“Let’s get moving!” As a mom of two easily distracted daughters, I find myself often repeating this phrase when we’re running late for school, dance class, or a doctor’s appointment. But far beyond getting out of the house on time, “let’s get moving” is actually sound advice for parents aiming to help their children establish a lifelong habit of regular physical activity. With an active lifestyle linked to an increase in cardiovascular health, energy level, and self-esteem, and a decrease in weight gain, sleep disturbances, and chronic health problems like type-2 diabetes, it seems we should put as much emphasis on encouraging daily movement as we do daily comings and goings. While a regular habit of physical activity benefits every age group, school-aged children seem to have the most to gain when they get a move on. And we don’t just mean numbers on a scale. Turns out a lot of the benefits reaped from breaking a sweat are cognitive—an increased ability to focus, a smoother shift in attention from one task to another, a boost in memory, and measurable academic success. When regular physical activity becomes part of their day, kids seem better able to stay ahead of the curve and keep their eye on the ball, allowing them to reach their fullest potential in the classroom and beyond.
Get a move on
The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) recommends children age 6 and older get a minimum of 60 minutes of physical activity per day. Aerobic activity should make up the most of that daily hour and while it can be a combination of moderate intensity (brisk walking) and vigorous intensity (running), the recommendation is that vigorous intensity be included at least three days per week. Other activities the CDC recommends including at least three days per week as part of your child’s 60 minutes is a muscle strengthening activity (gymnastics, climbing trees, and playing on the jungle gym) and a bone strengthening activity (jumping rope).
While 60 minutes doesn’t seem like much when you consider there are, on average, 14–15 waking hours in a child’s day (depending on his age), active play has a lot of sedentary competition. According to a 2010 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, children ages 8 to 18 years spend more than four hours a day watching TV, and that doesn’t include other screentime activities (computer, video, and phone games) which, when included, can increase that number to over seven hours per day.
And all that sitting has come at a heavy price for American youth. In a 2009–2010 study of obesity and body mass index (BMI) among U.S. kids ages 2 to 19 years, 16.9 percent of children and adolescents were obese. And that figure doesn’t include the children who are simply overweight, but not considered obese. The total percentage of children that are either overweight or obese is a troubling 31.8 percent. While research suggests overall obesity levels in the U.S. have plateaued in recent years, nearly four times as many 6 to 11 year olds were obese in this country in 2008 than in the early 1970s, according to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
Sedentary activities such as TV has to be to blame, right? Not necessarily. It’s true that nearly 30 years ago a review of obesity and TV viewing statistics led researchers to conclude there was a direct correlation between time spent watching TV and rates of obesity in all age groups studied. In fact, in 12- to 17-year-old adolescents, the prevalence of obesity increased by 2 percent for each additional hour of television viewed. And, very recently, a 2013 study using data from ongoing, biennial surveys submitted by over 4,200 girls and 3,500 boys (beginning in 2004 when they were between 9 and 16 years old) showed, among both genders, each hour per day of increased television time was associated with a 0.09 increase in BMI (which translates to about a half a pound of weight gain). Among girls only (most notably, overweight girls), higher baseline minutes of reported screentime were associated with greater BMI gains with each subsequent survey. But, more often than not, studies haven’t consistently resulted in the same conclusion. In a 2004 study of obesity rates in relation to TV viewing in children age 12 and under, hours of TV time didn’t necessarily correlate with weight. But, it was a different story when they looked at video game use independently. Researchers found that hours spent playing video games did, in fact, have a positive relationship to increased weight. “This may mean,” researchers noted, “that video game play, but not television use, is indeed displacing the time children spend in more physically demanding pursuits.”
While many factors lead to obesity, including diet, heredity and environmental influences, those physically demanding pursuits, otherwise known as physically active play (or should we say lack thereof), are a biggie. And the benefits of keeping physically fit extend far beyond maintaining a healthy weight. Increased time spent being physically active reaps rewards from head to toe—especially the head. Regardless of whether there’s weight to lose, it turns out an active childhood can lead to big gains for the growing brain!
Brain boot camp
Research shows that a child’s brain and brain function can be directly impacted by the amount of early childhood physical activity. The results of a 2010 study of 55 children ages 9 and 10 published in Developmental Neuroscience indicated that higher-fit children showed superior performance in a choice reaction time task. Fitness level was determined by assessing heart rate and peak oxygen consumption as study participants ran on a treadmill at a constant speed while the incline of the treadmill was increased steadily until they were too fatigued to continue. After differentiating the higher fit children from the lower fit ones, and leaving out the children in the middle in order to use only the extremes for purposes of comparison, researchers measured these two groups of children’s interference control using a choice reaction time task exercise known as the Flanker Task (also called an Eriksen Task). During a Flanker Task, subjects are instructed to quickly locate a certain central letter or, in this particular study, an arrow pointing in a certain direction, that is surrounded, or flanked, by other letters or arrows. The flanking letters or arrows can be the same or different than the central figure the subject is looking for, making the test a good measure of a child’s ability to disregard distracting stimuli quickly and focus on the intended target. How does this translate to a brain benefit kids can put to use? When the intended target is a teacher, a math activity, or a spelling test and the distracting stimuli is a busy room of chattering classmates, rustling papers, and scooting chairs, all of a sudden performing well on a Flanker Task exercise represents a child’s ability to pay attention and keep focused in the classroom.