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Topic Editor: John Reilly, PhD, University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom
To encourage children to develop an active lifestyle, different organizations advise limiting the amount of time children spend in sedentary behaviours, and promoting physical activity in the family and in the child care setting. For example, American and Australian organizations recommend that children under 2 not watch television, and that those between 2 and 5 be limited to 1 to 2 hours per day. Given that the exact amount required for physical activity to be beneficial for children still remains to be determined, minimal daily standards vary across nations. In Australia, authorities recommend three hours of physical activity distributed across the day for both toddlers and preschoolers, with no specified intensity to allow room for children’s natural dispositions. Meanwhile, U.S. guidelines are more specific and recommend that toddlers and preschoolers be involved in daily structured physical activity for 30 and 60 minutes respectively, whereas at least one hour of their day should be dedicated to unstructured physical activity (e.g., climbing on a play structure), a duration that can be extended up to several hours.
Parents can encourage their child’s participation in physical activity by being role models who provide every opportunity for the child to be active, such as going for short walks instead of stroller rides, and who limit time spent in sedentary behaviours. Parents are also responsible for providing safe and risk-free environments both indoors and outdoors where their child can be physically active. Parents should make sure to give equal opportunities to both sons and daughters to be physically active. To enhance physical activity at home, policy makers should make parental education and support a priority. In the child care setting, physical activity can be enhanced by integrating physical exercises of varying intensity both indoors and outdoors in children’s daily routine, and by making these activities more enjoyable. Children should be provided with a proper size outdoor space including shaded areas and portable equipment. Training child care professionals in integrating physical activity within the curriculum has also been found to be a winning strategy to promote children’s engagement.
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