Want to end childhood obesity?
Stop taking away children’s chances to play
According to the WHO, childhood obesity is on the rise.
Of course these are shocking statistics and as a person who has struggled with disordered eating all my life, it’s an issue close to my heart.
Many people blame parents for “allowing” their children to become obese, or, worse, they blame the children themselves for being lazy and greedy.
Whether these things are true or not, they definitely aren’t helping. Despite an increase in publicity about childhood obesity (think first lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign), rates are still rising.
What’s the problem?
Well, in my opinion, it’s to do with two things; we think obesity is an individual issue and we don’t let children play anymore.
Let me explain.
Obesity rates (in both children and adults) are often seen to be a personal issue — you’re obese because you’re greedy and lazy.
Comments in magazines, on social media and in politics tend to refer to individual responsibility (you need to lose weight, you should join a gym, you should cook healthier food etc) rather than the societal issue which is that obesity is on the rise because of the how we’ve structured our modern world.
There are so many barriers to being healthy. Number one is that a lot of the jobs of today are sedentary and if most people spend most of their day working, then they aren’t going to be moving very much.
Or some people do have very active jobs but they may be working so many hours that they don’t have much time to prepare healthy meals from scratch, which becomes another factor in gaining weight if calorie rich ready-meals become the norm.
Cars dominate our city planning and it’s harder to walk or cycle to work. Gyms can be expensive. It’s hard to find the motivation for home work outs.
All of this focuses on adults, but the picture isn’t that disimilar for children.
I taught in primary schools in the UK for twelve years. Each school day was from 9 am to 3.30 pm. During the day, children had a fifteen-minute break in the morning and forty-five minutes at lunchtime, some of which had to be spent eating lunch.
So of their six-and-a-half-hour day, only one hour was spent in movement (except for the days where they had a forty-five-minute P.E. lesson twice a week- which mostly was spent getting changed and rechanged and then standing around waiting for their turn to do something).
The other five and a half hours were spent in the classroom, mostly sitting at a desk, or on the carpet. Now while I tried to use a lot of drama and physical activities in my lessons, I was also trying to meet targets, and objectives and cover the curriculum, and most of that took place behind a desk.
The majority of children in my school arrived by car in the mornings because it was quicker and more convenient for their parents who needed to rush off to work.
School policy dictated that I had to send thirty minutes of homework every night, plus the children had to read for thirty minutes too, so on top of their already very sedentary day, they were expected to sit to do more work later.
Not only that, but when the children got home, parents feared them playing out on the street or in the local park for safety reasons. Highly addictive video games not only took their attention but also formed part of their social currency. If you didn’t play a certain game, you didn’t have anything to talk about the next day on the playground.
That was a few years ago, but talking to my nieces and nephews at primary school now, not much has changed. Possibly things have got worse.
In my opinion, if we want obesity rates for children to fall, we need to start with schools.
We need to increase break times and have more high quality P.E classes.
We need to teach children games that they can play with any equipment and space or number of participants so that they have something fun that they can turn to during those break times.
We need to plan lessons that aren’t so sedentary and get the kids moving through drama, games, brain breaks etc.
We need to prioritise healthy ways of getting to school like walking and cycling and make sure that our roads are safe for these purposes.
We need to educate in a fun way about food and nutrients and do more cooking classes where children have the opportunity to make something from scratch and find joy in eating something homemade.
In short, we need to make collective, structural and societal changes rather than blame a child, or their parent, for their weight.
