By Kevin Miller
The Jack Purcell Recreation Centre is offering a March break program to get children moving again after a long, inactive winter of staying indoors and playing video games.
The staff at the centre say now that the weather is warming up again, kids need to get active and work off some of the weight they may have gained during the winter.
The program also doubles as a daycare service for parents needing to keep their kids busy while they’re at work.
Tanya Beimer, the program coordinator, was hoping to offer outdoor skating among the planned activities, but that has been thwarted by the recent thaw. However, a wide variety of activities including swimming and a mini-putt field trip are still set to go.
“We have the facilities to be outside or in, and we have a lot of space for the children inside, especially in the gym,” says Beimer
There are a number of benefits to getting the kids active again.
Dr. Claire LeBlanc, the chair of the Canadian Paediatric Society’s healthy active living committee, says, “In colder countries, such as Canada, in the winter months, the general population tends to reduce their physical activity levels and children are certainly no exception to that.”
Beimer says over the six years she’s been working with kids, she’s also noticed a drop in their physical activity as a result of video games. Since one of the main objectives of the program is to get the kids active again, Beimer says children are asked to leave their video games at home and focus on the activities at the centre.
And that physical activity is becoming more and more important according to a study released in February by The Canadian Population Health Initiative (CPHI), an independent, non-profit organization looking at the overall health of Canadians.
According to the study, obesity in children aged seven to 13 has increased dramatically in the last 20 years.
According to the report, and LeBlanc, obesity is creating a crisis situation. “Actual obesity in children has gone from five per cent to 15 per cent…from 1981 to 1996.”
Since hard data takes a long time to get in this field, 1996 is the last year for which numbers are readily available for analysis.
The rise of obesity has continued according to the report, which has some numbers from 2001. And LeBlanc thinks that once more new numbers come out, the obesity level among Canada’s youth will be shown to be far higher than expected.
“From our perspective, these numbers are higher, we just don’t have the objective data to prove it at this time. So the [obesity] data for the 2000s should be staggering. My guess is that [the obesity level] will be much higher than this,” she says.
And the problem isn’t just on the physical level. Overweight youth will eventually become overweight adults and that could lead to large economic stresses on the health care system. Diseases that were typically only adult problems are now being seen in children too.
The study uses the example of Type 2 diabetes, which was until recently only seen in overweight adults, but is now increasingly seen in teens.
“This is an example of why we’re concerned about the obesity crisis in children, because we know it’s not just a matter of aesthetics. We’re concerned because their health is at risk — and the problem could be getting worse,” said LeBlanc.
The CPHI study showed that a “very obese 20-year-old white male could have a 22 per cent reduction in remaining years of life, compared to someone with a normal weight.”
All is not lost, however. LeBlanc says the future can be saved with some simple preventative measures, such as parents taking a more active role in their children’s health by limiting time spent watching TV or doing other sedentary activities.
And even though March break may send older kids to the mall while the younger ones spend hours at a time watching cartoons, parents need to remember that there are other options.
“Here we have a wonderful opportunity that we can have the kids not sit at home and watch TV all day,” said LeBlanc. “And Jack Purcell is offering a program that is affordable, that the kids can actually do some things together, meet new friends and be physically active and that’s a healthy thing.”
The program runs March 15-19 and takes both registrations and drop-ins depending on available space.