It seems every week in the news there is something about the obesity epidemic in our children. That teenagers of today might be the first generation to not live longer than their parents. Walking Jasmine to Kinder on Monday I saw a few things that might just explain why.
First, the long long line of cars outside the school dropping kids off. In my day (oh lord I'm old) when the weather was good (as it was on Monday) we walked! These days it seems anything more than 500m in too far for kids to walk. If you are able to drive them to school, then surely you have the time to walk them? Yes, I know some of these parents would have been on their way to work but from the way the majority of them were dressed I don't think so.
Secondly, when we got to the Kinder there were several parents there with kids in prams. Not the younger sibling of the 4 year olds either. The 4 year olds were in the prams! We received a contact list last night with phone numbers and address' of all the 4 year olds. Very few of them live far enough away to need to be pushed in a pram to kinder! Its about a 800m walk for us and Jasmine walks it just fine. There is one girl who lives closer and was pushed in a pram.
I thought we were supposed to be encouraging our kids to be active. Isn't walking them to and from school/kinder being active? Now I know Jasmine has endless energy so I'm going to assume she's not the only kid at kinder who does. She'll come home later and bounce around the house all afternoon. I fear what she would be like if she didn't walk to and from kinder.
