Healthy Living looks at the need for kids to be active
One of the unfortunate realities of adults is that once out of a formal school system, summer no longer carries the same freedom it did in childhood. Healthy living looks at why it is important to keep your children active this summer.
Marleni Cuellar, Reporting
With each generation, the favorite summer pastimes changes. We’ve reached a point now where children are left to be babysat by the television or video games. While it may be one way to keep the children engaged; it does not offer sufficient physical activity to meet the needs of the child.
Karen Rosito, Nutritionist & Dietician
“We honestly have to realize while you think of summer as time off cause I don’t have to get up early you need to work with the kids because it’s the time when the kids are the most unhealthy. When kids get bored they are going to eat anything, even if they are not hungry. They are going to eat.”
And excessive food coupled with lack of physical activity provides for a dangerous equation.
Karen Rosito
“Every summer your kids gain ten pounds ten times five years especially when they are in school years is fifty pounds just like that. It’s sad because the disease that weren’t around in other words you never heard of kids having high cholesterol at ten and now it’s like a commonality. It’s common that kids have high cholesterol, high triglycerides at ten and eleven and tummies that are larger than thirty-four-forty inches. I would suggest that you have to let your kid’s exercise sixty minutes every day for seven days so it’s not a weekend break. When I say exercise its broken into three types; it aerobics as in walking, running, house work, picking in clothes, hanging clothes, bathing the dog; anything like that that is aerobic. Two muscle strengthening; basketball, lifting their own weight even if it’s just a one pound weight, doing abdominals, and last but not least bone strengthening: tug of war, basketball.”
One of the daunting pressures for parents during the summer is finding time and opportunities to engage the children. Councilor, Myrna Manzanares, stresses that this is an important responsibility as a parent. Myrna works with young people at the Belize Family Life Association, an organization that provides positive activities for children and young people year round.
Myrna Manzanares, Counselor, B.F.L.A.
“Sometimes they say oh I don’t have the time; I noh have time fi do dis, I noh have time fi do dat. You have to make the time and you have to remember that you are the guiding principles in the child’s life. School is out. The second person who was dealing with that was teachers and the teachers are with their families and they have their own development to do. So parents it’s your responsibility now to take on the slack in the summer to ensure that your child keeps off the streets—when I say that, in any negative activity. Find out what is happening in the community. Get involved those are so critical. Parents can enroll their children but not only enroll them, but when the child get home talk to them discuss with them what did you learn? Maybe they might feel a little bit embarrassed about some of the things that the children learn but it is very important to know who was there, what did you do. What did you eat? Who were your facilitators? Encourage the child or your children to know who it is that they are dealing with so that later on if there are other things happening the parents can know.”
Karen Rosito
“I want to encourage parents to do something with time. Parents tend to be a little bit selfish when it comes to their time. When they come home in the evening, it’s my time but it can be our time as in family time. As you know eighty percent of people in Belize are obese so they can’t say they are not. Take the kid out and do something for an hour, the dog to walk, wash the car. Kids need to be active first they need to be healthy but that comes with activity and the need to be happy. So you can’t take a kid somewhere where they’re locked up and unhappy because he or she will start eating. You the parent are responsible for the child’s well being and his or her health.”
In addition to becoming the family that exercises together, Karen points out the need in making the home – especially the refrigerator – conducive to a healthy lifestyle.
Karen Rosito
“You have to be careful what you leave at home for these kids are latch key. Kids they let themselves in, they let themselves out. And you leave the refrigerator full of junk snacks that is what they are going to eat. If you leave your own homemade popcorn; fresh fruit popsicle meaning you squeeze orange juice, mix it with grapefruit mix it with watermelon put it in ice cube trays that’s a lot of calories less than any of these energy drinks.”
Myrna Manzanares
“The big thing is I think it is we as parents we have to let go. We are so tightened and we don’t do anything. If we just say forget the house work, we no di cook today. We just going. We wa just maybe ker wi own lunch; make some sandwiches, make some kool-aid or whatever and we just gwein. We go, we sit down in a shaded park even if it’s outside in a shaded part of the house and just have fun, just let go. Go back into your childhood as a parent.”
So, this year make it a summer of healthy living for both you and your child.
