Let the kids play

It doesn’t matter that the obesity rate for children in Canada, now at 13 per cent, is more than double that of a generation ago.

It doesn’t matter that health professionals warn kids aren’t getting the full hour of active play a day they need to prevent the onset of adult diseases in 14-year-olds such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and Type 2 diabetes.

It doesn’t matter that Participaction and similar organizations say kids should be encouraged to play in natural settings and take risks.

Apparently, we’re still not listening. We’re driving our kids to school, not providing them with enough active play time, keeping them indoors where it’s “safe” — and basically making them physically and emotionally ill by confining them to sedentary pastimes.

The latest party to this worrisome trend of overprotecting kids is St. Luke Catholic elementary school in Toronto, which has told its students they can’t play touch tag or other activities that involve contact on the playground.

Why? They were “getting overly physical and rough.”

The principal at St. Luke is understandably worried that kids are getting knocked down while playing. But all this is getting out of hand. Other schools have banned everything from balls to cartwheels in the name of safety. Participaction noted in a report this spring that kids need to live a little dangerously — maybe even fall from trees — to be prepared for life’s challenges.

They’re not alone in their findings. Another study in Norway found a playground workout can’t compete with what kids learn in freewheeling play: problem solving, creative thinking, selfsufficiency, team work, the ability to conquer fear to achieve goals and fine-tuning motor skills.

Yet St. Luke wants to do away with freewheeling activity and bring in a nurse to train students how to play organized games. One trustee suggests the kids play tag by walking, not running.

How out of touch are we? Years ago, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, of all organizations, urged parents to tolerate more risk in children’s play to help them learn “valuable lifelong lessons, particularly about risks and how to deal with them.”

In the end, we risk hobbling our kids, not helping them, by coddling and cocooning them. Let’s give them a chance to learn from play.

Schools have banned everything from balls to cartwheels in the name of safety