childhood physical activity
tsaunders | June 28, 2010Image by shanevaughn
Today is the first day of summer vacation here in Ontario, and I assume that the summer break has begun in most other parts of North America as well. That means that millions of kids are looking at 8 gloriously school-free weeks in July and August. Now while physical activity promotion folks like myself would hope that all of these kids are going to spend their summer outside being physically active, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that that is not the case for most kids.
Since these are kids, parents obviously have a huge amount of control over the way they…
tsaunders | April 21, 2010
Image by thelastminute.
You read that correctly - last week the RCMP was called in to break up a game of road hockey in Enfield, a suburb of Halifax, Nova Scotia. From the Halifax Chronicle Herald [emphasis mine]:
Ryan Jefferies and his buddies enjoyed playing road hockey almost every free minute in front of Ryan's house here. But anonymous complaints recently put an end to that.
Ryan's mom, Debbie Jefferies, said Monday she has no idea who complained or why, but the games came to an end last Thursday when an RCMP officer showed up at their door.
"He just said they had received two…
tsaunders | March 17, 2010
Image by Duchamp.
In most developed nations, kids get far less physical activity than they did just a few generations ago. Given the strong links between physical inactivity and health risk (and given that we're now seeing "adult" diseases like heart disease and type 2 diabetes in children and teenagers), this has become a very real public health concern. Unfortunately, when it comes to increasing childhood physical activity levels, people often want to reinvent the wheel. For example, many people are enthralled with the Nintendo Wii as a means of increasing childhood physical…