Researchers point to the need for more physical activity for children at home

Parents who do school at home with their children may think that getting them to participate in organized sports and physical activities keeps them fit, but Rice University researchers say the kids have need more.

The faculty of the Department of Kinesiology of Rice studied data collected from 100 children aged 10 to 17 attending school in order to confirm their hypothesis that these activities are sufficient to keep children in shape. The data, however, gave them wrong.

The findings of Rice researchers are available in an open access document in the Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology.

Laura Kabiri, a sports medicine teacher at Rice, said the problem lay in the amount of activity that is part of organized diets. According to the World Health Organization, children should do about an hour of mostly aerobic activity a day, but other studies have shown that children who play sports other than elites only participate 20 to 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise that they need during practice.

Rice researchers decided to quantify it with the help of statistics collected by Kabiri on home-schooled children and teens as a graduate student and postdoctoral researcher at Texas Woman's University.

"We badume – and I think parents do it as well – that children enrolled in an organized sport or physical activity practice the activity they need to maintain good body composition, good cardiorespiratory fitness and their muscular development, "Kabiri said. "We found that this was not the case.The mere fact of checking the box and registering them for an activity does not necessarily mean that they meet the requirements necessary to stay healthy."

Kabiri said the researchers suspected that the same was true for public school students in the general clbades of physical education, where much of the time is spent organizing the clbad . "When you only have 50 minutes, it's very easy for half or more of that time to get in, out and do the job," she said.

Data on public schools would be easier to collect, but home schooling poses a different problem for researchers. "We do not know much about this population and it is expanding," Kabiri said. "The home school is becoming very popular in the US It has been growing steadily.

"And now that Texas students can have free public education online starting in grade 3, I think this population will increase.I want to make sure that the health, physical activity and exercise aspects of their education do not fall through the cracks, "she said.

"From what I understand, the state program is about physical education, but if you are a school student at home in the state of Texas there is no obligation in terms of physical activity, and information on physical education, nutrition and exercise are largely left behind. " to parents, "she added.

The authors concluded that it would be wise for parents to give their children more time each day for unstructured physical activity.

"Parents know that if they attend activities and do not see their children breathing and sweating profusely, they are not doing enough exercise," Kabiri said. "So there should be more opportunities for unstructured activities." Bring your kids to the outdoors and let them run and play with the neighborhood kids and ride the bike.

"If I've learned one thing about families attending school at home, it's that they're really dedicated to educating their children," she said. she declared. "If there is a problem, they will want to know it and make the necessary adjustments."