May 15, 2025 • 25 mins
🎙️ TMIT 07: Family Movement
“Movement can be a pursuit, not a punishment.”
In this episode, we explore how when families co-create movement that feels fun, chosen, and skill-building, they create lasting motivation and connection.
TMIT about Family Movement: Building intrinsic motivation through Autonomy — “I choose this.” + Competence — “I can do this.” + Connection — “I belong here.”
We also discuss:
- Why movement often becomes a “chore” instead of a joy—and how that shift happened during childhood and adolescence for Greg & Danielle.
- How the 🔗 Active 1 + FUN study leveraged self-determination theory to create co-active, side-by-side movement that built confidence, skills, and family connection.
- What a family movement experiment might look like, including choosing a new skill to try together and asking the kids to co-create the way.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to The Most Important Thing.
I'm Danielle DeMarco Neufeld. And I'm Greg Neufeld, and
together we're exploring how ambitious busy families can
build culture at home. Because after all, family is the
most important thing. All right.
So today we are talking about family movement.
That's right. Now, I'm sure that you've done a
(00:23):
lot of research on this topic. Who me?
Yes. And I know that there's going to
be a lot for us to dig into as it relates to any family, but I
think that we need to try something a little bit different
today. And let's start with what I'll
(00:45):
call in nerd speak, the context window.
And this is the part where we feed the problem and a lot of
context into the audience to really understand how we arrived
at this episode and why we're here to talk about it.
OK, so we are a family of five. We have three children.
(01:10):
We live in Florida and we moved here to be outdoors a lot more
than we were in New York. This is true, yeah.
Danielle and I both grew up in the Northeast.
I would say that as a child, I grew up in a very active
household, but I was not an active child.
I was definitely not an active child.
(01:31):
I had somewhat active parents. I would say.
I guess they would probably stayvery active, but I spent a lot
of time watching TV and playing video computer games.
Me too, and to be honest, I don't think there's anything
wrong with that. But what I do think that was
wrong was my dread of certain activities and my equating
(01:56):
exercise with not having fun. I'd like to reframe this a
little bit for myself at least, because I know in our family
play exercise or in our family play episode, we talked a lot
about how we played. I think something happened to me
between the ages of like 10 and 13 where I went from being quite
(02:19):
playful and active because I wasplaying a lot to not being
active and not moving my body because I guess it was no longer
cool to play. Interesting.
And so I wonder actually if thisis a great time for our family
movement experiments because we are, well, our second daughter
(02:41):
is moving to elementary school next year and there's just
naturally less, less time for them to quote, UN quote, play
and move their bodies in that way as they get older.
Yeah, I, I would say I followed a similar arc.
I think that I lost the desire for movement when I felt
(03:06):
self-conscious about the activities that I really enjoyed
and stopped them. So I was into jiu jitsu and I
was so gung ho about jiu jitsu. It was probably my favorite
thing. And then I remember kids would
drop out from my friend group, they stopped going, carpool got
(03:29):
smaller. It was really just me and one
other family. And then that family stopped
going and no longer was it cool to be in jiu jitsu.
And I had this tug of war and I,you know, my myself I lost
because I stopped going. I told my parents I wanted to
quit too. And I never found that thing, I
(03:52):
don't think, until I was in my late 20s, early 30s again.
Interesting. And you say that even though you
played tennis throughout high school, right?
As tennis. As did I, but I think this sense
that we're talking about, of enjoying the process of moving
our bodies and being active is not something that we developed
(04:16):
during our childhood. No, it was not an 8.
It was not. It was not a the inherited
trait, I'll put it that way. I think that there's a there's a
kind of kid that I see on the play scape that is always in
motion and kind of grateful I don't have that kid.
(04:37):
You don't. You really don't.
Because it seems like a lot of work, but the positive is that
those kids are just born wantingto move and run and jump and
throw themselves at things. And I wasn't one of those kids.
And we don't have those kids. No, I don't think so.
(04:57):
I think we have a spectrum of degrees of inclination towards
activity. I would say our middle daughter
Jade is probably the most activeand loves to move her body,
followed by Maverick. He seems to always be running
around. And then we have Hunter who is
our oldest and absolutely thrived when we couldn't go
(05:19):
outside during COVID because we lived in very cold winter
Connecticut. And we think of her more as
Taylor Swift, or at least a a Taylor Swift cat lady fan.
She loves to be inside and drinktea and write poetry.
The idea of moving her body would just never naturally occur
(05:41):
to her. Except for on Tuesdays when she
goes to ballet and she loves going to ballet.
So it kind of proves the point about my jiu jitsu experience
that I think that movement is something worth exploring.
Not in the sense of it's a requirement, but in the sense of
it is a pursuit. And it's a pursuit of finding
(06:04):
that thing that makes you feel like you need to go and do it,
versus it's a chore that mommy and daddy said you have to go
and do. Sure, absolutely.
OK, can we dig into my research now?
Because you're. You're tiptoeing around it and
you don't even know about it yet, but you are.
You are definitely leading us, leading us there.
So have we, have we set the context window?
(06:24):
So. Here's the contacts window.
I think that a lot of people here listening, I'm sure, can
relate that we want to instill aculture of family movement, but
we don't want it to be a chore for our kids, and we don't want
it to be a chore for ourselves. Yeah.
Absolutely, because we actually have our own individual movement
down. So this opportunity is really us
(06:48):
to putting aside some of our ownindividual movement time to make
space for family movement. So it has to be worth it.
It has to be worth it. OK, cool.
So there's obviously a lot of research on the topic of getting
children and families to move, but one of the studies that
really stuck with me was from 20/21.
It was published in the International Journal of
(07:10):
Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity and it was
called Active One Plus Fun. So the idea was simple, bring
parents and young kids together for weekly movement sessions
that are playful, skill buildingand done side by side.
The goal wasn't just to get families moving, it was to help
them enjoy it together. And it worked.
The kids built real movement skills.
(07:30):
The parents felt more confident supporting activity at home.
And most importantly, the families were spending time in
ways that felt joyful and connected.
Pretty good outcomes, yeah. Very cool, I'm I'm really
interested to learn what they did and what kind of movement.
This was absolutely so. The program is grounded in
something called Self Determination theory, which is a
psychological framework about what drives motivation.
(07:52):
It says that people, especially kids, are more likely to stick
with something when 3 core needsare met.
Autonomy, competence and relatedness, and I believe that
these are the most important thing about family movement.
I could see that those are the most important things about
movement for any person. And if you're listening and you
(08:13):
don't have your sense of movement down, I hope that you
can learn something here too, and not just make this about
your family and your kids. That's great.
Yeah, I totally agree. So let me just from the top
autonomy, which is the sense of I choose this competence, which
is the feeling of I can do this and relatedness, which is
(08:35):
feeling connected to others. So I belong here.
Those are the three key ingredients in really motivation
about anything according to selfdetermination theory, but
directly applicable here to family movement.
That's awesome. That's really awesome.
I felt this way the first time Istepped into a CrossFit box.
(08:56):
The, the feeling if I can do this first once I saw all the
different types of people and body types that were going
through the workout, the relatedness because of, you
know, my level as as a novice, but having, you know, a
foundation in weightlifting, I was able to kind of pick things
up pretty quickly and you. Felt like you belonged and I
(09:19):
felt. Like I belonged and then the
autonomy because honestly, like they didn't need me.
I, I, it was great. Like I could show up or not.
And I showed up every day for six months.
I think you remember this. You were, you were nursing
maverick at the time. And I was like, Danielle, when
you're done nursing, I think I found the thing.
(09:39):
So and you had indeed. And I had Indeed.
You and I are CrossFit cross fitters every day in our home
gym. That's right, we are indeed
great. So autonomy, I choose this.
Kids and adults feel motivated when they have some say in how
they move. So let's give them the
opportunity, right? Right.
(10:00):
And it can be within a container.
Do you want to ride a bike or goto the playground?
Those two being acceptable options to me.
Or even smaller, you know, let'sdo an optical obstacle course
today. Do you want to do the same one
that you did last weekend, or doyou want to make a new one
today? Yeah, I, I mean the, the mental
(10:24):
load feels a little challenging when it comes to the array of
activities that that we can offer to our kids.
Which is why I'm curious how theresearch thinks about the
matching the activity to the individual as opposed to giving
an assortment of activities and picking the least worst one.
(10:47):
Right. So I could see, you know, Hunter
saying, well, I want to ride bikes today and then the next
day saying I want to go to the playground and then the next day
saying I want to do this simply out of like, those are the least
worst options versus every day she wants to do X and build some
mastery and some skill and some competence.
(11:08):
And you know, the autonomy I think is, is definitely huge
here, but I'm curious how competence feeds into that if
you're always giving them different options.
Well, I think that it can be about choosing at the outset.
So maybe we should reframe thoseexamples, right?
Because maybe it's not necessarily about today I want
(11:31):
to go ride a bike and tomorrow Iwant to go to the playground.
But it can be OK. You have a say in this family's
may fitness competition or and that could be, you know, you
have a say in this family's may fitness pursuit and it's a the
pursuit of improving your competence in ex skill.
(11:56):
Yes, I like that. Those those are the two most
important things in movement as it relates to our family, is the
connectedness, feeling like I belong and then that sense of
mastery, feeling like I can do this.
Yeah. And I think that the third thing
that I chose this, I had a voicein choosing this is important as
(12:18):
well. And so maybe we'll have to stack
these, right? Like maybe there will be
something that the kids want to do this month and then you and I
will have to wait until we do the push up contest next month
or something like that. But we can, we can certainly
take turns. I mean, I already hear the
threads of an experiment developing, but let's let's
(12:41):
continue to go through. So what's autonomy?
The sense of I choose this. When movement isn't forced or
overly structured, it becomes intrinsically motivating and
everyone, kids and grown-ups aremore likely to return to it
because they feel that ownershipcompetence, the feeling of I can
do this. People are more likely to stick
with an activity if they feel capable and see progress.
(13:03):
So this is the idea, one that they use at hunter school as
well around the stages of mastery if you will.
So rather than did you get an A+in physical education this
quarter, it is, are you consciously competent of certain
(13:24):
skills in this area of life? And I think you hit the nail on
the head where, you know, CrossFit is a great example of
this, of no matter where you start, you can always track your
progress. And I think celebrating small
wins can be really important here.
So scaling everything to start and then making sure to
(13:44):
celebrate those small wins. Yeah, I, I mean, I'm a little
too focused on the things that Ilike about CrossFit and haven't
broadened my horizons in a while.
But one of the things that I really love is the ability to do
it at any time, but compete on aleaderboard with others so that
(14:06):
you can see, so that I can see my skills developing not just
against my own benchmarks, but against the other people that I
know on that leaderboard. And so, you know, I'm wondering
if we can carry some of that into this family where maybe
it's not just a family in intra family movement thing.
(14:29):
Maybe there's maybe there are families out there that are
doing different challenges and it's the Neufelds which gives us
a sense of belonging versus, youknow, other families on the
leaderboard. I would love to explore that.
Interesting. OK.
I'm also thinking when you talk about a leaderboard that it
doesn't have to be ultra competitive.
It can also just be a visual representation of
(14:52):
accountability. I think that that can be really
important as well. And then I know you mentioned
CrossFit, but we happen to have,as I mentioned, Jade, we happen
to have a child that loves to master things, both puzzles and
movement, like the monkey bars or catching a ball.
(15:16):
And I'm just thinking about breaking movement down into
things like balancing or jumpingor catching.
It doesn't have to be really complex opportunities either.
It can just be about how many times can you jump in 30 seconds
or something like that. Yeah, yeah.
(15:36):
I I had looked up some family movement tips and tricks earlier
and what I find in that basket is it's a lot of tricking the
kids into moving. That doesn't feel good.
It doesn't feel good. It's like, oh, let's do Simon
Says with different movements orhow many laps can we run around
(15:59):
the yard in a minute? Like that doesn't help the
individual discover themselves. I.
Hear what you're saying around forcing.
Ideally, we're not going to force.
Let's see how this goes, right? I think it's a great time to run
an experiment, but I do want us all to move together more as a
family, so we'll see. We'll try it the nice way first
and we'll see how it works. OK, let's let's, let's double
(16:22):
click on that for a second. Do we want to move more as a
family or do we want the kids tomove more because we move a lot?
Are you looking for more movement or are you looking to
replace the movement that you have?
That is your choice with things that are less desirable to you
(16:43):
or suboptimal in exchange for that family movement.
I wouldn't say that that would be suboptimal.
I think that, no, I absolutely would like to move more as a
family. I don't think that it has to
completely replace my movement. I mean, maybe at the most we're
talking about replacing our Saturday workouts, right?
I would be open to that, but I'mnot even sure that we have to do
(17:04):
that. It could be above and beyond.
I'm happy to do a double time onSaturdays.
I'm thinking about skill building together as a family,
where everybody's a novice in something and we all work on,
let's say, jiu jitsu. I think that would be much
better. Again, with this power over
versus democracy democratic approach.
(17:24):
I would like to do something newtogether so that the kids don't
feel like it's us teaching them something.
Agreed. It can be something that we,
none of us are very good at to start.
Yeah, I'd love to hear from people if they've ever done any
kind of family classes or, or ifthat's a thing even because, you
(17:48):
know, there's adult and junior classes at the karate studio.
But do they ever do family classes?
I have no idea. Yeah, I think it's probably not
easy, but yeah, would love to know if there are or what types,
What types of skill building or movement lend itself better to a
whole family approach? This feels unfortunately like
(18:08):
there's only a high class solution.
Like you can hire a private instructor to do just about
anything for a family. Like if you've got a tennis
court and you want to teach the family tennis, you just pay
somebody to come over and you'vegot the court, you've got the
time, you don't need to go anywhere.
But I'll be curious to explore what we can do that's not so
(18:29):
highbrow, maybe going a little bit more like towards things
that actually exist versus needing to make something up and
spend a lot of money on it. Yeah, I think part of it is also
that you're going advanced mode again, whereas this could be as
simple as learning to catch and throw a ball.
Fair. That's great.
Yeah. OK.
And then the last one, which we're already touching upon, is
(18:51):
this feeling of connectedness toothers so that I belong here,
which is how shared movement deepens relationships and
emotional safety. Yes, the the tennis component of
my life was was a very heavy component because it was such a
(19:13):
family first activity and we always had something to play
tennis with because there were four tennis players in the
house. It wasn't my favorite sport.
That was more of a mental head game developmentally not ready
yet for I'm sure you can relate.Tennis is a tough one.
(19:33):
I mean, talk about, talk about ahard, a hard skill to master,
right? That said, I want to be clear.
This is a family movement episode.
This is not a family sports episode.
No, no, no. So I think that you're confusing
and maybe it's important for us to define that movement does not
necessarily mean sport, at leastthe way I'm thinking about it,
(19:54):
is simple stuff that we can master.
I don't even have any ideas, butI'm sure the kids do.
Around things that they're already trying to master, maybe
like cartwheel for Hunter or a handstand for me, or catching
and throwing is a real focus of Jade's right now.
So there are little opportunities I think, to get
(20:16):
our family moving together that don't necessarily need complex
sport action. Yep, and Lord knows that I could
certainly use some work on things like balance and just
flexibility. Yeah, I mean, what about family
yoga? Family yoga is great.
Hunter does yoga every week at school.
(20:36):
There's no reason why she can't lead us in a practice.
Right. That's that's a great, great
opportunity. OK, so to recap, the three
ingredients that I believe are the most important thing about
family movement come from self determination theory and it's
(20:57):
autonomy. I choose this competence, I can
do this and relatedness, I belong here.
OK. That's tremendous take away.
And I think that the experiment here is just to look for a
couple of simple things to try. Yeah.
So let's get into it. What?
What would you be willing to commit to as far as a minimum
(21:20):
viable product? Or what does what are the
curvatures of this experiment look like if we don't
necessarily know exactly which types of movements everyone's
going to be willing to engage inat the outset?
Honestly, I think this is a great framework to bring to our
kids because we can explain to them these three components and
talk to them about what will bring everybody together for the
(21:42):
with that, that gives us these three components.
So we say like, we're not going to force you to do anything you
don't want to do. We want to come up with
something as a family that we all choose.
We want to come up with something as a family that we
don't necessarily think that we're that good at, but that we
believe that we could be and andwork on it.
(22:03):
And then we want to come up withsomething as a family that we
can do together. So what should that thing be?
OK, great. So maybe this is a framework
that we bring to them on Friday night at our family meal.
I think that sounds great. We talk about, well, let's move
our bodies tomorrow, yeah? What should we do?
What should we do? Yeah.
And and let's make sure it has these three things.
Yeah. And I think that whenever we
(22:23):
pick an activity, we just need to get buy in on on those
things. And if there's buy in, then
feels like everybody wins. OK, cool.
Yeah, I'm glad we had this conversation because I think
that it's much lower stakes thanI had realized at the outset,
where it really can be just a simple skill like catching and
throwing a ball. It doesn't have to be some
(22:45):
grand, complex sport. Yeah, I I think the reason why I
bring up more complexity is because of the the thing that my
parents were always pushing on me, which was if you don't move,
you're going to get fat. And that is a topic for another
day. I agree.
(23:08):
I agree that hits on a lot of different things.
Yeah, the joy of movement shouldnot be equated with a fear of
not looking your best or not feeling your best.
Right. And to put it more positively, I
want our children to understand and appreciate the joy of
(23:31):
movement in a way that I don't think I ever did.
As I mentioned, when I was younger, I think I played
because I love to play, but as an only child, when those play
opportunities became scarce, I didn't have a foundation in
movement and became quite a sedentary person outside of the
(23:53):
extracurricular sports that I was largely forced to play.
Yeah, me too. Thank goodness for CrossFit.
And I wish I'd stuck with jujitsu.
I wish you had too. It's pretty cool.
You know, for me, I found that once I started, once I was on my
own, even in college, that I, I needed to move my body when I,
(24:16):
and I didn't necessarily feel that way prior, but I, I
definitely felt the desire to move my body when I was sitting
in class all day or working, youknow, working hard on papers or
sitting at a desk all day in my first job.
Yeah. And for me, it was very peer
oriented. I ebbed and flowed depending on
who I was spending time with or living with.
(24:37):
And I think that boys especiallycan be susceptible to that,
especially when, you know, movement is not something that
I, it wasn't again, one of thosekids that was running around and
chasing everything. I was a little bit more of an
observer. So that's one thing that I want
(24:58):
to look out for for our kids is who they're spending time with
and make sure that not make surethat their friends are moving,
but make sure that they're moving no matter what their
friends are doing. And one way to do that is to
keep them family oriented. Exactly.
Yeah, it all ties together. All of these experiments that
we're running is just one big experiment.
(25:18):
It sure is. It's been so much fun it.
Really has it Really has no one I'd rather be doing this with.
Ditto. Love you, goosey.
Love you, goosey.
Welcome to The Most Important Thing.
I'm Danielle DeMarco Neufeld. And I'm Greg Neufeld, and
together we're exploring how ambitious busy families can
build culture at home. Because after all, family is the
most important thing. All right.
So today we are talking about family movement.
That's right. Now, I'm sure that you've done a
(00:23):
lot of research on this topic. Who me?
Yes. And I know that there's going to
be a lot for us to dig into as it relates to any family, but I
think that we need to try something a little bit different
today. And let's start with what I'll
(00:45):
call in nerd speak, the context window.
And this is the part where we feed the problem and a lot of
context into the audience to really understand how we arrived
at this episode and why we're here to talk about it.
OK, so we are a family of five. We have three children.
(01:10):
We live in Florida and we moved here to be outdoors a lot more
than we were in New York. This is true, yeah.
Danielle and I both grew up in the Northeast.
I would say that as a child, I grew up in a very active
household, but I was not an active child.
I was definitely not an active child.
(01:31):
I had somewhat active parents. I would say.
I guess they would probably stayvery active, but I spent a lot
of time watching TV and playing video computer games.
Me too, and to be honest, I don't think there's anything
wrong with that. But what I do think that was
wrong was my dread of certain activities and my equating
(01:56):
exercise with not having fun. I'd like to reframe this a
little bit for myself at least, because I know in our family
play exercise or in our family play episode, we talked a lot
about how we played. I think something happened to me
between the ages of like 10 and 13 where I went from being quite
(02:19):
playful and active because I wasplaying a lot to not being
active and not moving my body because I guess it was no longer
cool to play. Interesting.
And so I wonder actually if thisis a great time for our family
movement experiments because we are, well, our second daughter
(02:41):
is moving to elementary school next year and there's just
naturally less, less time for them to quote, UN quote, play
and move their bodies in that way as they get older.
Yeah, I, I would say I followed a similar arc.
I think that I lost the desire for movement when I felt
(03:06):
self-conscious about the activities that I really enjoyed
and stopped them. So I was into jiu jitsu and I
was so gung ho about jiu jitsu. It was probably my favorite
thing. And then I remember kids would
drop out from my friend group, they stopped going, carpool got
(03:29):
smaller. It was really just me and one
other family. And then that family stopped
going and no longer was it cool to be in jiu jitsu.
And I had this tug of war and I,you know, my myself I lost
because I stopped going. I told my parents I wanted to
quit too. And I never found that thing, I
(03:52):
don't think, until I was in my late 20s, early 30s again.
Interesting. And you say that even though you
played tennis throughout high school, right?
As tennis. As did I, but I think this sense
that we're talking about, of enjoying the process of moving
our bodies and being active is not something that we developed
(04:16):
during our childhood. No, it was not an 8.
It was not. It was not a the inherited
trait, I'll put it that way. I think that there's a there's a
kind of kid that I see on the play scape that is always in
motion and kind of grateful I don't have that kid.
(04:37):
You don't. You really don't.
Because it seems like a lot of work, but the positive is that
those kids are just born wantingto move and run and jump and
throw themselves at things. And I wasn't one of those kids.
And we don't have those kids. No, I don't think so.
(04:57):
I think we have a spectrum of degrees of inclination towards
activity. I would say our middle daughter
Jade is probably the most activeand loves to move her body,
followed by Maverick. He seems to always be running
around. And then we have Hunter who is
our oldest and absolutely thrived when we couldn't go
(05:19):
outside during COVID because we lived in very cold winter
Connecticut. And we think of her more as
Taylor Swift, or at least a a Taylor Swift cat lady fan.
She loves to be inside and drinktea and write poetry.
The idea of moving her body would just never naturally occur
(05:41):
to her. Except for on Tuesdays when she
goes to ballet and she loves going to ballet.
So it kind of proves the point about my jiu jitsu experience
that I think that movement is something worth exploring.
Not in the sense of it's a requirement, but in the sense of
it is a pursuit. And it's a pursuit of finding
(06:04):
that thing that makes you feel like you need to go and do it,
versus it's a chore that mommy and daddy said you have to go
and do. Sure, absolutely.
OK, can we dig into my research now?
Because you're. You're tiptoeing around it and
you don't even know about it yet, but you are.
You are definitely leading us, leading us there.
So have we, have we set the context window?
(06:24):
So. Here's the contacts window.
I think that a lot of people here listening, I'm sure, can
relate that we want to instill aculture of family movement, but
we don't want it to be a chore for our kids, and we don't want
it to be a chore for ourselves. Yeah.
Absolutely, because we actually have our own individual movement
down. So this opportunity is really us
(06:48):
to putting aside some of our ownindividual movement time to make
space for family movement. So it has to be worth it.
It has to be worth it. OK, cool.
So there's obviously a lot of research on the topic of getting
children and families to move, but one of the studies that
really stuck with me was from 20/21.
It was published in the International Journal of
(07:10):
Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity and it was
called Active One Plus Fun. So the idea was simple, bring
parents and young kids together for weekly movement sessions
that are playful, skill buildingand done side by side.
The goal wasn't just to get families moving, it was to help
them enjoy it together. And it worked.
The kids built real movement skills.
(07:30):
The parents felt more confident supporting activity at home.
And most importantly, the families were spending time in
ways that felt joyful and connected.
Pretty good outcomes, yeah. Very cool, I'm I'm really
interested to learn what they did and what kind of movement.
This was absolutely so. The program is grounded in
something called Self Determination theory, which is a
psychological framework about what drives motivation.
(07:52):
It says that people, especially kids, are more likely to stick
with something when 3 core needsare met.
Autonomy, competence and relatedness, and I believe that
these are the most important thing about family movement.
I could see that those are the most important things about
movement for any person. And if you're listening and you
(08:13):
don't have your sense of movement down, I hope that you
can learn something here too, and not just make this about
your family and your kids. That's great.
Yeah, I totally agree. So let me just from the top
autonomy, which is the sense of I choose this competence, which
is the feeling of I can do this and relatedness, which is
(08:35):
feeling connected to others. So I belong here.
Those are the three key ingredients in really motivation
about anything according to selfdetermination theory, but
directly applicable here to family movement.
That's awesome. That's really awesome.
I felt this way the first time Istepped into a CrossFit box.
(08:56):
The, the feeling if I can do this first once I saw all the
different types of people and body types that were going
through the workout, the relatedness because of, you
know, my level as as a novice, but having, you know, a
foundation in weightlifting, I was able to kind of pick things
up pretty quickly and you. Felt like you belonged and I
(09:19):
felt. Like I belonged and then the
autonomy because honestly, like they didn't need me.
I, I, it was great. Like I could show up or not.
And I showed up every day for six months.
I think you remember this. You were, you were nursing
maverick at the time. And I was like, Danielle, when
you're done nursing, I think I found the thing.
(09:39):
So and you had indeed. And I had Indeed.
You and I are CrossFit cross fitters every day in our home
gym. That's right, we are indeed
great. So autonomy, I choose this.
Kids and adults feel motivated when they have some say in how
they move. So let's give them the
opportunity, right? Right.
(10:00):
And it can be within a container.
Do you want to ride a bike or goto the playground?
Those two being acceptable options to me.
Or even smaller, you know, let'sdo an optical obstacle course
today. Do you want to do the same one
that you did last weekend, or doyou want to make a new one
today? Yeah, I, I mean the, the mental
(10:24):
load feels a little challenging when it comes to the array of
activities that that we can offer to our kids.
Which is why I'm curious how theresearch thinks about the
matching the activity to the individual as opposed to giving
an assortment of activities and picking the least worst one.
(10:47):
Right. So I could see, you know, Hunter
saying, well, I want to ride bikes today and then the next
day saying I want to go to the playground and then the next day
saying I want to do this simply out of like, those are the least
worst options versus every day she wants to do X and build some
mastery and some skill and some competence.
(11:08):
And you know, the autonomy I think is, is definitely huge
here, but I'm curious how competence feeds into that if
you're always giving them different options.
Well, I think that it can be about choosing at the outset.
So maybe we should reframe thoseexamples, right?
Because maybe it's not necessarily about today I want
(11:31):
to go ride a bike and tomorrow Iwant to go to the playground.
But it can be OK. You have a say in this family's
may fitness competition or and that could be, you know, you
have a say in this family's may fitness pursuit and it's a the
pursuit of improving your competence in ex skill.
(11:56):
Yes, I like that. Those those are the two most
important things in movement as it relates to our family, is the
connectedness, feeling like I belong and then that sense of
mastery, feeling like I can do this.
Yeah. And I think that the third thing
that I chose this, I had a voicein choosing this is important as
(12:18):
well. And so maybe we'll have to stack
these, right? Like maybe there will be
something that the kids want to do this month and then you and I
will have to wait until we do the push up contest next month
or something like that. But we can, we can certainly
take turns. I mean, I already hear the
threads of an experiment developing, but let's let's
(12:41):
continue to go through. So what's autonomy?
The sense of I choose this. When movement isn't forced or
overly structured, it becomes intrinsically motivating and
everyone, kids and grown-ups aremore likely to return to it
because they feel that ownershipcompetence, the feeling of I can
do this. People are more likely to stick
with an activity if they feel capable and see progress.
(13:03):
So this is the idea, one that they use at hunter school as
well around the stages of mastery if you will.
So rather than did you get an A+in physical education this
quarter, it is, are you consciously competent of certain
(13:24):
skills in this area of life? And I think you hit the nail on
the head where, you know, CrossFit is a great example of
this, of no matter where you start, you can always track your
progress. And I think celebrating small
wins can be really important here.
So scaling everything to start and then making sure to
(13:44):
celebrate those small wins. Yeah, I, I mean, I'm a little
too focused on the things that Ilike about CrossFit and haven't
broadened my horizons in a while.
But one of the things that I really love is the ability to do
it at any time, but compete on aleaderboard with others so that
(14:06):
you can see, so that I can see my skills developing not just
against my own benchmarks, but against the other people that I
know on that leaderboard. And so, you know, I'm wondering
if we can carry some of that into this family where maybe
it's not just a family in intra family movement thing.
(14:29):
Maybe there's maybe there are families out there that are
doing different challenges and it's the Neufelds which gives us
a sense of belonging versus, youknow, other families on the
leaderboard. I would love to explore that.
Interesting. OK.
I'm also thinking when you talk about a leaderboard that it
doesn't have to be ultra competitive.
It can also just be a visual representation of
(14:52):
accountability. I think that that can be really
important as well. And then I know you mentioned
CrossFit, but we happen to have,as I mentioned, Jade, we happen
to have a child that loves to master things, both puzzles and
movement, like the monkey bars or catching a ball.
(15:16):
And I'm just thinking about breaking movement down into
things like balancing or jumpingor catching.
It doesn't have to be really complex opportunities either.
It can just be about how many times can you jump in 30 seconds
or something like that. Yeah, yeah.
(15:36):
I I had looked up some family movement tips and tricks earlier
and what I find in that basket is it's a lot of tricking the
kids into moving. That doesn't feel good.
It doesn't feel good. It's like, oh, let's do Simon
Says with different movements orhow many laps can we run around
(15:59):
the yard in a minute? Like that doesn't help the
individual discover themselves. I.
Hear what you're saying around forcing.
Ideally, we're not going to force.
Let's see how this goes, right? I think it's a great time to run
an experiment, but I do want us all to move together more as a
family, so we'll see. We'll try it the nice way first
and we'll see how it works. OK, let's let's, let's double
(16:22):
click on that for a second. Do we want to move more as a
family or do we want the kids tomove more because we move a lot?
Are you looking for more movement or are you looking to
replace the movement that you have?
That is your choice with things that are less desirable to you
(16:43):
or suboptimal in exchange for that family movement.
I wouldn't say that that would be suboptimal.
I think that, no, I absolutely would like to move more as a
family. I don't think that it has to
completely replace my movement. I mean, maybe at the most we're
talking about replacing our Saturday workouts, right?
I would be open to that, but I'mnot even sure that we have to do
(17:04):
that. It could be above and beyond.
I'm happy to do a double time onSaturdays.
I'm thinking about skill building together as a family,
where everybody's a novice in something and we all work on,
let's say, jiu jitsu. I think that would be much
better. Again, with this power over
versus democracy democratic approach.
(17:24):
I would like to do something newtogether so that the kids don't
feel like it's us teaching them something.
Agreed. It can be something that we,
none of us are very good at to start.
Yeah, I'd love to hear from people if they've ever done any
kind of family classes or, or ifthat's a thing even because, you
(17:48):
know, there's adult and junior classes at the karate studio.
But do they ever do family classes?
I have no idea. Yeah, I think it's probably not
easy, but yeah, would love to know if there are or what types,
What types of skill building or movement lend itself better to a
whole family approach? This feels unfortunately like
(18:08):
there's only a high class solution.
Like you can hire a private instructor to do just about
anything for a family. Like if you've got a tennis
court and you want to teach the family tennis, you just pay
somebody to come over and you'vegot the court, you've got the
time, you don't need to go anywhere.
But I'll be curious to explore what we can do that's not so
(18:29):
highbrow, maybe going a little bit more like towards things
that actually exist versus needing to make something up and
spend a lot of money on it. Yeah, I think part of it is also
that you're going advanced mode again, whereas this could be as
simple as learning to catch and throw a ball.
Fair. That's great.
Yeah. OK.
And then the last one, which we're already touching upon, is
(18:51):
this feeling of connectedness toothers so that I belong here,
which is how shared movement deepens relationships and
emotional safety. Yes, the the tennis component of
my life was was a very heavy component because it was such a
(19:13):
family first activity and we always had something to play
tennis with because there were four tennis players in the
house. It wasn't my favorite sport.
That was more of a mental head game developmentally not ready
yet for I'm sure you can relate.Tennis is a tough one.
(19:33):
I mean, talk about, talk about ahard, a hard skill to master,
right? That said, I want to be clear.
This is a family movement episode.
This is not a family sports episode.
No, no, no. So I think that you're confusing
and maybe it's important for us to define that movement does not
necessarily mean sport, at leastthe way I'm thinking about it,
(19:54):
is simple stuff that we can master.
I don't even have any ideas, butI'm sure the kids do.
Around things that they're already trying to master, maybe
like cartwheel for Hunter or a handstand for me, or catching
and throwing is a real focus of Jade's right now.
So there are little opportunities I think, to get
(20:16):
our family moving together that don't necessarily need complex
sport action. Yep, and Lord knows that I could
certainly use some work on things like balance and just
flexibility. Yeah, I mean, what about family
yoga? Family yoga is great.
Hunter does yoga every week at school.
(20:36):
There's no reason why she can't lead us in a practice.
Right. That's that's a great, great
opportunity. OK, so to recap, the three
ingredients that I believe are the most important thing about
family movement come from self determination theory and it's
(20:57):
autonomy. I choose this competence, I can
do this and relatedness, I belong here.
OK. That's tremendous take away.
And I think that the experiment here is just to look for a
couple of simple things to try. Yeah.
So let's get into it. What?
What would you be willing to commit to as far as a minimum
(21:20):
viable product? Or what does what are the
curvatures of this experiment look like if we don't
necessarily know exactly which types of movements everyone's
going to be willing to engage inat the outset?
Honestly, I think this is a great framework to bring to our
kids because we can explain to them these three components and
talk to them about what will bring everybody together for the
(21:42):
with that, that gives us these three components.
So we say like, we're not going to force you to do anything you
don't want to do. We want to come up with
something as a family that we all choose.
We want to come up with something as a family that we
don't necessarily think that we're that good at, but that we
believe that we could be and andwork on it.
(22:03):
And then we want to come up withsomething as a family that we
can do together. So what should that thing be?
OK, great. So maybe this is a framework
that we bring to them on Friday night at our family meal.
I think that sounds great. We talk about, well, let's move
our bodies tomorrow, yeah? What should we do?
What should we do? Yeah.
And and let's make sure it has these three things.
Yeah. And I think that whenever we
(22:23):
pick an activity, we just need to get buy in on on those
things. And if there's buy in, then
feels like everybody wins. OK, cool.
Yeah, I'm glad we had this conversation because I think
that it's much lower stakes thanI had realized at the outset,
where it really can be just a simple skill like catching and
throwing a ball. It doesn't have to be some
(22:45):
grand, complex sport. Yeah, I I think the reason why I
bring up more complexity is because of the the thing that my
parents were always pushing on me, which was if you don't move,
you're going to get fat. And that is a topic for another
day. I agree.
(23:08):
I agree that hits on a lot of different things.
Yeah, the joy of movement shouldnot be equated with a fear of
not looking your best or not feeling your best.
Right. And to put it more positively, I
want our children to understand and appreciate the joy of
(23:31):
movement in a way that I don't think I ever did.
As I mentioned, when I was younger, I think I played
because I love to play, but as an only child, when those play
opportunities became scarce, I didn't have a foundation in
movement and became quite a sedentary person outside of the
(23:53):
extracurricular sports that I was largely forced to play.
Yeah, me too. Thank goodness for CrossFit.
And I wish I'd stuck with jujitsu.
I wish you had too. It's pretty cool.
You know, for me, I found that once I started, once I was on my
own, even in college, that I, I needed to move my body when I,
(24:16):
and I didn't necessarily feel that way prior, but I, I
definitely felt the desire to move my body when I was sitting
in class all day or working, youknow, working hard on papers or
sitting at a desk all day in my first job.
Yeah. And for me, it was very peer
oriented. I ebbed and flowed depending on
who I was spending time with or living with.
(24:37):
And I think that boys especiallycan be susceptible to that,
especially when, you know, movement is not something that
I, it wasn't again, one of thosekids that was running around and
chasing everything. I was a little bit more of an
observer. So that's one thing that I want
(24:58):
to look out for for our kids is who they're spending time with
and make sure that not make surethat their friends are moving,
but make sure that they're moving no matter what their
friends are doing. And one way to do that is to
keep them family oriented. Exactly.
Yeah, it all ties together. All of these experiments that
we're running is just one big experiment.
(25:18):
It sure is. It's been so much fun it.
Really has it Really has no one I'd rather be doing this with.
Ditto. Love you, goosey.
Love you, goosey.
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