This week as promised we will be looking at the subject of exercise for children and adolescents.

There are many factors that conspire to reduce physical activity in children:

• TV and computer/tablet/electronic games which can occupy the attention of children for hours in the day.
• Safety issues – parents are rightly reluctant for their children to be outside unsupervised for fear of criminals.
• Working parents – not around to supervise their children and encourage physical activity or else they are too tired to do active things with their children.
• Schools that don’t promote physical activity as part of the curriculum.
• Obesity issues tend to make children inactive, and inactivity promotes obesity – a vicious circle.
• Inactive parents – if the parents are not particularly active, they set an example for the children to follow, besides the parents being less inclined to do interesting games and activities with their children.

ALSO READ : Turning the Tide – The Role of Exercise in Restoring Vitality (Part 4)

“Childhood and adolescence are critical periods for developing movement skills, learning healthy habits, and establishing a firm foundation for lifelong health and well-being. Regular physical activity in children and adolescents promotes health and fitness.”  Quote from the 118 page Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, second edition. See the complete document :

How much exercise do children and adolescents require.

Strong evidence demonstrates that higher amounts of physical activity are associated with a reduced risk of excessive increases in body weight and obesity in children/adolescents ages 3-17 years.

Specific evidence-based physical activity guidelines for children and adolescents:

• One hour or more of daily moderate physical activity
  • Includes muscle-strengthening activities at least 3 days per week and that would include activities like lifting heavy things, climbing trees, or working on gym equipment and elastic bands, tug-of-war, playing on jungle gyms. Of course some house and garden work together with parents can also be helpful – carrying watering cans, helping move furniture, digging in the garden all provide useful muscle strengthening.
  • Includes bone-strengthening activities at least 3 days per week such as hopping, skipping, jumping and tumbling.
  • Do vigorous-intensity physical activity at least 3 days per week – this includes running, playing active games, sports – all things included in physical education at schools.

What are the benefits of these kinds of exercises

• Children have favourable body composition (means they are well built and well proportioned)
• Improves heart and lungs and blood sugars and fats
• Improves bone health and strength
• Improves endurance and muscular fitness
• Some evidence to show that it also reduces symptoms of anxiety and depression
• Improves cognition – the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding i.e. improves mental function
• Improves moods and family harmony (from my own personal experience of observing children and grandchildren over the last 42 years – I don’t have any scientific studies to confirm).

It is vitally important that parents grasp that parenting of young children is only a relatively short phase of life, and it is really worth taking the trouble and effort to engage your children in enjoyable activities.  If you want them to be active, play with them as much as possible.  Set some time each day when you can get out – riding bicycles, walking, playing tag, kicking the ball, playing sports.

You will not only be helping them, but you will be doing enjoyable exercise for yourself as well.  Of course if both parents can be involved, all the better.

Too soon your children will have grown up, and moved on, and you will have lost that precious opportunity to engage with them meaningfully while they still adored you, and craved your companionship.  I speak from a sense of regret with how little time I spent with my children, because of the busyness of life.

Here is a tabulated version of the recommendations for different age groups

This information comes from the Physical Activity guidelines for Americans, referenced above, with some modifications for South African conditions.

Here are some interesting articles to stimulate your imagination:

https://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/kid-fitness-when-your-child-wont-exercise#2

For some good tips to help your couch-potato child become active.

Hope you catch the inspiration to get your whole family active and moving.

Dave Glass

Dr David Glass graduated from UCT in 1975.  He spent the next 12 years working at a mission hospital in Lesotho, where much of his work involved health education and interventions to improve health, aside from the normal busy clinical work of an under-resourced mission hospital. 

He returned to UCT in 1990 to specialise in obstetrics/gynaecology and then moved to the South Coast where he had the privilege of, amongst other things, ushering 7000 babies into the world.  He no longer delivers babies but is still very clinically active in gynaecology.

An old passion, preventive health care, has now replaced the obstetrics side of his work.  He is eager to share insights he has gathered over the years on how to prevent and reverse so many of the modern scourges of lifestyle – obesity, diabetes, ischaemic heart disease, high blood pressure, arthritis, common cancers, etc.

He is a family man, with a supportive wife, and two grown children, and four beautiful grandchildren. His hobbies include walking, cycling, vegetable gardening, bird-watching, travelling and writing.  He is active in community health outreach and deeply involved in church activities.  He enjoys teaching and sharing information.

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