‘Super stressful’
The challenge of keeping kids active in summer,
Sherry Perez laughs and says, “Oh my gosh,” when asked how much she’s spending to keep her two young kids active this summer. The answer? Around $4,000. While summertime brings endless freedom for Canadian children, for many parents it’s also a challenging time to keep kids physically active. According to the YMCA’s new Healthy Kids Report — which included online interviews with1,760 parents with kids aged 6 to12 across Canada — most parents think their children are less active on weekends and in the summer months than they are during and after school. “(During the school year) we’re sort of more relaxed because we already know they’re being active. But in the summer, the switch flips,” said Perez, a YMCA health and fitness expert who lives in Courtice, Ont. “Now we have to program them 12 hours a day? That’s super stressful.”
Perez said keeping kids active in the summer takes effort. There’s no school recess forcing them outside, and no gymnasium for them to run around in.
To keep her own kids — four-yearold Abby and 7-year-old Ashton — moving while she’s at work, Perez signs them up for a slew of active day camps. Ashton’s one-week hockey camp alone costs $340.
The YMCA study suggests costs are a barrier to keeping kids active, with 55 per cent of respondents saying financial concerns are one of the biggest challenges in being active with kids. To keep costs low, Perez sug- gests improvising boot camp-style classes where the kids call the shots or head outside for unstructured play time on the grass.
Keeping kids active outside school hours is a common challenge parents face, especially in an age when kids have tablets and smartphones, said Allana LeBlanc, knowledge manager with Participaction, a nonprofit organization supported by the Government of Canada.
“You’d think that kids are more active on the weekend because they have all this time,” she said. “But they actually . . . get generally about half an hour to an hour more screen time on the weekends compared to the weekdays.”
According to a June Participaction Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth, the biggest risk to kids’ health is keeping them inside.
LeBlanc encourages parents to let kids get outside and play on their own, adding that kids get 20 per cent more activity when they’re super- vised. These cost-free activities could include letting a child walk to the park on their own, ride their bike outside or set up playtime with friends. As for Perez’s own kids, she can tell when they’re bored — they ask for their hidden-away tablets.
“It’s so much easier as a parent to let them (play with electronics) . . . than it is to say, I’m going to put my extra work aside and we’re going to go outside and be active for half an hour,” she said. “That’s the struggle that I think most parents deal with.”
“(In the summer) we have to program them 12 hours a day . . . That’s super stressful.” SHERRY PEREZ YMCA HEALTH AND FITNESS EXPERT