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Prescription for healthy kids: Go outside and play
Saturday, September 25, 2010 02:56 AM
By Catherine Candisky
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Remember growing up and racing off on your bike with friends, collecting lightning bugs in a jar or exploring a nearby stream or woods?

Will your kids?

Probably not.

Children on average are spending seven hours and 38 minutes a day – more than 50 hours a week – watching television, playing computer games or using a computer, a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation says.

“This indoor, sedentary lifestyle is taking a toll on our children,” said Jenny Morgan, founder of the Leave No Child Inside collaborative of central Ohio.

The grass-roots effort to encourage kids to get off the couch, put down their video games and play outside is hoping to spread the word with the help of Gov. Ted Strickland, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and local officials and organizations across Ohio.

Strickland signed the Ohio Children’s Outdoor Bill of Rights, a nonbinding proclamation supporting the endeavor and encouraging parents, educators and others to help children reconnect with nature.

“Growing up in rural Ohio, some of my greatest childhood memories were times spent outdoors, but, sadly, too many of today’s children are losing out on those memories and experiences,” Strickland said.

“It’s important that we all work together to encourage children to experience the great outdoors for their own physical and social well-being.”

At a rally in Columbus yesterday, the Ohio Leave No Child Inside coalition launched a new campaign to provide families and schools information to encourage outdoor exploration. The group also released a report detailing how the shift in lifestyle is putting children at greater risk for obesity, vitamin D deficiency, myopia and stress, and outlining their plan for combating the problem.

“It’s an easy solution,” said Morgan, a teacher at Columbus School for Girls. “We simply need to get our children outside every day.”

The Leave No Child Inside movement started in Cincinnati in 2006 and has grown to include 80 grass-roots initiatives in nearly every state, including five in Ohio. The effort was sparked by Richard Louv’s 2005 best-seller, Last Child in the Woods, about the growing disconnect between children and nature and a phenomenon he calls nature-deficit disorder.

The Ohio coalition yesterday also recognized Dr. Wendy Anderson-Willis, a pediatrician at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, for her efforts that include giving many of her patients prescriptions to play outside for at least an hour each day and her involvement in the Walk with a Doc program.

“I think it’s the right of every child to play outside and it’s the job of the adults to create a world where this is possible,” Anderson-Willis said.

In addition to playing outside, her advice to patients and their parents: eat five fruits and vegetables a day; drink mostly water; and cut back on screen time.

Leave No Child Inside encourages outdoor activities such as bike riding, walking and going to a neighborhood playground or park, which research suggests benefits children physically, intellectually, emotionally and socially.

“An idea so simple,” said Sean Logan, director of the state Department of Natural Resources. “We didn’t miss it until it was almost gone.”

More information about No Child Left Inside of central Ohio can be found at www.kidsandnature.org.

ccandisky@dispatch.com