It's mud-luscious Spring: Get Outside and Play!

Spring is a month old.  Earth Day was last week.  It's time to celebrate play in the great outdoors.

Outdoor play for kids:  there's nothing like it.  It's a theme I'll be investigating and coming back to continuously as I write this blog.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends one hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) a day for youngsters; there are technical definitions for 'moderate' and 'vigorous,' but the terms roughly are equivalent to the energy expended in walking and running, respectively.


Kids in America are getting a lot less MVPA these days.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the good fortune of being asked by my friends at the Leave No Child Inside Collaborative of Ohio to spend the afternoon with them as they profiled the benefits of outdoor play for children.  The story can be found here.

I spent some time discussing the findings in a  2010 article in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.  This study reviewed the well-known decline of physical activity time in children and adolescents in most developed countries.  It went on to survey the literature demonstrating that time outdoors is positively associated with physical activity in kids. Literally, if the only intervention made was to have children outside as opposed to indoors, their average MVPA increases.  Not surprisingly, more MVPA leads to lower rates of child overweight and obesity.

This is science merely validating what Grandmothers' common sense has always known, a confirmation of that old saw that middle agers' like me enjoy saying:  "when i was a kid, my mom just pushed me out of doors and told me not to come back inside until dinner.'  But maybe things were different back then, so the question  in 2012 is:   how do we get our kids outside, so they can increase their MVPA?

The 2010 study looked over five years at predictors of time spent outdoors in children.  Many factors were anazlyzed:  yard size, owning a dog, number of siblings, availability of outdoor play space, etc. Among the most powerful predictors found were parental encouragement and supervision.  These were more powerful predictors of outdoor time than, say, availability of playground space.  This influence of adult behavior on child play was especially true for older children.  In other words, getting outdoors with your kids gets them outdoors and active.  Actions speak louder than words.  Grandmothers in 2012 may just need to go outside along with their kids, instead of simply pushing them outside.

It's a beautiful, cool but sunny day here in Central Ohio, and it rained yesterday.  There's a mud puddle somewhere for your kids (and you) to play in or near.  Get outside.

e.e. cummings (and I) would love to see you there.

[in Just-]

BY E. E. CUMMINGS

in Just-

spring          when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles          far          and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far          and             wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's

spring

and

         the

                  goat-footed

balloonMan          whistles

far

and

wee