When considering a commitment to viewing young children holistically a child's physical health should be assessed. I'll take obesity for example. Technology is improving rapidly and children are shying away from running and playing outdoors or even indoors. This play allows a child to run off the food in which they consume. Children eat more junk food so more running around is needed for them get rid of fat that maybe building up. Overweight children more often have asthma, high blood pressure, and elevated cholesterol (Berger, 2012). Over time it gets worse: If they stay heavy, obese children risk diabetes, heart disease, and strokes and are less likely to marry, to find jobs, ad to live to old age. Because of obesity, some children are not able to function well in school because they maybe getting picked on and laughed at from other children. In 2007 the Australian government announced the development and promotion of healthy eating and physical activity guidelines for children. These measures will form part of the government's plan for early childhood and plan for tackling obesity. One quarter of all Australian children, or around 600,000 children age 5-17, were overweight. The 2004 Australia's Physical Activity Recommendations for Children suggest that children aged 5-17 years of age need a minimum of 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day .
Sources:
Berger, K. S. (2012). The developing person through childhood (6th
ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
World Health Organisation Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health, Overweight and Obesity
viewed, (6 July 2009). retrieved from:
Hello Carlos
ReplyDeleteIntelligence testing has been accused of unfairly stratifying test-takers by race, gender, class and culture; of minimizing the importance of creativity, character and practical know-how; and of propagating the idea that people are born with an unchangeable endowment of intellectual potential that determines their success in life. I wonder if we should even be using intelligence tests in the first place. In certain situations where intelligence tests are currently being used, some may say no. Many feel that the use of intelligence tests to diagnose learning disabilities should be discontinued. For decades, learning disabilities have been diagnosed using the "IQ-achievement discrepancy model," according to which children whose achievement scores are a standard deviation or more below their IQ scores are identified as learning disabled. What critics of intelligence testing fail to consider is that most of the alternatives are even more prone to problems of fairness and validity than the measures that are currently used, There will l always need some way of making intelligent decisions about people because we are not all the same; and we have different skills and abilities. Many of us think of intelligence as a fixed, innate ability, instead of something that develops in a context.
Carlos,
ReplyDeleteGreat information. It is so unfortunate that children are being so influenced by T.V. and video games that they do not want to go outside. We have to find better ways of getting the child off the couch and outside to experience nature and play outdoor games. I remember as a child riding my bike, double dutch, hop scotch, hide and seek, kickball, and skating we as parents may have to get more involved with teaching our kids about the outdoor games we possibly played as kids. I discussed with my daughter how we had no video games to play so we had to go outside and make up games to play.
Carlos,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your take on what other areas we can assess our children. I had not thought of assess children for other aspects of their life. I thought of children with disabilities or learning curves thank you for giving me a different view.
Thanks,
Bobbi