tempting for you? Maybe a stressful workday, going on vacation, or days off during the holiday season? We want to provide you with problem solving skills that can help you stay active, but we also want to discuss how to handle it when you do slip up. Slipping up is a normal part of the process, and we don’t want you to give up!

Prevention strategies:

· Plan ahead. Be aware before you enter into a situation that’s going to be temping and think about how you will handle it. Just thinking about it beforehand can help you make better choices when you’re there! It also helps you plan ahead. How have you planned ahead to avoid temptation?

· Make a plan. During the holidays, you may not get to have your normal exercise routine, but you can still choose activities that are more active than others! Or plan out time to exercise with a friend or family member to help keep you accountable!

· Recovering from slip-ups: Everyone misses their goals at some point. If you miss a few days or a week of being active, the first step is to realize it and we encourage you to get back into the habit of being active. Make sure to set specific, measurable, and a realistic goal for the first week back, and keep yourself accountable to that goal through motivating techniques or incentives.

Family Activity Corner 

Complete the problem-solving worksheet with your child to identify barriers to exercise and how to overcome these barriers.

Everyone in the home can try a physical activity jeopardy game. Write 5, 10, 15, 20, etc. on separate pieces of paper. On the back of each of these sheets write a physical activity. Examples include boxing jabs, jumping jacks, push-ups, arm circles, elbow to opposite knee touches. Pick of the pieces of paper and everyone does the physical activity listed for the number of repetitions listed on the piece of paper.

**this activity was modified from the American Heart Association’s In-School Activities Break list

Brain Breaks:

· Try this exercise activity. Go to YouTube and search HTS Middle School & High School PE Cardio & Core or use this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3H2lQ3_Z_M

· Check out this plank activity! Go to YouTube and search PE from Home – Playing Card Plank Activity or go to this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1WXer02t_o.

COVID-19 Updates 

Visit the Stay Active Website for more information and resources

Contact us with any questions or concerns related to the Stay Active Program:



816-287-0262 

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