When I was growing up it was considered punishment to have to stay in the house. To earn money, we spent our weekends cutting grass and doing yards or washing cars for the folks on the street. As teenage boys we wanted weight sets and would challenge each other in bench press contests — while girls were watching of course.
Are those days long gone, replaced by the stay-inside “tweety” generation? Apparently so.
According to Associated Press via Fox News,
“Only 1 in 4 U.S. kids aged 12 to 15 meet the ‘Lets Move’ recommendations — an hour or more of moderate to vigorous activity every day. The results are based on about 800 kids who self-reported their activity levels and had physical exams as part of the 2012 National Youth Fitness Survey. Government researchers won’t call the results disappointing, but lead author Tala Fakhouri of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, “There’s always room for improvement.”
You’ll recall Let’s Move was the initiative launched by First Lady Michelle Obama in 2010.
“It’s definitely very concerning to see that our kids are engaging in such a limited amount of physical activity each day when we are still battling” an obesity epidemic, said Dr. Stephen Pont, an Austin, Texas, pediatrician and chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ section on obesity. Data suggest obesity may have decreased slightly among some kids but the overall rate for children aged 2 to 19 is 17 percent, or about 12.5 million obese kids.
We recently posted a commentary on adult obesity and the typical liberal progressive response of it’s not your fault and more regulations will solve it. I can only imagine that somehow this report will lead to more government “mandated” actions for young people.
Perhaps we simply need to be more responsible for our own health, and that of our children. Can it be that the culture of advanced technology has led to a sedentary lifestyle? Do our kids spend more time sitting inside playing Madden football than outside playing pick up or sandlot football?
We need more parents to lead by example and set a model of health and fitness for their children to follow, instead of sitting glued to their own versions of video or digital entertainment. More adults play “fantasy football” than get out and actually play it. More adults sit around playing “Call of Duty” than could ever pass a basic training fitness test.
Any guess what the progressive socialist response will be to the issue of childhood obesity and lack of physical fitness? Not that it’s any of their business.
As a family we went kayaking along a North Palm Beach canal before our week in the mountains of Colorado. I don’t expect my daughters to be Olympic athletes, but won’t allow them to be couch potatoes either.
What happened to the old days of kids never wanting to come inside? How can we restore the sense of pride of being a physically tough American kid? Message to parents, we had better do it ourselves, or else — under the guise of “caring” — there will be government mandated diets and physical training for our kids. I enjoyed my military days of doing PT but it sure is much more fun doing it now when I’m not being told to.
