July 25, 2004
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK
Parents taught to play with the kids (Denis Campbell, The Guardian, July 25, 2004
Parents will be issued with instruction manuals showing them how to teach traditional playground games such as hopscotch, skipping and hide-and-seek to their children in a new move to tackle soaring levels of obesity among young people.All mothers and fathers of newborn babies would be given a detailed guide to nurturing their child's physical development under plans being considered by the government's main agency for promoting sport and healthy activity in England.
The manuals would contain scores of ideas about how parents can help their offspring avoid becoming overweight by regularly playing simple games with them at home, in the garden and even when travelling by car. [...]
'It's not rocket science, and a lot of it is things previous generations would have done without thinking. But while I don't want to sound demeaning to present-day parents, a lot of parents today haven't been taught particular games or nursery rhymes and so don't know how to pass those on to their children or do them with them,' said David Maiden, the PE and youth sport manager with Fife Council.
The Play At Home manuals remind parents how to do everything from ring-a-ring-o'-roses to peek-a-boo to the hokey cokey. Parents receive further books, containing new exercises more suited to older children's development, when their son or daughter turns three and five.
Of course they didn’t learn to skip or play hopscotch. They were too busy working on their sex education assignments.
Posted by Peter Burnet at July 25, 2004 10:02 AMThat whole program is stupid. Parents know those games and nursury rhymes. They don't want to play them. The kids are fat because the parents are fat. And they're both fat because they're lazy.
Posted by: Brandon at July 25, 2004 1:14 PMRather, a good idea, especially in the UK where it's 100% assured that taxpayers will end up paying the medical bills for obesity-related illnesses.
Brandon:
A very harsh assessment, too harsh.
Modern humans are no lazier than medieval ones, but society has changed in ways that our bodies won't adapt to for 10,000 years. After all, there are human populations whose bodies haven't fully adapted to agriculture yet, resulting in higher than average rates of diabetes and alcoholism, among other ills.
First-world humans now face a trident composed of inexpensive abundance, sedentary workplaces, and sedentary amusements. Since none of those will change anytime soon, we are left with trying to convince as many as possible to change their unthinking habits a bit.