from:timeonline.com
Peta Bee
More surprising than David Cameron’s choice of primary school for his daughter Nancy, 4, were the accompanying pictures in some newspapers of him pushing her around in a buggy that looked far too small.
For a growing number of parents, the pushchair is no longer an item that is discarded not long after a child can toddle. Instead, they continue to wheel their children around until they are 4 or 5 either out of fears for their safety or because they are too busy and stressed to let them walk.
Paediatricians claim the attempts to “containerise” young children in this way can backfire even by the time they reach primary school. Around one third of children aged 10 and under are now overweight and many of those are products of the stroller generation who have grown up being wheeled rather than walked everywhere.
Dr Martin Ward-Platt, a paediatrician at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, says: “One now takes for granted the sight of big children being pushed around in buggies [but] it is doing them no good … children need to be active as early as possible.”
In the US, the National Association for Sport and Physical Education has set guidelines for the physical activity levels of toddlers, which include minimising the use of pushchairs and playpens and encouraging walking and unstructured activity lasting between 60 minutes and several hours a day.
Joel Steinberg, a professor in paediatrics at the University of Texas, has noticed an increase in children as old as 6 still using buggies. “People think toddlers have limited physical ability, but that’s not true,” he says. “We should teach them the best way to go is to walk, not ride.”
