The one thing at the top of every list that marks the traits of a good mom is the way they prioritize healthy choices for their children. It shows up in everything you do. You want them educated, well-fed, and living and leading active and healthy lives. 

Of course, there are days when you are torn between just letting them be kids and having fun while ensuring the fun they have isn’t dangerous to their growing brains or poses a safety hazard.

It can be hard to find that thing for your kids to do that checks off all the boxes. 

Cue the world of ping pong. 

Giving your children the gift of ping pong makes being a good mom fun. You know it will be good for them, and even fun, too. Ping pong is renowned for being one of the best all-purpose games your children can pick up. It feeds the mind, body, and soul, and nurtures their overall physiological health. 

 If you need a really good reason to sell this life benefit to your family, we’ve rounded up several benefits of ping pong for children that will back up any proposal to purchase that table. Learn them here.

Build Overall Muscle Strength

If you’ve never played before, ping pong is more athletic than you might think. Cardiovascular health improves with regular ping pong activity, and it also helps to build muscles and strengthen bones. 

Ping pong is an exercise that has you moving all of the time. Moving around the table tennis table for hours on end, or even just one hour, is going to create a stronger person, with an improved heart rate and better blood circulation.

At the same time, it burns calories and is just plain good exercise. This is a sport that any mom could find appealing to their children. With this table in your home, you have a fun reason to get them away from screen time.

Build Better Brains

Anyone that plays ping pong a lot probably knows first-hand how ping pong can strengthen mental activity as well. It is known to develop your own strategy and cognitive skills, while also honing your mental acuity and that of your children. 

Many sports require brain skills, but in ping pong, you are always thinking of what to do next. You don’t have the advantage of a team to play it out for you most of the time, and it’s all you making the moves and deciding what to do next.

Ping pong is also renowned in the world for helping to develop better memory skills, and is frequently touted by Alzheimer’s experts as a suggested game to play. 

In addition to strategy-building and memory-developing skills, ping pong also helps you to strengthen the neural connections that result in hand-eye coordination and improved reflexes. All of these muscle activities start in the brain and the spinal cord, two parts of the body that ping pong nurtures. 

These combined psychomotor and concentration skills help to build more well-rounded children that can literally think on their feet when engaged in any individual feat.

Build Small and Gross Motor Skills

Every athletic activity is known to build small and gross motor skills, and ping pong is no exception. You can win a game from the slightest hand movement, or from jumping across the room to slam the ball. These are both small motor and gross motor development actions.

Your small and gross motor skills are developed first in the brain where thinking and planning begins. With practice, your children’s motor skills in table tennis will become automatic as their neurons begin firing orders at their muscle groups to take it home for the team.

Build Social Skills

There is nothing like the fellowship that this sport nurtures. Ping pong today has become a huge phenomenon all over the world, with tournaments and conventions happening all the time. One reason for that is the social nature of the game. You can really get to know people when playing with or against them. When your children are playing with each other, they will make memories and develop experiences that they wouldn’t with any other sport.

This is a close-contact sport with a dose of healthy competition mixed in between matches and tournaments, fostering good exercise and healthy activity. Give your children the gift of good social skills in addition to the many benefits of exercise and strategy building when you give them the gift of ping pong.

Play Ping Pong Today

Being a good mom, or feeling like one, takes more work every day sometimes. At least, that is how it might feel. If you add ping pong to the lives of your children, you may find this activity does some of the heavy lifting for you. Bring ping pong into the family and start seeing the benefits immediately.

They will have an activity that they love, develop their mental acuity and strategy-building skills, and enhance their coordination and reflexes in a solid activity that is healthy on the heart and gross motor groups. At the same time, they will become social creatures without the screens in front of them, with live humans in real-time. This is something that will make you feel good, mom. Go for it.