Your Taiwanese Kid Spends too much Time Crammed into School...
“Your Taiwanese kid spends too much time crammed into a classroom with too many other kids, too much time sitting too close in desks that are too small, too much time under fluorescent lights that are too bright. You know this and you hate it. And this is why your child should train Brazilian Jiu jitsu.” I wrote these words back in 2017 and they still hold true today. ( Click the link for that post below) https://365daysofsustainabletraining.wordpress.com/2017/01/21/why-your-taiwanese-kid-should-train-brazilian-jiu-jitsu/(opens in a new tab
However, there is a more insidious threat to our children’s health in 2022. Our kids are addicted to screens! Smart phone screens, tablet screens, screens on pads, and screens on other devices are stealing our kids’ childhoods; and we’re just clicking like and subscribe, or hitting the thumbs up button!
“Lack of fitness affects not just health, but everything about our kids' lives. Depression, stress, and anxiety are at record levels. Additionally, study after study shows poor fitness affects ability to learn and has a huge effect on school performance. We know without a doubt a child who is not physically active is not assimilating information or thinking to their full potential. In other words, there will not be better math scores until we have better health scores.
The fact is, our children are fighting for their lives: between bad food and two-dimensional entertainment, creating healthy habits has become a Herculean task for young people. We must empower our children to build active, healthy lives that set them on a path for success and happiness.” -Dr. Daniel F. O’neill, “Survival of the Fit” On average, children ages 8-12 in the United States spend 4-6 hours a day watching or using screens, and teens spend up to 9 hours. According to a 2021 article in the Taipei Times, a National Taiwan Normal University study found that first-year elementary-school students in Taiwan spend up to three hours per day using mobile electronics.
The same article went on to say that elementary school aged children spend less than five hours a week exercising and that Taiwanese children generally do not engage in exercise outside of physical education classes they attend weekly at school. The struggle is real. As a father to two boys, I’m constantly waging war against screen time. (I mean, I will literally “throw the book” at my kids to get them to read a book!)
Fortunately I have a couple things working in my favor to help balance out my kids’ screen time. The first thing is, as a Jiu jitsu coach I insist my boys participate in Jiu jitsu class at least three times a week. The physical and social benefits of Jiu jitsu are palpable. As I wrote previously, “A BJJ class is not like any other class your kid is in. There is a lot of touching. They grab each other, throw each other down, and grapple with each other. There are a lot of kids rolling around on the ground grappling and sweating on each other. It's great. They yell and laugh but rarely does a child react negatively to the seemingly rough and tumble nature of the activity. It's primordial and chaotic. But from this chaos a kind of truth, a kind of order, is formed.
In BJJ class students work together to make each other better. This is why your kid should train Jiu jitsu.”
The second thing I have going for me is, I live in a city where green spaces abound! There is a jungle-forest-mountain not five minutes’ walk from my front door and I make my kids go hiking there as much as possible. Yes, I say, “make”; they are addicted to screens after all. They will initially balk at my demands but before you know it they are chasing each other, climbing (and falling out of) trees, throwing rocks, and breathing kind-of-fresh air.
No matter where you live there is a good chance that there is an open space of some kind where you can take your kids (and yourself) out for a walk. Which is a great idea based on a new study that says just 4,000 steps a day could be the magic number for us to live well into old age. Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine analyzed 17 studies that looked at how far people walked during the week. The scientists concluded that 4,000 steps per day reduced the risk of dying from diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and other life-threatening conditions. So turn off the device you’re reading this on and go ….take a hike.
