There's a public service commercial that's been airing for the past few months whose goal is to get more children off the couch and exercising.
It features several prominent sports stars, and tells children to, "Get up and play an hour every day," and shows images of children playing with adults outside in a highly controlled environment, doing things like playing hopscotch or jumping around in a potato sack.
Why I don't like this ad:
It makes exercise seem like work.
Kind of like eating your vegetables.
Also, the "play" they show children partaking in doesn't look fun at all. Whatever happened to running around outside screaming your head off? Or hanging upside down on a jungle gym? Climbing trees? Tag?
In my opinion, children shouldn't be "exercising" at all in the regimented way that the ad implies. An hour every day? Kids should just be playing. Simple, unstructured play for however long they can. What ever happened to that?
The people who wrote this ad have framed exercise as something that you should do for good health rather than as something that is fun and completely awesome to do. To me, the ads send the wrong message about exercise, and will likely in the long run result in kids who are even less active than before.
So sad when well meaning health promotion campaigns are designed by morons.
Seizurebowl
3 hours ago
10 Pearls of Wisdom:
completely agree!
I haven't seen this ad but you would think it wouldn't be that hard to make a fun, effective ad on this subject.
In other related news, I loved the photographs of Michelle Obama jumping rope with kids to promote activity!
I personally believe that if they want to see more active kids then gym class in school needs to become more fun or create after school activities that aren't "teams" but rather groups or clubs that are focused around learning a skill/sport.
The competitiveness on a team is real hurdle for a child who has never been active. When I was in high school we occasionally got a new person on the track team who hadn't been active before but wanted to get in shape and they suffered big time. It sucks to not be able to keep up or do all activities and the coaches usually didn't have the time or patience to help them along. Alot of people would drop out within 1 or 2 weeks because the coach didn't tell them that if they kept going and trying in 2 or 3 more weeks they would really start to see physical gains.
Which is why I support groups like Girls On the Run which is about self-image, health and confidence. They learn a little, bond with a group and build up to running 3.1 miles. There's a "race" but it's just put on to show them they can finish it and everyone is a winner.
BG --
You're totally right that not already being proficient at a sport or in great shape to start with is a barrier to participation.
I am pretty active and I even see it in myself. For instance, I would LOVE to play basketball or volleyball, but I suck since I've never been on a team before. And there just aren't that many teams for 32 year olds who suck at basketball or volleyball. Organized sports sound so much more fun to me than going for a run by myself! Sigh.
I haven't seen the ads you're discussing, but then we're busy doing things instead of watching television. Once the kids are done with their schoolwork, they go outside. We have balls and bats, a basketball hoop, a swing set, animals. Sometimes they use sidewalk chalk to draw in the driveway and then play hopscotch. Everyone has roller skates. If it's raining, I can back cars out of the garage and the kids can roller skate in the garage. Yesterday they raked up huge piles of leaves and jumped in the leaves.
I can't imagine kids only having one hour to play. How sad.
Yeah, these ads are pretty insulting and paint playful behavior as almost a regimented activity. It is sad, though, that people feel the need to ask kids to actually get outside and do something for only an hour rather than sit and watch TV or play video games. And the Wii with its "Fit"? Come on. That hardly gets the HR up.
there's a 4 year old in my clinic that weighs 84 lbs. No metabolic abnormalities...the parents just keep feeding him. and feeding him. and feeding him.
It's not always that easy to get kids outside to play if you live in an urban environment, parents get home at dinner time, darkness comes early, and schools have gym once a week.
What does that have to do with the craptastic commercial?
It has everything to do with the commercial - if your children are getting zero hours of play time a day, though we wish everyone were living that ideal life of play-all-the-time, it is a GREAT start to get them moving for an hour a day. We see a large number of very obese children in our clinic as well. Many of them get no exercise. At all. Even the kids who aren't obese simply are not using their bodies - and their imaginations - as much as they should be. The goal of inspiring a "habit" like playing for an hour a day is to get those people who are doing *nothing* to make play a priority - to commit to giving one hour of your day to something other than sitting in front of the television. For many children, this would be a great improvement indeed.
Sara,
Sweetie, you're missing the point. YOur intervention is going to FAIL if you think that turning "play" into something you *should* do for an hour every day is going to inspire children (or their parents) to make exercise a lifelong activity. People only do lifelong activities because they enjoy them. This intervention makes play work and would not be enjoyable for me much less an obese child who hated exercise to begin with. They're never going to stick with it. THat is the goal, right?
I hope you're not involved in designing these things. It saddens me that you don't seem to get it.
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