Welcome to my blog! As a busy mum of three I have started this blog to share some of the trials and tribulations of daily life. It’s always hard knowing where to start but here goes… Today I completed my first 10k in five years (last one was pre-children). The views were gorgeous, the weather perfect for running and I found that rather than being hard work I really enjoyed myself.
I left the children in the capable hands of the husband who ran them (or was run?) ragged around the park. On coming home I saw this article on the Beeb… Parents offered advice on exercise for under-5s http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14080072 The Chief Medical Officers for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have
come together to issue a guidance that children under the age of five should have at least three hours exercise a day. Given, that most children will be awake for about 12 hours a day this means that for a quarter of their waking day they should be active. Just a quarter??? My children are bouncing off the walls from the off and the idea that I could make them sit still for NINE hours a day is completely bonkers.
I understand the Medical Officers are concerned about children growing up to be sedentary adults (and those sedentary adults becoming obese and costing the NHS money in the future) but is there any evidence to support this being the case? It seems that rather too many ‘links’ have been made and we’ve now ended up with some fairly strange advice on how to exercise our children.
I can’t wait for my children to join me running at some point in the future if they’d like to but I won’t be encouraging them on the basis that they’ll be possibly fighting off the threat of obesity in the future, but because its fun, life-affirming and relaxing. Making parents paranoid about how much exercise their under fives take is not, in my view, going to make for a healthier population on the whole.
