{"id":11481,"date":"2015-07-28T20:27:56","date_gmt":"2015-07-29T00:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=11481"},"modified":"2015-08-12T14:59:58","modified_gmt":"2015-08-12T18:59:58","slug":"front-porch-perspective-children-and-physical-activity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/front-porch-perspective-children-and-physical-activity\/","title":{"rendered":"FRONT PORCH PERSPECTIVE: Children and physical activity"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Stephen Somerville<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a society, we have to be generally concerned about children\u2019s lack of physical activity and the dietary challenges that many have.
\nBefore school let out for the summer recess, my son brought home a blue folder that caught my eye. Inside the folder was a section entitled, \u201cEating healthy with Canada\u2019s food groups.\u201d
\nAfter reading the materials, my rhetorical question is this: since Ryan seems to know all about the food groups, why does he consistently persist in stating that ice cream and Pringles chips are one of the basic food groups and should therefore be consumed on a daily basis?
\nI was walking by Dr. G Williams Secondary School in late May and what I saw brought back some memories.
\nI saw what looked like a bunch of Grade Nine boys running around the track. They were all wearing school issue uniforms and the teacher had his stop watch and was timing the kids as they came around the track.
\nSome of the children finished strongly while others had a great deal of difficulty and a few of the students had stopped running and were simply walking.
\nNot much different than when I did the same thing thirty-odd years ago.
\nBut it got me thinking about something else; something that I don\u2019t see enough of now.
\nI don\u2019t see any kids playing street hockey or any kids getting together to play baseball or football in the park anymore.
\nI recall playing street hockey from morning until night with my buddies. We would even take on other \u201cstreets\u201d where I grew up. First team to twenty was usually considered the winner.
\nMaybe it takes too much effort to get everyone together today or maybe kids just like to play in their leagues and want their free time to do other things.
\nThe problem is that this \u201cfree time\u201d \u2013 in a great deal of cases \u2013 leads to children playing video games on the computer for countless hours.
\nI am probably just as guilty as the next guy in that I sometimes let my son play more of these games than I should, but he is an active boy who likes playing soccer, golf, skiing and other sports.
\nI bought a portable basketball hoop a while back for the driveway with the intention of introducing Ryan to the game. I have been very pleasantly surprised that in addition to my son, both of my nephews will join him outside shooting baskets, although the shoot around usually reverts at some point to an NHL type game including body checks!
\nI digress.
\nIt does seem to me that there are more young couch potatoes today than when I was growing up.
\nAnd the federal government has tried to do something about it over the years \u2013 although I don\u2019t think enough.
\nAccording to Wikipedia, ParticipACTION is a national non-profit organization, originally launched as a Canadian government program in the 1970s, to promote healthy living and physical fitness. It shut down due to financial cutbacks in 2001, but was revived on February 19, 2007 with a grant of $5 million from the Federal Government.
\nParticipACTION is well known for its television public service announcements and segments such as a 1973 commercial, comparing the health of a 30-year-old Canadian to a 60-year-old Swede, which started a national discussion on the state of physical education in Canada.
\nIf you are of my vintage, then you may recall one of the programs associated with ParticipACTION – the \u201cAwards of Excellence\u201d.
\nI believe the government was doing this program in concert with Montreal hosting the 1976 Olympics.
\nThe physical fitness program consisted of a number of activities in which a student would be graded against an aged adjusted standard. I can\u2019t recall all of the activities that were measured, but I do remember the shuttle run, sit ups and the dreaded flexed arm hang.
\nIf you were in the top category for each category, then you were awarded the Gold \u201cAward of Excellence\u201d patch. There was a Silver and Bronze level as well.
\nI still have my patches somewhere in the house.
\nI don\u2019t know why the program was stopped; they should resurrect it in concert with a new healthy lifestyle advertising program \u2013 have a funny celebrity like Martin Short or Jim Carrey as the spokesman with some funny television commercials. Or even go back to comparing our health against that 60-year-old Swede.
\nAnything that can be used to encourage and promote healthy and active lifestyles for our children needs to be undertaken.<\/p>\n

Stephen can be contacted at stephengsomerville@yahoo.com<\/strong><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Stephen Somerville As a society, we have to be generally concerned about children\u2019s lack of physical activity and the dietary challenges that many have. Before school let out for the summer recess, my son brought home a blue folder that caught my eye. Inside the folder was a section entitled, \u201cEating healthy with Canada\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2Zb","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-25 04:59:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}