Kids and Healthy Lifestyles Part 1

With childhood obesity affecting one in five children, camps play a vital role in turning back this national trend. Camps are important partners for parents and children who want to make positive changes that keep kids active and eating right all year long.

The Culprits
Health professionals agree that numerous environmental and social factors are at play when it comes to the eating and exercise behaviors of young people. The era of “walking uphill two miles to school every day” is long-gone for most kids, and with the availability of buses and carpools, most children no longer walk to school. Playing outside is also decreasing with children spending much more time indoors than children ten or twenty years ago.

It’s no surprise to concerned parents that many children spend too much time with inactive technology, devoting as much as three to five hours a day to TV or computer-related entertainment. Almost everyone is familiar with the Food Guide Pyramid, but not many people are as familiar with the Physical Activity Pyramid. According to the Council for Physical Education for Children, sixty minutes is the minimum amount of physical activity recommended for children. Ideally, children should engage in flexibility games and exercises as well as muscular fitness activities at least three times a week, have active aerobics, active sports and recreation activities be a part of each day’s activities, and gather many of the sixty minutes of moderate and vigorous activities from outside play, games, walking, and other physical exercise. Camps offer an optimal environment to encourage varying levels of physical challenges, teach lifelong active recreational pursuits, and establish opportunities to learn active lifestyle behaviors.

A Healthy Attitude at Camp

Camps and their staffs make sure that camp programs offer opportunities for healthy and active living. If children begin to change some of their food and activity habits at camp, they might be able to transfer some of these behaviors when they return home.

How do camps help? For starters, camps continue doing what they do best, which is focusing on the positive development of children. Camp is, after all, for kids.

• Camps can help children learn to like foods that are good for them by presenting good choices in a fun, safe environment.
• Camps can provide older children and young adults as mentors for the children, to support positive, healthy behavior.
• Camps can teach children that physical exercise is fun and can be an activity of choice over television and video games.
• Camp environments can become the safest activity-oriented learning center outside the school system by working in tandem with education and nutrition.