An admittedly small study in Great Britain has found that many kindergarten-age kids lack the kind of balance, motor skills and reflexes of kids even just six years ago. Reports The Independent:
A “concerning” number of today’s four-year-olds are not physically ready to start school, new research has revealed, with children’s mobility levels said to be at an all-time low.
Early-years specialists monitoring children of school age found a higher number experience problems with their balance and coordination than previously thought, ultimately affecting their ability to learn in class. Researchers from the University of Loughborough said the increase was partly a result of modern children being less active in their early years compared with previous decades, with typical movements associated with play and development reduced by the introduction of electronic toys and screens.
Ironically, being able to use your body successfully makes kids more ready for exactly the kind of early and excessive schooling that may be creating the problem!
Dr Rebecca Duncombe, who led the study, said the lack of physical ability shown demonstrated that children are not as active as they should be in the beginning of their lives.
“A child’s physical development level impacts their ability to complete simple tasks such as sitting still, holding a pencil, putting on their shoes, and especially reading — all skills essential for school,” she said.
Are those skills really essential for four-year-olds? Sitting still???
You can read about the study here. It was of just 45 kids, so it’s not like this is definitive. But it is a great topic for research and the kind of thing Timbernook’s Angela Hanscom is so good at parsing.
Luckily, the solution to to problem is as obvious as it is simple: Let kids play. Give them time to frolic, stand back so they can take the basic risks all tots take, and don’t make them do the kinds of things they will have the rest of their lives to do (the thing I’m doing right now!): Sit still. Not yet. – L.
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34 Comments
One thing I’ve figured out is that swinging on swings (pumping oneself) is great for the kind of physical development needed to “sit still” in school. And more and more playgrounds are doing away with swings for safety reasons.
Another thing that kind of blows my mind is how prevalent it is for kids to enter school not knowing how to tie shoes or ride a bike. When I was a kid, that was pretty rare. Now it’s almost rare if your kid *can* do both of those at 5yo.
I also have mixed feelings about people setting up a playground in their yard. On one hand, it probably encourages some movement. On the other hand, it keeps the kids within a few strides of their four walls. I refused to allow an apparatus in my yard because I prefer for my kids to walk or bike to the park that is a mile away.
My four-year-old will start kindergarten in the fall. My wife is worried he’s not ready, academically, for it. He will likely be the youngest child in the class because he birthday falls so close to the cut-off date.
But he’s taken a keen interest in engines of all sorts. He likes tools, and for his birthday I’m going to have him help me pull apart the engine of a chainsaw so he can see what the insides look like.
No, he doesn’t know all his letters yet. But he knows his numbers (although he likes to pretend he doesn’t). He’s got the memory of an elephant. He’s outside with me helping work in the garden, and he wants to mow, use a chainsaw, and rake up leaves.
I fully expect him to be a problem for the school. Especially when he’s more interested in talking with the janitor about how the electric sweeper works than sitting and learning about what vowels are.
We’re putting up an “apparatus” now for a couple of reasons – with a 3yo and a full-time job, I don’t have time to bring him to the park every day, he’s obviously too young to get there himself, and I’m underwhelmed by the amount of outdoor time they get at daycare, particularly in mildly bad weather or in the winter. I need to be able to send him outside to play while I make dinner after work/daycare, and know he’ll actually get some energy out, possibly for the first time that day. It’ll be a few years before sending him outside to play can mean he walks independently to the playground a few blocks away.
And second, all of the playgrounds within walking distance of our house are lame! We’re putting up a dome climber (one of these: http://amzn.to/2pQUnpv) because a) I loved them as a kid and b) there’s basically nothing but stairs to actually CLIMB at the playground. Most modern playsets seem so boring to me, and I really didn’t want one in the yard.
Related to swings, though, I feel like the baby bucket swings have gotten bigger since I was a kid, and it just becomes 2nd nature to keep using them, possibly long after your kid should be ready for holding on and pumping on a big swing. It was only at nearly 3 that I had the sudden realization that maybe it was time for my son to move up – after I saw an old home video of my sister sitting on a regular swing at like 18 months. She wasn’t going anywhere, but she was sitting there, balanced, and holding on. Now he’s old enough to start learning how to pump, but hasn’t yet acquired the basics of holding on tight and balancing himself! I feel like I screwed up this one :-/
I believe it. I think that besides not playing outside, never walking anywhere is a contributing factor. As a preschooler, I would walk with my mom to all kinds of places – the library, the market, the park, a store. That’s now so rare that most people I know think of their preschoolers as incapable of walking even 1/4 or 1/2 a mile.
In fact, we have neighbors who are still pushing their 4 and a half year-old around in a stroller, even when the walk is just a leisurely evening stroll to the end of the block and back. (Until recently, I thought maybe she was disabled, but she’s not.)
K, one of my kids was 2 when she started pumping herself on the swing, but the other was 7yo. Not because she didn’t have the chance to try, she just didn’t want to. 😛 Actually the one who started at 2 did so because, at the time, she could not stand to be pushed on a swing – some sensory / vision issues probably. She was OK if it was her own body causing the movement.
The thing is, kids need that core body strength, however they get it.
” As a preschooler, I would walk with my mom to all kinds of places — the library, the market, the park, a store.”
I have vague memories of walking all sorts of places with my mother in Grand Rapids Michigan at the age of 3.5, just before we moved to a suburb of Detroit.
She had no car because my father had to drive to a six-week training in Oklahoma for his new job (which was the reason for the move).
I too used to walk uptown to shop with my mom when I was very small. I just checked on Mapquest and it was 1.4miles each way. I may have gotten tired at times, but we had no other choice, so walk we did.
In developing countries, it is not unusual for young kids to walk several miles to and from school every day. And then do their chores. All that walking probably helps them to do better in school.
Agreed on the walking, too. We’re expecting #2, and I’ve had people suggest double strollers I should look at, which was a little confusing. My 3yo hasn’t used a stroller with any regularity in 12-18 months, and I can’t imagine we’d want to (or be able to force him to) go backwards in that regard! He can easily walk 1/4 of a mile, and we do so all the time, although it can be frustrating, as he operates at two speeds – running full speed, and so slow he’s moving backwards. He’s getting a little better at keeping a normal pace beside me, but it’s a work in progress! We walked a LOT more when I was a SAHM (one car family, and my husband often had it at work), so imagine his stamina is actually less than it was a year ago, and a lot less than it could be at his age if walking were still our main means of transportation.
“K, one of my kids was 2 when she started pumping herself on the swing, but the other was 7yo. Not because she didn’t have the chance to try, she just didn’t want to.”
Both my boys are like that. The CAN swing themselves–but they have a lot more fun running around with other kids pretending to be/be chased by monsters!
And regarding walking: My boys both have (small) shopping carts. When we go grocery shopping the boys push their carts alongside us. We sometimes wonder who put the box of cookies (or mango, or plastic cup) in the cart, but spending an extra $2 on occasion is worth the price of wearing the kids out and teaching them basic social skills!
Regarding the article: It’s plausible, but given the small size, among other issues, I’m not convinced. One study does not a zeitgeist make–another study may find the opposite, just because the samples were different. Happens quite frequently in medicine. Second, where did these numbers that the children are being compared against come from? This is no small matter. Numbers derived from theoretical models may not actually represent the real world, due to misunderstandings of how different components of the real world interact. Models are only as good as our understanding of the system. And models in medicine, nutrition, and education have the added complication of being subject to political pressures. If you look at the history of the Body Mass Index or food pyramid you’ll find that they are as much the product of politics as they are the product of science, if not more so. I’ve never considered BMI to be valid because it ignores the fact that humans have multiple body types, for example–at my current BMI I’m perfectly healthy, but my cousin (who has a much larger frame) suffers symptoms of starvation. My point is, I’m highly dubious of the standards used in this study.
Then there’s the question of whether we’re seeing a trend, or merely seeing what already existed in a better way. What I mean is, I was never evaluated for my coordination in school. If we’ve only been measuring for a short time–and we have–we haven’t established a baseline. If we’re measuring more kids our baseline has to shift. Such factors can easily render a study useless in isolation–it’s good science, and important work, but only in as much as it adds to the body of data we have; drawing conclusions based on one such study is premature, to say the least.
That said, the idea that we need more playtime for children is one I’m all in favor of. And outside is best. Children learn movement by moving themselves in strange ways. Climbing a tree–in as much as it shifts the center of balance and presents unique challenges in how to move from Point A to Point B–is much better for kids than running on a track, in terms of developing coordination. (Both, to be clear, are good!) While I wish my youngest son didn’t climb out of his crib, I do acknowledge that it’s definitely helped is coordination–since he’s started he’s gotten far fewer bruises from falling down on flat surfaces (and more black eyes and busted lips from falling down off of things he’s tried to climb). He’s also learned to throw some pillows and blankets on the floor in case he falls when he climbs out of bed.
“My 3yo hasn’t used a stroller with any regularity in 12-18 months, and I can’t imagine we’d want to (or be able to force him to) go backwards in that regard!”
My son started walking places regularly with me around 18 months, too. One unexpected benefit was how other people (i.e., strangers) responded to him: I found that, whereas people other than other moms with babies of their own in tow tend to ignore a kid in a stroller (or look irritated and disgruntled at its being in their way, especially in New York City!), absolutely everybody is charmed by an 18-month-old or 2-year-old getting around on his own steam. Almost everybody we passed would stop to smile or say something nice to him.
I started making my kids walk to the park when they were 18mo, and I only used the stroller 1x after that (a full day at the zoo, age 2.5). Walking with 2 tots is admittedly more complicated than strapping them in, and I got less exercise than I would have gotten in the same amount of time if I were pushing them. But, bad mom here, I was concerned about my youngest’s weight, and she needed to do the walking. So I sucked it up, in the evenings after work, when time and weather allowed. I also asked their nanny to take them outside for walks every day while I worked.
When they went to preschool, in addition to the physical activity they got there, I often stopped at a park on the way home and let them run and climb for an hour or so. Or to swim at the community pool. I’d bring a picnic so I didn’t have to worry about having time to cook dinner. On weekends I worked park visits into our shopping trips. When they were 4, I started keeping their bikes in my trunk so they could practice bike riding at different parks (because our road is too steep for a beginner). At the zoo or museum, I would always make time for them to climb on things etc.
My kids started school young, and that was one reason I was particular about them being able to do all the physical things kids do in K/1st. But I was surprised to learn that many/most of the kids in their class couldn’t do things I considered rather basic for that age.
“In fact, we have neighbors who are still pushing their 4 and a half year-old around in a stroller, even when the walk is just a leisurely evening stroll to the end of the block and back. (Until recently, I thought maybe she was disabled, but she’s not.)”
They don’t fall asleep when they are walking themselves. They may fall asleep in the stroller.
My wife and I did this until well after 4 1/2, though the walk was much longer. Part of the point was to put the child to sleep.
“They don’t fall asleep when they are walking themselves. They may fall asleep in the stroller.” Oh, no, that’s definitely not what my neighbors are doing – they’re just going on a family walk as a little outing. Which is what makes the stroller so bizarre.
But really? Your more-than-4-year-old would fall asleep in a stroller and you could make the transfer to bed without waking them? Certainly wouldn’t work for us. Also, I don’t care to put my son to sleep as if he were a baby. To me, being able to go to bed, settle down, and eventually fall asleep is an important life skill. I would fear that somebody who doesn’t know how to do that by school age is going to have lifelong struggles with insomnia.
Whether they are four or eleven years old, core strength is important for sitting, standing, nearly everything.
These results are similar to those reported in “Balanced and Barefoot” by Angela Hanscom.
I agree with Anna. Plus, Mark’s child will have a deeper, longer (read: better quality) sleep as a result of tiring him/herself out with the walking. I have a lot of issues with any form of overparenting, and seeing a child in a stroller when he/she is much too big and old for it is one of the more irksome activities some parents engage in –
it’s all part of the infantilization of kids.
This may also be why so many are getting fat.
Obesity in children is child abuse, and should be treated that way. Parents: Stop murdering your children with food.
“Almost 90 per cent of children demonstrated some degree of movement difficulty for their age.”
I have to say after coaching youth sports for years that I agree with this statement.
A lot of kids just don’t know how to move! That said, the absolute best way to coach is to play fun games they enjoy and get them moving naturally and learning agility, speed, timing, and spacial awareness to increase their overall fitness levels. The simple, made-up games that have them running around, turning, jumping, and learning left from right.
Sports come more naturally after teaching kids how to just play. I always tell them to go play these games at home with their friends or at recess. They come back and give me more ideas of favorite games they’ve learned and shared, makes practices a lot more fun. And while I think this statistic is true, I also think kids in kindergarten can catch up with fitness.
Give them more recess!
“Obesity in children is child abuse, and should be treated that way.”
No. For a number of reasons. If nothing else, enforcing this rule would be a gross abuse of rights. There’s also the question of what defines obesity.
Again, humans don’t have a single ideal morphology–there are a variety of body types, and what’s healthy for one is unhealthy for another. I’m not saying that a 600 lb person is healthy; I’m just saying that the biological realities are highly complex, with multiple optimal weights and fat/muscle ratios, and typical legislative measures (for example, the BMI) are too heavy-handed to account for those. Add in a healthy dose of parents turning each other in to Child Protective Services (something all too common today), and your proposal would rather quickly create a very dystopian society.
My wife and I often carry gummy snacks, chips, cookies, or the like with us when we’re out with the kids. We have gotten several lectures on how giving kids sugary treats is abuse and that we should be ashamed of ourselves. What those people don’t know–what they cannot know, because they don’t see it–is that our kids will eat adult-sized portions of broccoli, peas, carrots, asparagus, and other vegetables. I would really rather not have CPS beat down my door because people make assumptions based on a highly biased dataset, and that’s a real risk this day and age.
There is a long-standing organization in Philadelphia called the “Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential”. They have worked with typical and brain-injured children for decades, helping them to reach their maximum ability. You might think some of their early-childhood programs like “Teach Your Baby to Read” are silly and unnecessary, though if you get to know them, you find out they are just a few minutes per day of exposure and great socialization if nothing else.
One of their biggest efforts is the study and application of children+motion to encourage brain growth. One of the most vital parts of this is to allow a child to move around under their own power starting shortly after birth. The more time a child moves, the more their intellect grows. This progresses to swinging like an ape (“brachiating”) when they can hold weight on their arms. It’s fascinating. We’d like to think our brains would work just fine in a jar hooked up to a computer, but all parts of the body are interdependent and work best when toned and powerful.
https://iahp.org/early-development/
The viral video about Russian baby yoga that I saw today was definitely shocking, and probably excessive. However, I can’t help but wonder if this is a first step to significant numbers of Olympic athletes and first class intellects. The complex motion and strength must affect their brains in some very interesting ways assuming they are not hurt in the process.
As the parent of a ridiculously uncoordinated kindergartner, I feel the need to stand up for us! Well, not really– this study is talking about a trend (although I echo Lenore in saying at 45 subjects, I wouldn’t take it as gospel). There may in fact be such a trend, and if so, it is troubling. But please don’t look at every clumsy little kid and think you can make assumptions about how he’s been parented! Any more than you should look at a short child and assume he’s been deprived of nutrition. My son… he’s had so many opportunities to run, climb, bike. And what does he like to do? Legos. Puzzles. Dot-to-dots and color-by-numbers. When we go to playgrounds, he builds in the sandbox. He is far and away the least physically developed child in his class… and we don’t even own a TV, nor does he have any sort of digital tablet.
Have yet to understand way folks get concerned about kids beng >Ahem!< kids. When I was legal guardian for three children, I was called to the school because the eight-year-old wiggled…I always thought that was normal for kids that age.
As a way to encourage my kids to develop hand-eye coordination, I learned how to tie balloon animals. It’s easy to find a book and balloon pump. After I learned how to do this, I taught my children at age 7 how to make a rabbit from a balloon. This worked great. At age 8, my son could make dogs, flowers, giraffes, and birds.
Disclaimer
A popular balloon toy is a sword. Your child may learn how to make a sword from a balloon. This could start your child on a path of violence and may lead to them joining ISIS. You have been warned. I take no responsibility of such an occurrence.
Maybe if playgrounds actually had real equipment like merry go rounds and see-saws and more dangerous things to climb (some do, but not all), kids would move better. Or better yet, if kids got out into nature more (and there was more nature around for this), they could have any “playground equipment” they wanted and could even build it themselves.
My daughter just did not like walking, and thus, we used the stroller for longer distances (or there surely would’ve been a meltdown or adult carrying her) for quite a while–even coming home from kindergarten. However, at 18 mon. she loved walking and hiked in the woods and all. But then the novelty wore off. What she did use, though, was a balance bike and a scooter. Either one of these help kids keep up with adults and get somewhere on their own at a very young age–not to mention help with balance and coordination. Therefore they build kids’ self-esteem and physical skills. Highly reccommended! She even rode the balance bike in the woods and loved it.
Driving kids around when not necessary is really ashame, too. Instead of making an outing of a walk or bikeride, use the bike/walk time to get somewhere. Like school or dance, etc. (if possible) Way more kids than necessary get driven around.
I’ve read that wearing your baby helps build up balance systems, because they are moving in 3d and lean down when you do, etc. But a baby in a stroller just slides along in 2d. Thankfully that mommy-habit seems to be increasing.
And lastly, at our school, there are certain pieces of playground equipment (including the one spinning one) that kindergarteners are not allowed to use–I guess not safe for them? So they are missing extra opportunities to build these skills.
“A popular balloon toy is a sword. Your child may learn how to make a sword from a balloon. This could start your child on a path of violence and may lead to them joining ISIS. You have been warned. I take no responsibility of such an occurrence.”
The rule in my house is “Only hit people who are armed.” This has lead to one child handing the other–very sweetly–a foam sword, then cracking him in the skull with the one the first kid had behind his back. Technically, both were armed. 😀 It gives them a chance to work out aggression, to play together, to practice a sport (it was adorable to see a knight in the SCA giving my kids instructions–and seeing them listen), and gets them moving. I’ve always said that there’s no better way to learn a lesson than to have someone swing for your head every time you get it wrong.
(We do supervise this combat, and break it up if it gets too violent. Still, if they’re fighting it’s THEIR fight, we’re just moderators.)
Jessica, i was the same sort of kid…uncoordinated and preferred solitary activities that required very little movement, like reading. Some kids are just like that.
I appreciate the comment about the quality of the study. 45 kids in the UK cannot accurately reflect the UK population let alone any other nations’ children. The implications of this data are severely limited and should pretty much only motivate further study.
I’m a believer in outdoor play and I’m a believer in good statistics and I’m a believer in proper application of those statistics. Don’t be quotin’ this study in your mom’s group to justify yourself, just stay tuned for more studies. While you wait, go for a walk with your kid.
Let kids climb trees, ride bikes, and run around. They’ll be nimble and fit.
this goes with what I’ve been saying for years…..children are weaker and less coordinated than ever. I teach riding to children and over the last decade it seems as if they have no hand or upper body strength or balance. most can’t hold the reins for more than a few minutes[at first] and have no idea how to shift their weight to stay balanced. they tend to sit like sacks of potatoes. when I ask what other sports they do the answer I get the most is nothing. they [and their parents] seem surprised that riding is exercise, not just sitting there.
I’m laughing like crazy over the “only hit someone who is armed” rule!
On the article, though: the results (even though it’s a small study) definitely don’t surprise me. I’ve heard the things about core strength before, and I remember doing a music class with my son when he was a toddler (not because I expected to raise Mozart, because we were new in town in the winter and wanted to make friends!) and the teacher would explain how things like rocking from side to side, and shifting weight accordingly – the same kinds of things kids do on playgrounds – were good for brain development.
I definitely think kids spend more time in sedentary activities than they used to. But I’m afraid part of it is risk management. I don’t remember ever having to worry about serious diseases from ticks when I was a kid playing outside, and mosquito bites just itched – there wasn’t anything dangerous about them either. Now if you want to go walking in the woods, you’ve got to douse your kids in bug spray, so you’re weighing the chemical exposure against the benefits of being in nature.
Then of course there’s the loss of walking to and from school. Add in that everything seems to be more of a production number now (like how biking is no longer just transportation but a fully gear-up “activity”) – and the more complicated something is, the less often you’ll do it – and we get a lot less of things that used to be completely normal and developmentally appropriate.
And sunscreen – I’m not sure how I feel about that. I am light-skinned and managed to get through my whole childhood without a single dab of sunscreen. We swam in outside pools for hours etc. People say the sun is different now, but I’m not totally buying it. A little gradual exposure so you get a healthy natural tan will protect most light-skinned children, most of the time. And dark-skinned children do not need sunscreen at all. Lucky for me, my kids are brown-skinned, so I don’t have to fuss with sunscreen unless we’re in scorching sun for hours on end. (Which does happen occasionally on vacation.)
But my point – logistically it is so much fuss to put on sunscreen, especially if you’re caring for multiple kids, that I could see just looking for something to do indoors instead.
“People say the sun is different now, but I’m not totally buying it.”
It is, but the difference is negligible.
A big part of the issue is better detection methods–we can identify cancer better, so cancer rates appear to rise. We’re also much better at stopping other causes of death, so long-term health risks tend to show up more. A miner who gets black lung disease isn’t going to have to worry about melanoma; an office worker might.
But I agree–if exposure to the Sun was a death sentence our species would have died out in the Pleistocene. Plus, sunscreen isn’t perfectly safe. There are carcinogens in sunscreen. The official rule in my company is that we’re not allowed to use anything above SPF 30, because after that the risks associated with the carcinogenic compounds in sunscreen outweighs the benefits of wearing it (after SPF 30 the difference in protection from UV rays is negligible). This illustrates something I’ve said time and time again: Safety procedures are not inherently safe. ALL activities carry inherent risks. So we’re not talking safe vs. unsafe; we’re evaluating different risks. Once we frame the question in that way, a lot of the moralizing virtue-signaling can be seen for what it is: flagrant nonsense that undercuts the safety of everyone involved.
Well, plus there are health benefits to letting the sun hit your skin. Who knows, maybe those health benefits are related to kids’ motor or mental development, so sunscreen is messing with school and sports performance … it would not surprise me.
There was a time when “scientists” managed to convince moms that breast milk is bad for babies. I feel similar about trying to convince parents that the sun is bad for kids.
Sunscreen is a good example of the problem with blanket rules about what parents should or shouldn’t do. Parents need to be able to weight the risks/rewards and make decisions based on their individual child’s needs. I have one child, a redhead, who will suffer great pain and probably future skin cancer if she doesn’t wear sunscreen regularly, although gradual exposure to sun in the spring helps. The poor child needs sunscreen on her eyelids and reapplications every hour. I have another child who never burns and doesn’t even really look tan despite hours in the sun. Her sunscreen needs are very, very different.
Here, a “meanwhile in Russia” would be appropriate.
Does anyone ever think of what becomes of these kids once they are older?