Children's Health and Success

Recently, it has been almost impossible to pick up a newspaper, or turn on a news show and not hear something about the obesity epidemic. While, obviously, food choice (and amount) plays a significant part in this problem. It seems to me, we are once again approaching this issue from a very simplistic view. Obesity isn't about food, it's about lifestyle. Two articles recently published about studies in England support this idea.
The first article from Scientific American states

The Sleep Council said "junk sleep" could
rival the consumption of unhealthy junk food as a major lifestyle issue for
parents of teenage children.

Both of my girls need sleep (probably just the recommended amount, but when so many people don't get that much, it seems they need "extra" sleep). I can tell when they've not had a enough sleep, or simply need a little more because of the stressors in their lives. Yesterday, the Imp was sooo tired. She's been getting 8 1/2 hours of sleep, but with her friend's mom ill, she's been using lots of emotional energy through the day. The Imp is an intelligent girl who tends to do well in school and takes most things in stride (I've called her my poster child for "don't sweat the small stuff.") Her Algebra class has to do a project involving stocks and charting their fluctuations. The Imp, discovered that with a $4 increase, her chart wasn't big enough to show the stock's progress. She had already redrawn her charts because she had made the increments so big, small fluctuations (under $1) really couldn't be seen on her charts. Bottom line, she needed to redraw 3 charts. She began yelling about the "stupidity" of the project and then burst into tears. The Imp rarely cries, especially in frustration. She was just too tired to handle the normal irritations of the day. She was sent to bed early last night, and I'm sure today will be not be flustered by things like redrawing graphs.
I feel like I'm a lone voice in the wilderness advocating sleep for my kids. We have a "no telephone calls after 9 PM" rule. That is partially to make sure the girls' sleep is not impacted by the telephone. It has taken years for some of the Singer friends to understand we won't put her on the phone if the call at 10:00pm. What is more amazing, is the parents of these friends imply I'm the crazy one, because often the calls concern homework. We've had to take the Singer's cell phone away at night, because her friends were 'texting' her all through the night...12 midnight, 2 am...anytime and all the time. Our sanity requires some down time. We don't need to be that connected.
I was glad to see the article seemed to be supporting my beliefs. But near the end of the article, it stated

"Teenagers need to wake up to the fact that to feel well, perform well and look
well, they need to do something about their sleep."

I don't think it's teenagers who need to wake up to the fact that they need more sleep...it's their parents. That's the parents' job, to teach the teenagers healthy habits so they can be successful in life.

The second article is from BBC. Here the value of play is emphasized. We've sent our kids to private schools for primarily religious reasons. But as I watched the public schools take away any kind of recess, it gave me another reason to keep my kids in private school. The Imp is in 8th grade. She has 20-30 minutes (depending on how quickly or slowly she eats her lunch) to play outside with minimal adult supervision. While she no longer plays ball on a regular basis (most of the time, it's girl-talk time), for years, she climbed monkey bars, swung, played kickball and various other outdoor fun. As a former middle school teacher, there were days, I had to take my students outside and let them run for 10 minutes before starting class. There was just too much pent up energy in these 12 and 13 year olds, and I'd be fighting a losing battle to ask them to sit still, when they'd already been sitting still for 6 hours. Many schools have cut back on recess to allow for more "academic" time. I argue that taking recess away will hurt the academic scores, more than additional teaching time will help. If the student isn't engaged, it doesn't matter what the teacher is doing. Kids need time to be kids.

The experts say that play - especially
when it takes place outdoors - is crucial to a child's health

An increase in traffic, parental fears about abduction by strangers and a
"test-driven" culture of education have all contributed to the trend.

My solution to obesity? Give recess back, take electronics out of the bedrooms and let kids sleep.