Pat Hartman | Childhood Obesity News

Obesity and Country Life, Continued

Pat Hartman November 2, 2022 No Comments

In 2018, the Centers for Disease Control published the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which sampled 10,792 adults’ records and 6,863 children’s records, which may sound like a relatively small number. However, this data did not originate with self-reported weight figures, but came from information supplied by healthcare providers, so the reliability factor is greater.

Over all age groups, the big news was the increase in severe or class 3 obesity. Country women are twice as likely as city women to be dangerously overweight. Among men, the disproportion is even higher. Well over twice as many country men are likely to be very obese, than their urban counterparts. Here are some highlights:

Men and children living in small towns are three times more likely to be severely, dangerously obese…

[P]eople in rural areas are far more likely to have a BMI over 40

The difference between rural and urban children has stayed stable over time, but the disparity is growing among severely obese adults

But strangely, in some other cultures, this dynamic works the opposite way. As a McKinsey Institute discussion paper pointed out,

In India and China, the prevalence of obesity in cities is three to four times the rate in rural areas, reflecting higher incomes in urban areas and therefore higher levels of nutrition and food consumption and often less active labor.

A metastudy published in 2020 set out to clarify the city-country difference. It concluded that “the associations of obesogenic environmental factors, including residential density, with weight-related behaviours and outcomes could vary greatly across countries and regions.” The pertinent data came from 35 studies conducted in 14 different countries.

With regard to children and PA (physical activity), there was “no conclusive association between residential density and childhood obesity.” Why? One proposed explanation was…

Although unlikely to stimulate PA directly, a higher residential density usually allows for mass retail services and facilities and thus tends to increase the number of potential destinations within walking or cycling distance, which could increase the PA levels of residents…

Half of the studies in the systematic review reported a negative relationship between residential density and weight status, whereas the other half showed a positive relationship.

Another seeming anomaly is the difference in findings about the effect of air quality. In June 2020, the University of Southern California and the Barcelona Institute for Global Health released a study that tried to pin down the totality of all environmental factors that contribute to obesity. It concluded that, in combination with the built environment, “air pollution correlates with the highest childhood obesity rates and body mass index.” One quotation says,

High BMI correlates with densely populated areas. But, BMI was lower in areas with more concentrated resources: businesses, community services, educational institutions, restaurants, shopping, and more.

That seems to fit uneasily with the information from other studies, which is what inspired the researchers to try very hard to identify each and every contributing factor to obesity.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Severe obesity warning for rural America,” DailyMail.co.uk, 06/19/18
Source: “Overcoming obesity: An initial economic analysis,” McKinsey.com, November 2014
Source: “Neighbourhood residential density and childhood obesity,” Wiley.com, 05/14/20
Source: “Childhood obesity is linked to multiple environmental factors,” Umiess.net, 06/29/20
Image by SMcD22/CC BY 2.0

Obesity and Country Life

Pat Hartman November 1, 2022 No Comments

Many Americans, and maybe even people from other places, have the impression that rural residents in the USA are in great shape, because of all the physical labor that country living implies. There is farm work; property maintenance; dealing with horses or cows; heavy machinery repair; gardening, etc. And likewise, we might even cherish an image of country folk enjoying a bounty of fresh foods, rather than hyper-processed junk.

But no. Part of the reason is, there are very few family farms anymore, because corporations have moved in and muscled everybody out. The stereotypical vision of the family farm growing one crop or a few crops, with a thriving kitchen garden for the family, is rarely seen. People who are still growing food seem to have transitioned to small operations producing fresh sprouts, midget veggies, heirloom tomatoes, or gourmet mushrooms. Some grow legal marijuana in greenhouses, or supply an elite clientele with semi-legal raw milk.

What we think

One of the unconscious assumptions made by many Americans is that rural people are farmers, but that appears to be incorrect. A lot of people live in the country because they can’t afford city rent prices, or have an interest (like rebuilding automobiles) that requires space, and distance from neighbors who object to noise and “eyesore” properties.

Maybe they raise llamas, or run a doggie-sitting establishment where people who go on vacation can leave their pets. Maybe they moved out there to build a dirt bike race track, or so their kids could fly drones, or hold band practice where it doesn’t bother anybody. Some just like the wide-open spaces. But none of that is necessarily connected with the desire, or ability, to raise their own food for the family table, on a regular basis.

Similarity and difference

Out in the sticks, the “food desert” phenomenon is definitely a factor. In 2012, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation publication “F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future” quoted the U.S. Department of Agriculture figures. Putting some numbers to the food desert concept, they reported that around 2.3 million Americans lived in low-income areas more than 10 miles from a supermarket.

Looking back over the past few years, at the big picture, we see that in 2016, the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System showed that “28.7 percent of adults living in urban or metropolitan areas had obesity, compared with 34.2 percent of adults living in rural areas.”

Other research looked at the matter from the perspective of selection and causation, and found that moving from city to country “predicted a within-person increase in body weight,” and that once settled in the country, obese people were less likely to pick up and move again:

Using nationally representative longitudinal data, this study investigates: (1) whether people with obesity select into rural counties, and (2) whether living in a rural area increases body weight after accounting for selection bias… These results suggest that the association between rural residence and obesity in the United States is likely bidirectional.

Contributing factors?

As Childhood Obesity News has pointed out before, the causes of obesity are definitely multifactorial. Amanda Seitz reported on one of them, the steady decrease of available prenatal care in rural areas. This type of service is vital because of the many factors that can contribute to childhood obesity in the womb, or even before conception. Seitz wrote,

Hospitals have been shedding their obstetric services in rural areas, low-income and majority Black communities… More than half of rural counties didn’t have a hospital offering pregnancy care as of 2018…

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “F as in Fat,” RWJF.org 09/01/12
Source: “New Report Shows U.S. Obesity Epidemic Continues to Worsen,” AAFP.org, 10/15/18
Source: “Obesity among U.S. rural adults: Assessing selection and causation with prospective cohort data,” ScienceDirect.com, January 2020
Source: “COVID-19 linked to increase in US pregnancy-related deaths,” SFGate.com, 10/19/22
Image by luvjnx/CC BY 2.0

Teen People, This Is 4 U

Pat Hartman October 31, 2022 No Comments

The BrainWeighve app points out that overflowing brain energy is likely to be burned off in a useless and even harmful way, like nail biting or — you guessed it — overeating. What can cause this counterproductive behavior? Well, for one thing…

Not being able to make a decision can produce overflow brain energy…

What does it take to make a decision? As the app suggests, a good start is to create two lists, the for and the against; the pro and the con. From the different lengths of the two lists, you’ll get a rough idea of the problem’s shape. One thing you will notice is, there will be varying reasons for things being on either list. Say you’re thinking about quitting a stupid job. In the column for YES QUIT the first entry is “hate the boss.” That much is clear.

Then, things get more complicated. In the column for NO DON’T QUIT one item is “keep up car insurance” and another is “get my own apartment.” But are they of equal weight? Depending on where you live, being without wheels is a grueling fate. Keeping a car on the road is definitely worth putting up with a boss you wouldn’t spit on if he was on fire. And comparatively speaking, living at home isn’t really that bad.

And there it is

One of those things, mobility, may not be an absolute life-or-death need, but it certainly is a major issue. The other thing, getting your own place, is probably not primarily a need, but more of a want. In another year, it might be more of a need.

One of the gigantic skills of existence is to figure out the difference between needs and wants. It applies throughout life, and in every facet of living. To distinguish between a want and a need is a talent that few are born with, and most of us have to work hard to develop.

Needs can be met. Wants never end.

Needs are permanent parts of our hard wiring, and their main feature is that they can be fulfilled and satisfied. Maybe not permanently, of course. Your body needs water, pretty much every day. But thirst and other needs can be quenched, for various periods of time.

Wants are transitory, they come and go, and they will gaslight you. Wants will whisper in your ear, “Just satisfy me, and you will live happily ever after.” But they are lying. Wants are like a whack-a-mole game. As soon as you knock one down by caving into it, another want pops up to distract and torment you.

Next…

After discerning between a want and a need, the next step is to decide which one to chase. Concentrating on needs is definitely a more useful place to put your energy. If you get this figured out, the good vibes can carry over into other areas of life. But wait, there’s more. When something carries over from elsewhere, to impact the current dilemma, it’s a weirdly opposite situation that can lead to the same positive result.

For example, do you excel in some other area of life, like music or sports? Then, whether you realize it or not, you already have a head start. If you are any good at all, at some specific skill, this means you have already figured out a few things about the difference between wants and needs. Congratulations, you are a winner! Because you can carry that knowledge over into reclaiming your own body.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by Jan Tik/CC BY 2.0

To the Teen People, More

Pat Hartman October 28, 2022 No Comments

Have you ever heard an adult say something like this? “Nobody warned me that raising kids would be so difficult,” or “Nobody told me owning a house would be so hard.” Actually, someone probably did, and the person just wasn’t listening. Now they know, and occasionally they have a thought that is worth passing along. It used to be fashionable to give the elders a listen, at least, because they have “been there, done that, and bought the t-shirt.” And the refrigerator magnets, the drink coasters, and the keychain.

Boring and ignorable as the oldsters may be, they are well-intentioned in trying to help you escape some of the traps and avoid some of the holes they fell into. Maybe they won’t go into detail about how they know this stuff. Anyway, in the best case, they can actually throw a little light on the subject. A fellow human is hoping that you will not end up saying, “Nobody told me it would be so easy to turn into a humongous bag of flab.”

What if they aren’t there?

This world can be a miserable place, but here’s the beauty part: If suitable grownups are not available, we as people can be our own guides through the wilderness at any age. Some of our contemporaries are as wise as any elder. Everybody is wise about something, and with the BrainWeighve app, people can find peers who have met up with a certain challenge, and crushed it. A person can find workable advice from others in the same age group who have actually experienced, and are experiencing, all this mess.

Some people do find keys that take them into things, and others find keys to get themselves out of things, and they are happy to share their keys. That’s what the plan lists are for, to remind us that there are ways to cope, if only we open ourselves up to hearing them.

Say what?

We talked about Dread Lists, where typically about half of the obnoxious situations are school-related. A fair portion of them have to do with grades. As it turns out, the people with the best ideas about maintaining an acceptable academic record, are people around the same age and attending similar institutions. The antidote to a Dread is a Plan, and a lot of people your age have already shared plans that have worked for them.

It is always a plus to hear how others deal with sticky situations. Even adults share helpful information with each other in forums and other online spaces. For instance, what to do about an incoming call from an unidentified number that obviously hopes to sell you something you don’t want or need. Pick up and say, “It’s done, but there’s blood everywhere.” The caller will probably hang up.

Okay, don’t do that really. The point is, people like to help strangers, and even if your cases are not exactly parallel, with BrainWeighve you can get ideas, or at least a useful notion that coping is possible.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

To the Teen People

Pat Hartman October 27, 2022 No Comments

When talking amongst themselves, some professional comedians (including some obese ones) admit that they went into the game because people were laughing at them anyway, for the wrong reasons. As professional funny people on stage, they at least have some choice about it, and some control over why people laugh.

They often discuss the subject of public perception, and talk about feeling self-conscious and sensitive about how people regard them in everyday life. Like, “Everybody’s thinking I’m high,” or “Everybody’s thinking I shouldn’t have shaved my beard,” or whatever. Then one day, they realize — “Everybody’s too busy thinking about themselves, to spare a thought for me.”

This may be true of some grownups, who have big issues to worry about. Unfortunately, it’s not true in school, where quite a lot of people may be thinking about you because they don’t have anything better to do with their lazy brains. For some people, their teen years are an excuse to spend ridiculous amounts of energy trying to make other people miserable, and they are experts at it.

Distracting demographics

At the top of the page, it says “Childhood Obesity News,” so what does that have to do with you? Well, it’s a technical issue. Here is the official word from both the U.S. Department of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, regarding the phases of life. They are:

(1) infancy, between birth and 2 years of age; (2) childhood, from 2 to 12 years of age; and (3) adolescence, from 12 to 21 years of age. Additionally, Bright Futures guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics identify adolescence as 11 to 21 years of age, dividing the group into early (ages 11–14 years), middle (ages 15–17 years), and late (ages 18–21 years) adolescence.

On a closely related topic, it should be known that clinical trials of the BrainWeighve phone app are being organized at the University of California, Los Angeles. There will be two successive beta tests of eight teens, both for three weeks each, followed by the four-month main trial with 30 adolescent subjects.

The seeming contradiction

A number of studies, including those in the childhood obesity field, raise the ordinary person’s eyebrows by being filed under “pediatric” when the subjects were 16, 18, and even 21. But it’s totally legit. By coincidence, obesity is the ideal field in which to corral a wide age range in a single group. A person of legal age, who is 30% over his ideal weight, and a toddler who is 30% over her healthy weight, are similar in many ways.

Likewise, almost any school-related problem can be found at all educational levels, from one-year-olds in daycare to 21-year-old college students. The details may differ, but the underlying dynamic is startlingly similar. We have talked about a number of reasons why school can be stressful — and have not yet mentioned the issue of grades, which is a biggie. Stick around, teen people. There is something here for you.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

School Then and Now, Continued

Pat Hartman October 26, 2022 No Comments

Of course, money has been a factor since forever. Kids from affluent families have always enjoyed lording it over those whose economic situation is not so great. Even if their parents won’t spring for the latest phone or a car, privileged kids find multiple ways to make their status known. Along with financial superiority, the popularity game has always been uncomfortable at best and vicious at worst. It doesn’t take long to learn that squashing and slandering others is one way of making yourself more noteworthy and admired in the little universe of school.

Some causes of social anxiety have always existed. Betrayal is one. There is always the girl who pretends to be your bestie, totally worthy of being confided in, and then she goes around telling everybody all your secrets. She was there in 1885, and she’s there now. Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Hell is other people.” This should not be true at school, but unfortunately, it is. School can be especially horrid for kids who have a bad home situation and hope to escape it at school, only to find persecution there too, just in different forms.

Here too? Yes.

Educational institutions are rife with psychological trauma as part of the daily background stress. It’s not even necessary for something on the Dread List to happen on any given day, since every day is fraught with the sense that something awful could happen at any minute. In gathering basic information to create the BrainWeighve phone app to help kids avoid and escape obesity, Dr. Pretlow’s team learned that around half of the life situations they dread originate — you guessed it — at school.

In a piece titled “Obesity and the Emotional Toll it takes on Children’s Mental Health” the author Mahender cites the major areas where this is apparent. Bullying certainly is one, and it may manifest both verbally (taunting) and physically (some kid grabbing a handful of an obese child’s flesh and saying, “Can you pinch an inch?”). Another type of unwanted attention originates in negative stereotyping and social shame and stigmatization. Many types of discrimination are available to cruel schoolmates who go in for that sort of thing. Two of the most common results are chronic depression and, of course, emotional eating.

The writer reminds parents:

These children may hear from peers (and even adults) that being overweight is their own responsibility. They could receive insults.

[C]ompared to his slimmer friends, your youngster who is fat is more likely to suffer from poor self-esteem. His low self-esteem may cause him to feel self-conscious about his appearance, and his lack of confidence may affect his schoolwork.

Childhood obesity has financial expenses in addition to health expenditures, and your child’s weight issue is closely linked to his emotional life.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Obesity and the Emotional Toll it takes on Children’s Mental Health,” NewsPatrolling.com, 10/19/22
Image by Dark Dwarf/CC BY-ND 2.0

School Then and Now

Pat Hartman October 25, 2022 No Comments

Before talking more about the BrainWeighve phone app, some background school might be helpful.

An adult who is now of grandparent age might remember a relatively serene educational experience. Of course, a lot depends on geography and the makeup of the local population, but in the more polite olden days, there was probably less physical fighting, especially when teachers were empowered to maintain order by administering physical punishments. In the present, with ubiquitous cameras and, in many schools, even armed law officers, it may be that fights tend to occur outside of school grounds. They certainly involve more serious weapons.

There was gossip aplenty, based on the overheard whispers of grownups. One informant notes that in grade school, the knowledge that a teacher was divorced spread very quietly, and was received with shock. But knowing that a classmate’s parents had split up, and that the boy or girl lived only with a mother, and no father, could be news of monumental significance. There was definitely a stigma. Today, some kids glibly recite a whole list of successive step-parents to anyone who will listen, and even with a certain amount of pride. In the scandal sweepstakes, to be a child of divorce, or even multiple divorces, is hardly worth mentioning.

Shocking events

The informant says, “In 6th grade, I was privy to disturbing information about the doings at a camp run by a respected girls’ organization, and overheard a particularly nasty boy bragging about stuff that went on at some kind of boys’ sleepover. There were whispers about a male teacher who showed too much interest in a certain girl student, but he was transferred to another school.”

By and large, public schools in the 1950s tended to be pretty tame. Even in high school, kids weren’t dealing with the kind of stuff that goes on now (at least according to popular movies) like revenge porn being spread online. A young student might be presented with a moral dilemma, like whether to let a classmate see his answers on a pop quiz. Now, he could face a bigger challenge, like whether to make pocket money by writing someone else’s term paper.

Back in the day, a girl didn’t want a “reputation” or to be known as “fast.” There might have been one girl in the whole senior class who “got in trouble” and disappeared to “stay with relatives in another state for a while.” Now, for 9th-graders, being known as sexually active is a status-builder, and pregnancy scares are a topic of daily conversation.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Food, of course, has always been a fertile area for teasing, and a potential source of shame. When a child brought in a lunch packed at home, it might smell funny, or be too ethnic, containing ingredients not considered edible by the mainstream. If Mom stuck a little note in the lunch bag, a child could hear about it for a year. Some kids didn’t even have lunch. Some kids don’t have lunch now, unless it is provided by a government-administered program, and that can be a fertile ground for stigma.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by Florida Keys Public Library/CC BY 2.0

Halloween Hacks, a Few Last Words

Pat Hartman October 24, 2022 No Comments

First, a footnote to the previous post, where we mentioned the desirability of making good use of pumpkins. “Zero-Waste Chef” Anne Marie Bonneau dives deeply into the topic of pumpkins, which generate an estimated 1.3 billion pounds of organic waste per year, and do not belong in landfills because there, they turn into methane gas and contribute to climate disaster.

Since they are food, the best course would be to eat them, and the chef provides recipes. But by the time Halloween is over, jack-o-lanterns are all withered and moldy, so that’s no good. But at least compost the darn things, so they can turn into healthy soil, not sickening gas! And furthermore — save the seeds. Bonneau writes,

Whether you eat pumpkins or carve jack-o-lanterns, save the seeds to roast. My kids always loved this crunchy fall treat. You can roast all different kinds of squash seeds. The small seeds of delicata squash — yellow-orange, cylindrical-shaped squash with green stripes — become crunchy quite quickly when roasted in a bit of olive oil.

There are good reasons to switch over to non-food treats for Halloween. One is that some innocent child might be accidentally poisoned. Some allergies only cause a rash or sniffles, but a peanut allergy can be a serious proposition. The trouble is, some people just don’t understand the danger. Manufacturers are not always meticulous about labeling, and even nutless candy made in the same facility as the nutty kind can be dangerous. We all need a reminder that obesity avoidance is not the only factor behind choosing to give out non-food Halloween treats.

Still, if you are simply interested in distributing treats that don’t contribute to obesity, the market provides a bounty of yogurt raisins, low-sugar mini granola bars, craisins, individually packaged dried fruit, fruit leather, fruit or veggie pouches, juice boxes, honey sticks, trail mix, and more.

Kids and parents can even make little collectors’ items to distribute, like pipe-cleaner spiders. If you have never made pumpkins from “pool noodles,” maybe now is the time to start. This page offers plenty of ideas from elementary school teachers, such as:

Have you seen those little bottles of aromatherapy for kids, promising to give them sweet dreams or happy thoughts? Make your own concoction for your students. Then put the liquid in spray bottles and slap on a label. We suggest making a “zombie spray” to keep zombies away, but let your imagination be your guide.

Of course, there are plenty of commercial products you can buy for trick-or-treat giving, for instance: rings that look like eyeballs; temporary tattoos (even glow in dark); vampire teeth; little bats; glow stick necklaces; friendship bracelets; bubble soap; fake mustaches; and Halloween-decorated slinkies, bouncy-balls, stickers, kazoos, drinking straws, miniature flashlights, band-aids, and much more. Tip: Buy these in the after-Halloween sales, to save for next year.

Childhood Obesity News has presented some of the crispiest, juiciest Halloween Hacks around. Anyone who progresses in a straight backward line through these posts will find inspiration. Anyone who feeds “Halloween” into the search box will be astounded.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “How to Keep 1.3 Billion Pounds of Pumpkin Out of Landfill,” Substack.com, 10/26/21
Source: “How to Make Pipe Cleaner Spiders,” Blogspot.com, 10/3/2011
Source: “30 Sugar-Free Treats for Halloween,” WeAreTeachers.com, 10/11/18
Image by garlandcanon/CC BY-SA 2.0

Halloween Fallout

Pat Hartman October 21, 2022 No Comments

So there lies the sugary harvest and ideally, some time in the previous week, kids and their caregivers have already agreed on what will be done with it. Somebody needs to decide what will happen to the loot and, hopefully, parents and children were able to collaborate in setting a limit. As an added bonus, if you can persuade them to design and observe boundaries here, that willingness could carry over into other areas of life. Elicit a child’s cooperation in making a plan, and you’re halfway to success.

If more than one child is involved, and they plan to swap back and forth, it doesn’t need to happen the minute they return from trick-or-treating. Prolong the holiday spirit by putting off the barter session until the next day. Give the traders time to settle down and think clearly about the deals they hope to make. Even after all the hoopla of getting the goods, and making shrewd bargains with each other, they might be willing to at least relinquish the brands they don’t care for, or even all of it. A kid can surprise you, and a smart adult never loses sight of that fact.

Variations on a theme

Maybe the family has set up some kind of rationing mechanism, so the sweets will not all be gobbled down at once. The take might be divided into four piles, with three piles released into parental custody, to be returned at one-week intervals. Or, the kids could keep half, and let a parent take the rest to share at work. Or the majority of the sweets could be reserved for day-by-day release in school lunch bags.

Some candies are candidates to be frozen for later use. People have been known to bake cupcakes with pieces of candy in their middles. At least one family has reported saving the Halloween treats to make Advent calendars. Some candies are even visually appropriate to reserve for decorating a gingerbread house at Christmas. Maybe you’ve got the Switch Witch thing going on, and each child’s hoard will be swapped for a toy or other item. Take the donation route?

If some or all of the swag is to be given away, recipients may include homeless shelters, food pantries, senior centers, nursing homes, hospices, and veterans’ organizations. Some dentists participate in a program where they buy surplus candy from young Americans and send it to deployed troops overseas.

But why would any kid in their right mind go along with any of this? Who knows? The only certainty is that they can occasionally surprise you. Making a plan ahead of time will probably work out better than leaving it until the gruesome pile of calories is actually sitting there, staring your child in the face. In the concluding paragraph, Dr. David Ludwig speaks on the morality of simply disposing of the Halloween haul:

After your child has had one or two candies from their Trick-or-Treat booty, throw out the rest (don’t give it away and foist the problem on other kids). Use the occasion as an opportunity to teach your kids a critical message: health comes first… Yes, it’s important to respect food, and not be wasteful, especially when some people don’t have enough to eat. But typical Halloween candy isn’t food, it’s junk.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “What is the Halloween Candy Buyback?,” HalloweenCandyBuyback.com, undated
Source: “Counterpoint: It’s Not Just OK To Throw Out Halloween Candy, It’s Smart,” Wbur.org, 11/02/16
Image “two jacks” by William Warby/CC BY 2.0

Halloween — What’s the Plan, Stan?

Pat Hartman October 20, 2022 No Comments

For a conscientious parent, the Halloween goals are to minimize the amount of junk the kids collect, how much they hold onto, and how much of it they ultimately consume.

If a family traditionally participates in the trick-or-treat ritual by passing out candy, a parent can introduce the concept of change by asking for ideas about whether something else could be distributed instead. It might be an opportunity to mention the horrible ingredients that are in some alleged treats, and just lightly touch on the very unfortunate results hidden in an overdose of sugar, especially if repeated often throughout a young life.

Start with the collecting part, and come to an agreement on at least one boundary, which could be spatial or temporal. The time limit could be 30 minutes or an hour. Parents and children can conspire beforehand to map out the most promising route, in terms of reward per time spent, and then stick to it. If your housing situation is fairly stable, it might be fun to keep note of what was distributed, at which addresses, and then later compare next year’s statistics. Why? Because keeping track of hard facts and learning to draw conclusions from them are valuable life skills.

Be best

Can kids be coaxed into setting arbitrary rules that increase the challenge? For instance, just to make things interesting, maybe they can only go to a house where someone is already on the porch. Or only to participating houses where nobody is on the porch at the moment. Or limit themselves to even-numbered addresses, or odd-numbered ones. It doesn’t really matter, as long as the rule originates with the kids, and will ultimately advance the parents’ agenda: to bring home less sugar at the end.

It seems to be fairly common for parents to decree “No eating while traipsing from door to door.” Be sure to lay the groundwork for this by making a nutritious dinner first. Then, during the collection process, anticipation makes even the best rewards richer. Furthermore, if kids plan to swap with each other afterward, it would be silly to gobble down anything that might be traded for an even better treat, if only they had waited. Also, whether or not parents believe that evil neighbors might poison children, it makes sense for them to give everything a once-over before anybody indulges.

The greater purpose here is to put some kind of a lid on the collection of loot, and to set a precedent. If parent and child can agree ahead of time on a well-defined trip, and both emerge feeling like winners, it sets a useful example for future compromise on other matters.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by vtgard/CC BY 2.0

Obesity and Country Life, Continued