That's Me and I Was Just Thinking

I got to thinking about a couple of stories I have heard on the various news shows lately discussing the “epidemic” of overweight adults and kids we have in our country. In response to this problem, the “do gooder” Nannies who have taken it upon themselves to try to negatively influence the freedoms we have by telling us we can’t eat popcorn at the theaters, our children cannot have a toy in their Happy Meal because toys apparently are fattening; Chinese food has WAY to much sodium; we can’t have salt shakers on the tables in restaurants in New York City; we can’t give our kids KinderEggs because our dumb American children will choke to death on the toy; we must have twigs and stems in the school lunch programs because good stuff isn’t good for our kids (one Illinois school district has banned lunches brought from home because the district can’t make sure all Mom’s care enough for their kids to send only twigs and stems); and on and on.

Recently an “if you agree, repost” status has been going around on Facebook that says “If you were raised on home cooking, rode a bike with no helmet on gravel roads, your parents had no child proof lids or seat belts in cars, got spanked when you misbehaved, had 3 TV channels you got up to change, school started w/the Pledge of Allegiance, drank water out of the water hose or the Soquel Creek (Capitola River) , rode in the back of a pickup truck, and YOU STILL TURNED OUT OK re-post.”

I heard on one of those shows how our Nannies are worried because our fatso kids got fat from eating all that fast food and the Twinkies the horrid mothers are sending in their tubby kid’s lunches. And, of course Walt Disney for making movies which kids have to watch in a theater where they are eating that super fattening theater popcorn, popped in coconut oil. This made me reflect back to my own childhood and what we did as kids. In a recent post on this blog I wrote about my memories as a 10 year old. I told of riding bikes up and down the hills at the construction site of the new mall. We won’t discuss what a bad mother I had for letting me do that, and without a helmet (they hadn’t invented bike helmets yet). The thing is, we were outside riding our bikes at breakneck speeds we attained by pedaling with our legs. Our curfew in the summer was when mom and dad were ready to go to bed. We played tag and hide and seek OUTSIDE AND IN THE DARK! We climbed trees and jumped rope. When we came in at night, we smelled “like puppy dogs” and had to take a bath before we went to bed.

In school we had recess at 10 AM and 2 PM. We had an hour for lunch, and when we finished eating we spent the remainder of the hour playing tetherball, 4 Square, softball, football, tag, or just running and chasing each other. I rode my bike to school every day until I was in high school – then I walked the 2 miles each way from my house to the high school (we couldn’t afford for Frankie to have a car to drive to school – the day I graduated from high school was the only day I got to drive to school). When I was in Junior High and in High School, PE was a regular subject. I had 4^th period PE, or 1^st period PE, or whenever it was. Even after I graduated and started college, we had to take PE for three hours a week until age 21. The thing is, we had PE every single day in high school, and those 3 hours per week in college.

Compare that to today. I know that my own kids have been fighting the elementary schools in Texas and Arkansas to get daily recess back into the schools. Our kids sit in the classroom all day – go to lunch and right back to class, with very little free time. PE happens occasionally in elementary school, but in middle and high school, kids take band or choir, and that counts as PE. Singing or playing an instrument, while extremely important in the over-all development of our kids, is not running and getting exercise. We did “warm ups” every day in gym – I am not sure that kids today even understand the concept of “warm up” – unless it involves food in the microwave.

If your kids’ after school games involve a game console or a smart phone, perhaps we need to take a look at what is making our kids fat. I don’t think it is toys in the Happy Meal and I doubt kids are getting fat eating theater popcorn once or twice a month, or having a Coke at lunch. Perhaps, just maybe, it is our parents and our schools not having our kids outside running, riding bikes, climbing trees, playing tag, jumping rope – just moving around every day. I’m not saying to toss the Wii or the Nintendo 64, just turn it off an hour or so a day and run the kids out doors. You might like the results. But, that’s me and I was just thinking.