The British Heart Foundation says that most parents are not aware that their children are not doing enough exercise. Many parents have misconceptions about how much exercise is required for a child to stay fit and healthy, with many assuming that weekly sports lessons at school is enough. They published their findings under the name of Couch Kids.

Guidelines are for children to be active for 1 hour per day in addition to any school sports or games activities. However, only 10% of children manage to do the recommended amount of exercise every day. Most come home from school and then sit down to watch television, eat and do homework, and then have dinner, before watching more television (or playing computer games) before bed.

The number of obese children has risen dramatically over the last 10 years but nothing has been done to promote more exercise. Research suggesting that exercise does not help you lose weight does not help to convince parents that more exercise is a good thing either.

The British Heart Foundation is calling for the government to make some important changes to its child health policy, including:

• Guidelines on recommended levels of physical activity for all age groups
• Schools maximising the opportunities for physical activity
• Collection of data about physical activity levels across the UK by local authorities and national governments

The current guidelines for physical activity do not make it clear what children from 8-15 should be doing each week. Also, many schools have not been supported well enough by the government with respect to physical education. Many schools have seen their playing fields diminish, and some inner city schools do not even have access to any playing fields at all.

“Mums and dads need to take the blinkers off about how active kids need to be in order to keep their hearts healthy. Kids need to get moving more, yet we’ve been standing still for the last decade. Children aren’t really any more active than they were 10 years ago.” Dr Mike Knapton, British Heart Foundation.

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How Long Should Children Do Physical Activity For?

This is the British Heart Foundation’s advice on physical activity for children:

Children and young people should aim to participate in physical activity for 60 minutes every day. They need to do a moderate intensity activity, like walking, dancing, games, swimming, cycling, active play and most sports. It’s also recommended that they take part in activities which enhance and maintain muscular strength, flexibility and bone health at least twice a week, such as climbing, skipping, jumping or gymnastics.

They don’t need to do the whole hour at once, and it can be split over the day. They could do four 15-minute blocks, or three blocks of 20 minutes – as long as they get their full hour of physical activity, it doesn’t matter when they do it.

You can incorporate this into their daily life easily – walk with them to and from school, encourage them to participate in PE lessons, enjoy active play with friends at break times and arrange for them to play sport or take part in structured exercise out of school.

But is the British Heart Foundation placing too much emphasis on the government and local councils to take action to get children more active again? Children generally follow what their parents do, especially under the age of 10. If parents were encouraged to be more active, to take more walks or cycle, then their children would naturally follow. Society has changed in the last 20 years. The media has made many parents live in fear of allowing their children the room to explore their neighborhood by themselves. But what is the solution?

Unfortunately there are not a lot of activities that a family can easily do together. Walking is a good option, but for many cycling or even playing soccer is a problem due to lack of safe open spaces in many places. Society needs to change. Government needs to change. Schools need support from government and parents. How we bring about this change is a really complex issue. Although Nike would say, Just Do It.

Read more about the British Heart Foundation’s Couch Kids Report – www.bhf.org.uk.