UK Edition
How to have a healthier start to the new academic year
Most of us know our children aren’t getting as much exercise as they need. Recent guidelines issued by the Department of Health recommend that all children from the age of five to adolescence take at least one hour of moderate to vigorous exercise every day. Yet, according recent NHS statistics, less than a quarter of children are meeting this target, particularly during the weekends.
Both parents and schools need to address this issue urgently – and when we do, our children will benefit in a number of ways.
First, exercise improves both cognitive function and wellbeing. Naomi Brooks and colleagues at Stirling University have studied the effects of an innovative programme dubbed the “Daily Mile”.
Created in 2012 by head teacher Elaine Wylie at St. Ninian’s Primary School in Stirling, this simple programme – requiring primary school children to take 15 minutes of self-paced aerobic exercise outdoors sometime during every school day – has now been adopted by more than over 3,500 primary schools in more than over 30 countries.
Brooks and her team compared children who’d participated in the Daily Mile for seven months with pupils in a school that hadn’t yet adopted this programme. They found those in the Daily Mile programme showed increased verbal memory, attention, alertness and wellbeing. In another study, they recorded similar benefits for more than 7,000 children after only a single 15-minute exercise session.
Furthermore, these benefits appear to be lifelong. David Jacobs and colleagues at the University of Minnesota followed 747 participants aged 18 to 30 between 1985 and 2010. When in 2010 the participants were given a battery of cognitive tests, including verbal memory processing speed and the ability to plan, those who were physically fit 25 years earlier scored 10 per cent better than others in the cohort.
Regular exercise early in life is also associated with better long-term physical health – even with longevity – as demonstrated by longitudinal studies at Harvard, in Framingham, Massachusetts, and at Perth in Australia. Vigorous exercise earlier in life is also associated with greater bone density later on, as Martin Nilsson and colleagues at the University of Gothenburg discovered in their work with 498 men aged 75.
Our most powerful and enduring habits are established during childhood. How can you encourage your children to take more regular outdoor exercise, particularly during the weekends, now that school has started?
Make exercise part of your weekends. Take family walks, rent bicycles together, find safe places to swim and/or try canoeing or kayaking. Parents are children’s most important role models: be sure you take part too with them.
Ask your children to help you choose some equipment that will encourage them to continue exercising at home on bad weather days – for example, an indoor bike, basketball net or mini-trampoline.
Once term does start, build a walk into your morning routine. Walk with them to the bus stop or, if you drive them to school, park several blocks away and walk there together. That way, you’ll all feel more alert for the rest of the day.
• Linda Blair is a clinical psychologist and author of Siblings: How to Handle Rivalry and Create Lifelong Loving Bonds. To order for £10.99, call 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk