Cradle Potatoes

A nation of couch potatoes is spawning a generation of undit kids. What can parents do to keep their children in shape?

Four-year-old Brandon will chase his playmates around the yard until sweat pours from his brow. But he suddenly grows very tired when asked to carry his plate from the table to the sink. Brandon will walk for miles when hunting lizards or frogs, but refuses to walk for exercise.

Experts across the country agree that children need exercise today more than ever. How they get that exercise is a subject of disagreement.

It is commonly known that “play is the work of a child.” Those who remember this adage will have greater success when trying to convince children to exercise.

Cradle Potatoes

The latest demographic research has revealed a nation of couch potatoes. “We have become lazy,” says Everett Malcolm, the director of the Child Development Research Center at the University of North Florida (UNF). “Heart attacks and heart-related diseases have reached a crisis state.” Unfortunately, our children are learning from example. They are becoming cradle potatoes.

A recent study conducted by the New England Medical Center in Boston concluded that one-quarter of school-age children are obese. Researchers at Harvard and Tufts universities call childhood obesity an epidemic.

Two generations ago, exercise was an inevitable part of a child’s day. Kids helped with chores, hauled wood and cared for livestock. Boys with paper routes carried their papers rather than climbing in the back of Mom’s mini-van.

Even one generation ago, kids walked to school every day. Today, some consider walking to school unsafe. The threat of abduction or kidnapping forces parents to drive their children to school or even to the bus stop.

Television has been blamed for much of today’s inactivity. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children hooked on a steady diet of television may be compromising their health.

“Children get plopped in front of the TV and spend their weekends magnetized in front of a TV,” Malcolm says. “They are exposed to a variety of junk food ads, and they are taught negative health habits.”

The primary problem is that parents fail to encourage fitness. “We don’t go out in the back yard and throw the ball to the kids. We don’t go on walks like we used to,” says Malcolm. “When both parents work they are either exhausted when they come home or they have other obligations.” It seems only fitness nuts buy bicycles and jogging shoes for every member of the family and proceed to use them.

Dorette Nysewander, coordinator of aerobic programs for Baptist Health and Fitness Center, worries that children don’t get enough chances to play around the neighborhood. “When I was a kids, we used to go out in the neighborhood and play kick-the-can and kickball until we went to bed. Then we would get up and start all over again.” Children who spend all day in a day-care facility are denied this opportunity.

Forcing Children To Exercise

Some exercise enthusiasts encourage parents to enroll their children in a fitness program from infancy. These “infant stimulation” classes accent awareness, eye-hand coordination and normal motor skills in newborns. However, Pam Estler of Nemours Children’s Clinic notes that these classes are best for sensory awareness, not cardiovascular development.

The benefit of infant stimulation classes, says Dr. Scott Fauth, a Jacksonville pediatrician, is that they teach the child early to make exercise a habit. The classes may also help parents bond with the infant.

Parents have discovered that infants can be handy counterweights in their own exercise regime. In “family exercise” programs, you may see Mom walking like a crab with baby on her tummy, or she may balance the infant on her shins during leg lifts. As babies become more mobile, they begin aerobic movement such a crawling, tumbling and ball skills.

However, in October 1988, The American Academy of Pediatrics denounced these trendy family exercise programs. “When an adult is stretching and moving a baby’s limbs, it’s easy to go beyond their physical limits without knowing it,” said Academy pediatrician Dr. Michael Nelson. Pediatricians are seeing more bone fractures and dislocations, muscle sprains and tears in babies.

Exercise videos, such as “Kids in Motion” from Playhouse Video, wait until children turn three to introduce them to their own aerobic fitness program. But most mothers agree, it’s a rare child who enjoys chanting “one-two-three-four” at the television after the first time.

Getting Exercise Naturally

“As long as parents are doing their job and children are provided with a stimulating environment, they will not need a structured exercise program,” Malcolm says.

Unfortunately, neither parents nor educators appear to be doing their jobs.

Day-care centers are responsible for much inactivity. “Children need adequate space for creative movement,” Malcolm say. “The day-care industry only requires a 5-by-7 [foot] block of outdoor space for every two children enrolled. They only require a 4-by-5 [foot] space indoors and that can double as a place for furniture to sit.” When children are kept in a contained space, it leads to sedentary behavior.

Dr. Fauth believes that today’s schools don’t offer sufficient physical education. “When I grew up, physical education was a requirement every day,” he says. “Perhaps it’s low priority. Perhaps they don’t have the funding or the time.”

Dr. Betty Flinchum, an education professor at UNF, says as much as 60 percent of the time a child previously spent in movement (play activities) at school is now spent sitting in front of a computer or a television, or in other sedentary activities.

Nysewander is also concerned that we’re taking fitness out of the schools. “We’re making great strides technologically,” she says, “but we’re flunking fitness.”

Duval County schools require students to spend a minimum of thirty minutes a week with a physical education teacher or a “resource teacher.” But Nysewander says her two daughters only see their resource teacher every other week.

Pam Gray, a resource teacher at Merrill Road Elementary and King’s Trail Elementary schools has taught physical education for thirteen years. She teaches her classes a skill or a game and the regular teacher is encouraged to follow through on Gray’s lesson plan for the other four days of the week. “About 50 percent of my teachers continue with the curriculum,” says Gray. “You have to sell the teachers on the importance of physical education. If they are fitness-oriented they will follow through with the lesson all week.”

In the other classes, the children usually play “games of their choice,” meaning they play on available playground equipment – equipment that environmental psychologists claim lacks the diversity to stimulate adequate play.

In addition, children who are not motivated to exercise will go out on the playground and sit, just as they did in class.

Innovative Future

UNF’s Betty Flinchum is a leading expert on childhood movement in the United States. Since 1960, Flinchum has been traveling to England to observe the British schools.

“Children in England spend two full afternoons a week in movement education,” Flinchum says. Educators there take 4-year-olds hiking and teach them team sports.

In Britain, they even use movement to teach language, numbers and three-dimensional concepts. When learning about triangles, the children lie on the floor in the shape of a triangle. They move a surveyor’s chain around the gym discussing fractions and square inches.

British children don’t just listen to music, they imitate the sounds with their bodies. Percussion instruments like a triangle or a drum might motivate short, jerking movement.

Children who learn through movement retain the concepts better. Movement education also improves children’s attention spans and their self-concept. “Their [British] culture values development of the whole child,” Flinchum says.

Our challenge in America is to make movement an integral part of every day. Children must learn to love movement so they will choose to engage in physical activity. “We need to give children a mind-set early on so they will be active as they grow,” Dr. Fauth says.

“If we start at the root of the problem, our children may not need spas when they become adults,” Malcolm notes.

No Excuses In Jacksonville

While waiting for day-care centers to obtain adequate space for children to play and for teachers to discover the benefits of movement education, parents can take steps on their own to make sure children get enough exercise.

“I was shocked to discover my 4^th-grade daughter could not jump rope,” Pam Gray recalled. “I had to take her outside and teach her just like I would the kids at school.”

In Jacksonville, a sedentary lifestyle is particularly inexcusable. “Ten months out of the year are conducive to outdoor activity,” Malcolm says. “We are fortunate here because we have a beach. We have nature trails and the Riverwalk. Families need set examples by engaging in family group activities.”

“Dance classes and gymnastics classes are a fantastic orientation for children if that is the type of motor conditioning desired,” Nysewander says. “The best thing to do is expose children to all opportunities for movement. Your health style is your lifestyle and if you don’t take care of your health, you’re gambling with your life.”

Freelance writer, JeaNette Goates Smith is coauthor of From Playpens to Proving Grounds. She lives in Jacksonville.