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Hot, Healthy Fun In Summer

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 4, 2008

Summer break is here, that magical 11 weeks when America's children run free all day.

Kids run, swim and bike. They play endless games. They sleep soundly at night so they can get up and do it all again the next day.

Oops, sorry; wrong generation. The school year is over, but most children will not be playing nonstop and reducing themselves to pencil-thin dynamos who could eat a pizza for lunch and burn it off by midafternoon.

Instead, children will be disturbingly sedentary, spend inordinate amounts of time interfacing with electronic media, consume trans fats and excess calories at an alarming rate and stay up late in front of the television because they're not tired enough to sleep.

By 2005-06, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly 32 percent of America's children were overweight or obese. This epidemic in children's health is described as a "lifestyle disease" and carries long-term repercussions officials are only beginning to understand.

There's an appropriate phrase in the Bible: "I lay the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected - even children in the third and fourth generations." (Exodus 20:5)

If parents persist in their failure to teach health as lifestyle, we'll be condemning our grandchildren to trickle-down diabetes, heart disease and an uphill battle against cost and life expectancy.

The ripple effect of a sedentary lifestyle is impossible to measure. That is why these 11 weeks provide an opportunity chock-full of hope.

Time magazine reported recently that several major initiatives have been launched to fight the epidemic.

"Families and officials have begun to understand," the article stated, "that the American environment needs to be changed to save the country's children."

It's a commitment that can work only if it is replicated from the grass roots, starting in each home. If every family developed a summer-break health initiative, the long-term results could be huge.

There could be exercise charts taped to refrigerator doors, parents included; posted limits on TV watching and video games for everyone; regular family outings to area parks; weekly excursions to museums, beaches and attractions; summer camp programs, city recreation and the YMCA.

Such a commitment to proactive health would change the family dynamic, as would accountability and follow-through when it comes to self-directed activities.

The ripple effect of such an effort might change everything, from health to relationships to behavior. We can't just watch and wonder anymore; now is the time to get in the driver's seat before this thing runs away from everybody.

"The childhood obesity epidemic is a tsunami," Time quoted David Ludwig, a researcher at Children's Hospital Boston. "We're beginning to see the wave hitting the shore."

There is much we can do to mandate positive change, however. Summer is a great time to start.

Columnist Derek Maul can be reached at derekmaul@gmail.com.

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