How Parents Can Help Their Children Get Physically Fit
By Dr. Antronette Yancey
According to the Centers for Disease Control and the United States Department of Health and Human Services, there has been a dramatic increase nationwide in overweight and obesity among children and adolescents in the last twenty years.
Obesity is a serious health problem. It contributes to many chronic diseases, including:
- heart attack
- stroke
- postmenopausal breast cancer
- colon cancer
- type 2 diabetes mellitus
- gallbladder disease
- polycystic ovary disease
- osteoarthritis
- sleep apnea
- injuries resulting from falls in the elderly.
A conservative estimate is that 300,000 deaths per year may be attributable to obesity, physical inactivity, and poor diet. The combination of poor diet and physical inactivity may soon surpass tobacco as the leading cause of preventable mortality.
The costs of obesity are high. In the year 2000, the total annual cost associated with obesity in the United States was $117 billion ($61 billion in direct costs, including healthcare; $56 billion in indirect costs, including lost productivity and earnings lost). In addition to concern for children's wellbeing, there are clear economic implications to the rise in childhood obesity.
What can parents do?
- Participate in children's physical activities--don't just "command" them to be active, and work with them to find activities that they enjoy. Parents who regularly play with their children and provide transportation to activities have more active kids. Children "forced" to exercise tend to be less active as adults.
- Replace sedentary activities (watching television and playing video and computer games) with more energy expending activities.
- Advertisements are the major connection between television and obesity. If your children must watch TV, show videos or non-commercial programs (e.g., public television station programs) in preference to commercial TV. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than 2 hours of TV per day.
- Offer your children only the recommended portion size so they aren't encouraged to eat more than necessary, and allow them to request seconds if they're still hungry.
- Do not insist that children "clean their plates." If their "eyes are bigger than their stomachs," store the food for later consumption.
- Substitute a bowl of fresh fruit, snack packs of raisins, nuts, or other healthy alternatives instead of a candy bowl or cookie jar.
- Be a positive role model for children and youth by participating in physical activity, eating healthfully and communicating consistent and positive messages that physical activity and eating healthy foods is enjoyable and important. Create opportunities for this modeling, e.g., by incorporating structured exercise breaks (simple dance aerobic moves to music) into PTA and school board meetings that teachers might also emulate in their classrooms (such as the International Life Sciences Institute's Take 10! program).
- Support legislation and policy that: 1) increases amount and quality of physical education and nutrition education mandated for school aged children, 2) increases the number of trained physical education and nutrition education teachers, 3) increases space and equipment allocations for physical education activities, and 4) decreases physical education class sizes.
- Encourage your child's school to implement nutritional standards for foods sold outside of the federal meal program.
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