Boys Need to Move – Part 1

Posted on 3rd June 2011 in Uncategorized
Run and Kick

Kids Need to Move

People evolved in a world where survival meant movement.  Our ancestors had to search for food, hunt animals, and farm the land without any manufactured equipment or even animals until recently.  If you sat in one place for 12 hours per day, week after week, you would die.

Estimates are that prehistoric people moved 5 to 15 miles per day hunting, gathering, chasing, escaping, exploring, playing and moving to more fertile grounds as the seasons changed.

Today people sit.  Every year there are more excuses for physical inactivity.  People sit at work.  They sit for entertainment or out of exhaustion in front of the TV or computer or video games. They sit going to and from work.  In other words people are not using their bodies in the ways they were meant to be used.  This is killing us and making us chronically stressed and depressed.

For children the situation is even worse.  Kids need to move more than adults do.  Their bodies and minds drive them to movement so that they will grow and develop property, both physically and mentally.  When allowed to, children run for fun! They just run and run.  Anyone who has watched a group of kids on a playground knows that this is true.

Unfortunately, kids today are not allowed to run or move.  The average child is allowed to watch between 4 and 5 hours of TV and “screen time” per day (screen time includes sitting at a computer and playing video games).  On top of that, PE classes are being cut or eliminated.  And many parents, out of fear for their safety, no longer allow children to go outside unsupervised.

And what is the result?  Fat kids.  Unhappy kids.  And kids who are increasingly being diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Disorders.  They are being held still against their will, and then they are being drugged when they try to move, or lose the ability to focus.

That is the problem.  Next time I will address some of the solutions.

 

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TV and Screen Time are Bad for Kids

Posted on 1st June 2011 in Uncategorized
Couch Potato Kids

In Training For A Bad Life

Brain science demonstrates that the brain becomes what the brain does. If we train the brain to require constant stimulation and constant flickering lights, changes in sound and camera angle, or immediate feedback, such as video games can provide, then when the child lands in the classroom where the teacher doesn’t have a million-dollar-per-episode budget, it may be hard to get children to sustain their attention.

- Douglas Gentile, ISU associate professor of psychology

That quote says it all.  The brain becomes what the brain does.  The way I have said it in the past is that the human body and brain are always in training, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.  If you run 10 miles per day, you are training to be a runner.  If your child reads and plays with toys and friends all day, she is training to be smart and fit and adaptable.  If your child watches TV 4 or 6 hours per day, she is training to sit and stare and be sedentary and anti-social.  Look at your child now.  What is she doing?  That is what she is getting good at.

ISU study finds TV viewing, video game play contribute to kids’ attention problems

Psychologists at Iowa State University have found:

that children who exceeded the two hours per day of screen time recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics were 1.5 to 2 times more likely to be above average in attention problems.

“There isn’t an exact number of hours when screen time contributes to attention problems, but the AAP recommendation of no more than two hours a day provides a good reference point,” said Edward Swing, an Iowa State psychology doctoral candidate and lead researcher in the study. “Most children are way above that. In our sample, children’s total average time with television and video games is 4.26 hours per day, which is actually low compared to the national average.”

What do those numbers mean?  Children who watch more than 2 hours of TV or “screen time”, which includes movies and video games, are twice as likely to have attention problems.  So if a child has attention problems, and watches more than 2 hours of TV or Video Games per day, there is a 50% chance that those problems are caused by the TV.

The lesson here is clear.  Cut back on your child’s sitting and staring time per day.  And if your child is showing signs of attention problems in school, cut the cord.

 

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