I was watching a TV show on my computer the other day and I actually paid attention to the commercial (embedding is disabled, hence the link). At first I was amused by it, then I was amazed, and then I was downright mad about it. It was a commercial from the US government encouraging children to get physically fit. The buzz phrase was ‘go outside for an hour a day to play’.
As I was a child, when I wasn’t working the rock pile or helping around the house, I was playing. I was too busy playing to see a television commercial to tell me to play.
In the summer, the neighbor kids, my brothers and I played horseshoes. The shoes were actually from some horse that had been re-shod. When the horse was done with them they gave them to the children to play with. Re-cycling at work again.
It was easy to set up for a game of horseshoes. We’d drive 2 pieces of pipe in the ground about 15 feet apart and we were ready. We’d decide beforehand how many points you got for a ringer, how many for a shoe that leaned on the stake, and how many for a shoe that was close enough to the stake that it could be measured with the opening of the shoe. We learned all of the ways to garner a point by watching the adults play. The goal of course was to ring the stake (pipe) with the shoe. Believe it or not, it takes some skill to make this happen. The shoe is heavy, the opening on it is small, and 15 feet can be pretty far away for a child. Sometimes the less even tempered among us could be downright dangerous during a game. One kid in particular had a hard time losing and sometimes he’d fling the shoes at his opponent instead of the stake. I’m sure this wouldn’t be allowed in government encouraged playtime. And truth is sometimes our horse shoe games lasted way more than an hour. I guess we were really physically fit.
When our own children were growing up they never needed a TV commercial to encourage them to play either. It was amazing but they seemed to take to it as naturally as I did. Maybe playing is a gene thing and my kids got it from me. They played baseball, hide n seek, put on plays in their playhouse, flew kites, and a few dozen other activities that I consider play. And they still managed to work around the house like I believe growing children should. Another generation of kids who were physically fit. And they didn’t even have a television to watch commercials on!
And now the next generation is taking up the idea of play (and work). Our granddaughter is always running, dancing, jumping, singing. She loves to play in water or sand. She thinks walking to visit her grandparents is a great way to get here. The kid just knows how to play and exercise naturally.
Knowing how to play just has to be inherited. I’m darn near convinced that if you don’t have the play gene to get physically fit you better watch TV to see how it’s accomplished. I’m so glad it came naturally to me and mine.
I know I have made fun about the physical fitness of the children of our nation but it is a serious problem as can be seen by the statistics below:
- Since 1980, the number of overweight children has doubled
- 1/3 of young people in grades 9-12 don’t regularly engage in vigorous physical activity.
- Out of overweight 5 to 10-year-olds, 61% have one risk factor for heart disease, and 26% have two or more risk factors.
- Hospital costs related to treating overweight and obese children and adolescents more than tripled from $35 million during 1979-1981 to $127 million during 1997-1999. (http://www.adcouncil.org/default.aspx?id=389)
As my dear old dad said at nearly every evening meal, “You’ll never get fat if you go away from the table a little bit hungry.” Following this advice, along with lots of work and play has worked for my family fit for 3 generations!