Do Children Need Exercise?

People tend to become less physically active as they get older, and research shows that this sedentary trend is particularly strong after having a child.1

According to one study, after having a first or subsequent child, 20 percent of young women changed from being active to inactive.2 And while parents (with dependent children) across the board are less active than non-parents, mothers tend to be even less active than fathers.3

If you’re a parent, this has implications for your health, of course, since regular physical activity (both exercise and non-exercise activity) is key for lowering your risk of chronic disease and maintaining your mobility, strength, and cognitive abilities as you get older.

What may be less obvious is that this tendency to become inactive affects your kids’ health, too, with recent research showing a close tie between activity levels in mothers and their children

• In a study of 4-year-olds and their mothers, mothers who were more active typically had more active children
• A mother and child’s activity levels tend to be closely linked, yet many people become less physically active after having children
• Exercise is equally important for kids and adults, with benefits for weight control, disease prevention, and improved brain function (and school performance) in both groups
• Unless your child is seriously overweight or obese, resist the urge to overly structure your child’s “exercise time,” instead encouraging natural active play
• Every time you fit in a workout, go for a hike, or walk the dog with your kids, you’re teaching them a positive lesson about fitness that will hopefully stay with them for a lifetime

It’s not only adults who benefit from physical activity. Children have just as much to gain from regular exercise, but only one in three children are physically active every day.4 Kids spend a lot of time sitting in classrooms at school and in front of screens (television, video games, and computers) at home. Children now spend more than 7.5 hours a day in front of a screen!5

What does your child stand to gain from swapping some of that screen time for an active game of tag, a ride around the neighborhood on their bicycle, or a hike in the woods with mom and dad?

For starters, it lowers their risk of becoming overweight or obese. About one-third of US children aged 2-19 years are overweight or obese, and childhood diabetes has increased 10-fold in the last 20 years. If this epidemic is not reversed we will, for the first time in history, see children living shorter lives than their parents. The risks of obesity for children are really that steep. As reported by the New York Times:6

“A study that tracked thousands of children through adulthood found the heaviest youngsters were more than twice as likely to die prematurely, before age 55, of illness or a self-inflicted injury.

Youngsters with a condition called pre-diabetes were at almost double the risk of dying before 55, and those with high blood pressure were at some increased risk. But obesity was the factor most closely associated with an early death. Adults who had the highest body mass index scores as children were 2.3 times as likely to have died early as those with the lowest scores.”

Beyond weight control, one of the primary benefits of exercise is that it normalizes your insulin and leptin levels, with the secondary benefits of weight loss and normalization of blood sugars. These basic factors in turn cascade outward, creating a ripple effect of positive health benefits, which are just as important for kids as they are for adults: