MATTHEW EDLUND M.D.
Contributing Columnist
health@lbknews.com
Thumbs. They race across joysticks and pale glass surfaces, clicking and pulling so quickly you need a stop-time camera to see what they’ve done. They send messages of love and forgiveness, kick footballs, pilot spacecrafts across millions of light years and explode the immense teethed jaws of flesh-eating aliens who will destroy Earth and every living thing on it.
And that’s the only part of the kid that’s moving.
Adults of all forms and persuasions come to me, grandparents, aunts, cousins, mothers-in-law, all with the same complaint—the children are inside all day. Why aren’t they outside? Why aren’t they playing in the sun? They’re sitting in chairs glued down like a mollusk, and they angrily declare, “Their parents should get up off their duff” and go outside to watch them, but they’re “too damn lazy to move.”
I tell them the economic crisis makes this vastly more complicated, but children and their play is a major public health issue that will affect their health and ability to learn most of their lives. Here are some reasons I hear against, and reasons for, letting your children play outside:
Reasons against
1. Predators. They’re out there, parents tell me. They’re right. Predators are out there, in schools and supermarkets, churches and playgrounds, and children have to be taught to deal with them everywhere and anytime.
2. Bullies. Ditto for predators—they appear anywhere children appear, so children must be taught to deal with them, and actually deal with them, so that they can develop an independent, self-reliant personality and grow up.
3. They’ll get hurt. True, they can get hurt outside, but it’s a lot better to help the growing process by using their bodies, so they can grow the strong muscles and bones that they will need throughout life.
4. West Nile virus. There are innumerable bugs outside that can kill, but there are