Re: Children's Obesity Epidemic

I enjoyed reading everyone's comments - many strong points mentioned.

Perhaps another factor is less children having a "place" to play outside. Less people live in the country. And even for the city folk, they used to play in the street, in the whole neighborhood, in parks, etc. (so I hear). My father's parents moved out to the country once he started having children, and my mother's family always lived in the country. I heard many a tale from their generation, including riding horses all over the county. Now, who has horses? Or a vast place to ride them? Or wide acres to explore? Not many people.

When I was growing up, we had 5 acres in the country. I was by no means athletic, but my siblings and I would play outdoors for hours everyday. We'd explore, pretend to be Indians, play in the sandbox, ride bicycles, play with dogs and cats, etc.
Later we moved to 1/2 acre in the city. But we had a trampoline in the backyard, and many was the hour we'd spend jumping, with the neighbors, too. Of course many of the "rules" printed on the trampoline were broken, but no one was hurt and we had fun! My siblings would go play with the other kids in the neighborhood, including playing in some people's tree "forts." My brother was forever climbing trees.
My sister and I did take dancing lessons, and my brother played in some sports teams.

Now we're all grown up, but the insurance company won't let us have a trampoline. And kids usually can't (or shouldn't) play in the street!

There's not much kids could be doing in a small back yard, even good imaginations can get exhausted after a while on a small playset.

I think kids (as a whole) have less interesting stuff outside for them to do than their parents did. Tweet