Kids And Exercise: Where’s The Line?

I see this with my 9 yr. old and his friends. My kid is an "only" child on a ranch. He has all the wide open land he could ever want to play on in the summer but he doesn't play outside. He would be on an electronic game constantly if I let him. I bring his friends over so he has someone to play with and it is sad the way these friends head for the couch as soon as they get here. It's like they don't even know how to just be kids. So many electronic games and so little free form play.

Kids don't play outside anymore for a number of reasons, but one of them is they'd rather be inside playing with their technology. My mother solved this problem by limiting us to one hour of screen time (that's computer/television/other media combined) from the time we were kids until we turned 16. Being inside sitting around is BORING when you don't have something to stare into like a zombie. Sure, some days I stayed inside and played with my toys but most of the time I took them outside and ran around. My parents rewarded us for walking to the neighborhood swimming pool and coached our sports teams as a form of encouragement. And I'm not some old fuddy-duddy who's not living in reality, I'm 24, and no one abducted me on my way to these events by simple virtue of my being outside. It's up to the parents to instill a love of activity in their kids, nobody else is going to do it for them.

Exercise is great, but it doesn't stop kids from getting fat. Diet is the cause of obesity, specifically processed carbs: french fries, chips, flour products like bread, donuts. Read The Zone by Barry Sears for the chemistry behind obesity and diabetes.MA just banned junk foods in schools, including artificial sweeteners (which also cause obesity. Google, don't argue about it.) That will do more than all the exercise in the world.

I agree that home-schooling and some "alternative" schools are good options for people, when they can do them. What I'm saying about traditional schools, though, is that we don't have to stop at just "giving kids a shot at a decent education" (and lots of schools do not do even that). It's time for us to ask What else is possible? If children are in school all day, schools could be set up to allow the "Hey, isn't it a beautiful day outside? Let's have a picnic!" scenario. It's unthinkable in today's schools because of how we structure them--one teacher to a room of 25-30-some kids. The Global Possibility Project, which I have founded and is just now beginning, will be taking up this question, among others. We now have the tools to create genuinely new possibilities in the world, in this area and in others.

Corporate fitness industry leading the way=National Nightmare of Epic Proportions. Not enough to have NCLB for children's minds, let's take over their bodies too!