Pat Hartman | Childhood Obesity News

Do Animals Have Things Figured Out? Continued

Pat Hartman July 22, 2022 No Comments

The topic continues to be thatch ants who, as we have seen, build enormous domiciles for themselves and their friends. The top part of the abode is a mound secured with dried plant matter, and the living quarters extend into underground tunnels and rooms. All the babies are kept in the central brood chamber. The sun warms the upper part of the home, while underneath, the decay of organic material generates heat. The ants forage for food at ground level, and also high up in trees.

If nearby plants try to encroach and grab too much territory, the ants poison them. An impressive thatch ant colony in Oregon consisted of 210 nests, covering four hectares (almost 10 acres or 48,000 square yards) of ground, and inhabited by probably 56 million individuals. Under normal circumstances, the acute, immediate stress of a predatory incursion rouses the worker ants to mount a vigorous defense of the colony. Against bird, bear, or whoever bothers them, they stand their ground.

If humans poke around, the ants will directly attack:

When a colony was disturbed the surface of the mound was soon covered with workers. Many assumed the defensive position: head up and mandibles widely spread; gaster turned forward under the thorax and ready to spray formic acid into any wound made by the mandibles. Many workers started spraying at the beginning of the disturbance and soon there was an invisible cloud of formic acid vapor above the nest that was irritating to human eyes and noses. The bites of the workers were also annoying.

But priorities can change. Three months after a wildfire had devastated an area, researchers studied thatch ant colonies that had suffered the loss of food sources and beneficent foliage cover, along with massive damage to the aboveground parts of their dwellings:

Many ants were directly killed by the fire […] but some ants survived in underground portions of the nest. We show that the behavioral fight-or-flight response of ants is altered…

After the fire, and after many weeks of living in an atmosphere of chronic stress, the ants manifested an altered response to events that caused acute stress. They became much more likely to flee from aggression, and much less inclined to fight. Their reaction proposes a big, intriguing question.

Could this response also serve a positive purpose? After all, thatch ants have elegantly dealt with so many other issues. Maybe the apparent discouragement is a necessary phase that gives the community a chance to pause, process the current reality, and form a consensus for change. Maybe this is nature’s way of telling them to get out of there and establish a new colony. Basically, we don’t really know what’s going on with them, except that they have been working on their game plans for millennia.

Are animals competent?

An animal will sometimes respond to a threat by doing essentially nothing; grass-picking or some other action that humans call displacement behavior, and regard as a substitute for action they consider more correct. Human observers give the animals a failing grade because they don’t engage in combat or run away, or whatever we have decided they should properly do.

Can we justify labeling the actions as inappropriate, when it might be that we simply don’t understand? In the face of horrendous threats, many animals comport themselves quite capably. Maybe they know exactly what they are doing when they pick at grass, too, or engage in some other action that seems random, out of context or incorrect to us. As oblivious bipeds who don’t know enough to flee from a tsunami, are we really authorized to make rulings about acceptable, effective threat responses?

Everything that behavioralists believe about human drives, and the human tendency to practice displacement activities, may be perfectly valid. Still, it seems rather unfair to take these judgment errors and lay them at the door of animals, who generally seem to have a pretty good handle on things.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Formica obscuripes,” AntWiki.org, undated
Source: “Climate change and wildfire-induced alteration of fight-or-flight behavior,” ScienceDirect.com, July 2021
Image by Upupa4me/CC BY-SA 2.0

Do Animals Have Things Figured Out?

Pat Hartman July 21, 2022 No Comments

Various creatures, confronted with approaching natural disaster, are able to satisfy their basic, innate drive to survive such catastrophes. Many species have developed effective ways to deal with hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and tornadoes. Wolf experts say,

When wolves first smell smoke, they’ll gather together. They’ll howl for each other to locate every member of the pack, and then they’ll stay close to each other in order to protect each other. They’ll patrol their territory to figure out where the threat of fire is coming from.

In the land bordering the Indian Ocean, prior to an underwater earthquake, elephants and flamingos fled for higher ground. In Thailand, a herd of buffalo near the beach pricked up their ears, looked out to sea, and then stampeded to the top of a hill. Cows, goats, cats, and birds also knew, somehow, to move inland.

Even in 373 BC, Thucydides reported that rats, dogs, weasels, and snakes deserted the city of Helice days before a huge earthquake. In 1805 in Italy, sheep, dogs and geese knew something was up, shortly pre-earthquake. Toads deserted their mating grounds. In Sicily, goats knew to flee the area in advance of a violent volcanic eruption, and just before the 1906 San Francisco quake, horses ran away.

In China, a quake alert system depends on snakes, who will move out of their nests even when the cold would normally encourage them to stay in their cozy homes. In 2014, birds in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee abandoned their breeding ground just before 80 tornadoes hit the area. A large French project studies migratory birds who avoid storms over the Pacific.

Even bugs have agendas

When a fire sweeps through an area, some insects rush to arrive on the scene while the trees are still actively burning. Are they nuts, reacting to a threat in such an inappropriate, out-of-contest manner? Absolutely not, because the best place to lay their eggs is in freshly burned wood, so they exploit and capitalize on the devastation by crowding out competitors for the enviable nursery spots, which works out splendidly for them.

Consider the lowly thatch ant (or thatching ant), Formica obscuripes. When starting a new colony, they will claim an open area of ground and establish, under a piece of wood or a stone, a nest that then grows both upward and downward. They build a mound from plant debris, and are very adaptable in the materials they use and how big they decide to make the mounds. They are also gangster enough to take over others’ territory:

These ants are temporary social parasites of Formica fusca-group species, including Formica pacifica. New colonies are established when an inseminated F. obscuripes queen enters the nest of a Formica fusca-group species and is accepted by the host workers. The host queen is eventually killed or driven off, and the host workers raise the brood of the invading queen. Eventually, only F. obscuripes workers remain as the original host workers die off.

But rather than repelling all visitors, they will also, for reasons best known to themselves, accept different kinds of insects as housemates — probably because the guests perform useful functions for the community that humans do not completely understand.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “What does wildlife do during natural disasters?,” WolfCenter.org, 03/17/21
Source: “The animals that detect disasters,” BBC.com, 02/02/22
Source: “The attraction of insects to forest fires,” Frames.gov, 1972
Source: “Formica obscuripes,” AntWiki.org, undated
Image by Shan Sheehan/CC BY-ND 2.0

Do Animals Know What to Do?

Pat Hartman July 20, 2022 No Comments

Where does drive-reduction theory come in, when animals experience a drive to preserve themselves from burning alive? What happens in a fire? Does the flight reflex inevitably kick in, or do animals react with displacement behaviors? Because if, under those very threatening circumstances, they do not resort to displacement behaviors, wouldn’t that put a rather large hole in the entire concept?

As it turns out, wild animals have a whole array of responses to wildfire. Some run in panic, others move calmly away, some swim along rivers, and others are even attracted toward the devastation. Some species, who have been adapting for eons, act in ways that seem counter-intuitive to humans, unless we take the trouble to understand. Jara Gutiérrez and Francisco Javier de Miguel report:

Some animals […] have advantageous evolutionary olfactory, visual, chemical, or audible fire detection mechanisms. Even in deep torpor, some of them can detect fire or smoke and then display active escape or refuge seeking behaviors [B]ehavioral responses may be detrimental to individuals, as happens with some animals climbing trees or animals not burrowing deep enough…

In other words, they are not just hanging around, dithering indecisively, picking at grass or faking sleep, or doing other displacement behaviors. Of course, not every effort is redemptive. When a creature acts on what could or should have been a solid instinct, its fatal failure is not due to a maladaptive response, but to individual bad luck.

E. V. Komarek, Sr., who seems to have known more about this subject than anyone, learned that some animals do not have an innate fear of fire, but deal with it matter-of-factly. Cotton rats, for example, spread the alarm to their neighbors and efficiently get to work evacuating the young from their nests to safer areas, without regard for the approaching flames. Sometimes they hide in ant mounds. Komarek wrote:

Somehow, mammals have the ability to sense the fire, smoke, and the direction it travels. These animals do not panic and flee ahead of a wind driven fire, but they usually escape along the sides or flanks… My associates and I have observed Virginia deer quietly watching a fire at night while slowly moving away from the flames… Horses, cattle and dogs have been seen warming themselves quite near moving flames.

King vultures will flock to a fire like kids to a free concert, knowing they will reap a bounteous feast of roasted reptiles. But not of cottontail rabbits! In his vast experience, this scientist never found a cottontail rabbit that had been damaged in a fire, including juveniles who normally stayed in the nests. A lot of snakes apparently know exactly what to do:

There are 500,000 or more acres in the Thomasville, Georgia-Tallahassee, Florida hunting lands that are burned over annually. The southern diamondback rattlesnake inhabits these areas. The annual burning does not seem to have reduced the number of such snakes, and I have not seen a rattlesnake killed by fire, and only rarely heard of such an occurrence… I have only found two water moccasins killed by fire on the many acres of marsh I have investigated.

(To be continued)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Challenges posed by fires to wild animals and how to help,” Animal-Ethics.org, 2020
Source: “Fire and Animal Behavior,” TallTimbers.org, 1969
Image by Iforce/Public Domain

Drive-Reduction Theory Dissected

Pat Hartman July 19, 2022 No Comments

Drive reduction theory is a confusing area, just like any other explanatory notion where, in actual experiential life, the exceptions seem to outnumber the rule. Here is a pretty basic definition:

The purpose of drive reduction is to conserve internal stability (homeostasis). The ability of a system or living organism to adjust its internal environment to maintain a stable equilibrium; such as the ability of warm-blooded animals to maintain a constant temperature. Drive-Reduction Theory works well for simple motivations…

But does it? Does the drive-reduction theory work well for simple motivations? For animals, sure. For humans, not so much. Take the example cited here, maintaining a constant temperature. An animal that is uncomfortably warm in the sun will go into the shade. An animal threatened by fire will, if possible, get into some water.

But humans do this stuff to themselves on purpose. A human will lie around roasting in the sun, anointing itself with potions to keep its skin from cooking, and purposely build up a very uncomfortable degree of overheated discomfort, the better to enjoy an eventual plunge into a pool.

If at all possible, an animal escaping fire or a predator will run away. If the threat closes the distance and seems about to catch up, the animal’s drive to escape and survive will escalate, and it will run even faster. So far, this makes sense.

People get involved, and it all falls apart

Take the most literal drive: driving. Humans go to great trouble and expense to produce machines that go fast for no other purpose than to go fast. There are of course instances where speed is very important — for instance, when a vehicle needs to achieve escape velocity to leave the earth’s gravitational field. And yet people devote their entire lives to, and often sacrifice their lives on behalf of, vehicles that go faster than the average person ever has a need for. This drive is not based on a physiological need, or on any purpose related to the survival of the individual or the species. It is arbitrary and, for practical purposes, useless.

As previously mentioned, the smell of fresh-baked bread stimulates both the starved and the well-fed, and arouses their drive to eat. Huge, very lucrative industries are based on the arbitrary creation of drives and incentives that are artificially cultivated and have nothing to do with the good of the species, and in fact, kill members of the species in huge numbers.

Needs?

The source says, “Drive theory is based on the principle that organisms are born with certain physiological needs…” Coca leaves grow in some geographical areas, and while workers there discovered how to chew the leaves to take the edge off hunger and exhaustion, the chemical was never a physiological need. Neither any individual nor the human species would have died without it.

Before cocaine started being refined, no human had ever been born with an innate need to snort refined cocaine. We synthesize drugs that both create and satisfy our drive to consume them. Somewhat like potato chips, addictive drugs exemplify an industry devoted to the satisfaction of a perceived and deeply felt need that would not have even existed without the stimulus provided by the industry itself.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Drive-Reduction,” InStructure.com, undated
Image by Jake Archibald/CC BY 2.0

What Is Drive-Reduction Theory?

Pat Hartman July 18, 2022 No Comments

It seems that in its simplest form, drive-reduction theory has to do with physiological (bodily) needs. One source gives this definition:

If we were to get too hot (need to be cool), we would seek shade (the drive).

There seems to be something not quite accurate about this. Actually, the physiological drive, the bodily need, is to be cool. This could be accomplished in several ways, of which seeking shade is only one possibility. Getting into the water would be another. For a human, opening the refrigerator door and standing in front of it would be another. So, seeking shade is not the drive. Seeking coolness is the drive.

In truth, when the sun is too hot, it is the drive to cool off that causes a move into the shade of a tree. Or the dive into the water. Or the erection of an umbrella. But the umbrella is not the drive. The refrigerator is not the drive. When a basic definition inspires such niggling doubts, where does the hopeful student go from there? The same page attempts to elucidate, but only sows more confusion:

Understand — “physiological need” means something without which you, or the species will die. So it’s a pretty short list — food, water, temperature regulation, sleep, air, and sex.

The situation quickly becomes more complicated. The author says,

A starving person feels driven to eat at the smell of baking bread, and the bread itself becomes the incentive.

Here is a problem. When the scent of baking bread hits their noses, non-starving people also feel driven to eat. It is a stimulus that affects even someone who has very recently finished a satisfying meal. The gigantic advertising industry is the same. Someone who has not eaten in two days might see a billboard that depicts an ice cream sandwich, and feel hunger pangs. But a very well-fed person, who is not the least bit calorie-deficient, can see that same billboard and also feel a tremendously strong desire to eat that ice cream sandwich.

An incidental question

As soon as psychology enters the equation, wouldn’t any research done on animals, to establish any of the basics, have to be eliminated? Because animal psychology is a very limited area, at best. Sure, a dog that has been beaten will show what looks very much like a psychological reaction — it will cower at the sight of a stick. And pets definitely have the psychological savvy to guilt-trip or charm their humans into handing out extra treats.

But human psychology is a vast and varied field, where so much is going on at every moment, it makes some of these notions look pathetically simplistic. Another sentence from the same page says,

Drive-reduction theory states that when a physiological needs arises, so does a psychological drive to reduce the need.

But humans are unique in a propensity to go out of their way to cultivate the existence of drives, and the advertising that sells french fries and sugar-sweetened beverages is but one example.

Recreational drug use is another place where feeble theories go to die. No one can dispute that an addict’s desire for heroin is a colossally powerful drive. But (except in the case of a patient suffering severe pain) there is nothing physiologically, on a body level, natural about a craving for opiates. It is an intentionally created and cultivated drive, caused not by nature, but by invitation, by purposeful action on the part of the human who seeks it. So it hardly deserves to be discussed in the same breath as, for instance, the physiological need to give birth when the baby is ready to come out.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Drive-Reduction,” Instructure.com, undated
Image by Roland Tanglao/CC BY 2.0

You Never Know Where It Might Lead

Pat Hartman July 15, 2022 No Comments

There is much to be said for the idea of capturing children’s attention by suggesting things for them to do rather than sit in front of an electronic screen, or stuff their faces. Some medical professionals subscribe to the idea that motion begets motion; that once you entice a child into doing something even a little bit active, a spark will ignite. It might lead to their finding a fascinating interest that lasts for a season, or a consuming passion that will determine their career. Many families also still practice some degree of isolation, at least relative to pre-pandemic days. So here is one last group of suggestions for free (or very economical) indoor occupations.

Kitchen table amusements

Rice grains can be used for pouring exercise, to get a feel for amounts. Supply a set of measuring cups and spoons. This does not mean you expect the child to ever cook, but it conveys the fundamental idea that measurement is considered important, and in every field of endeavor there are commodities that need to be measured according to many different standards.

Sit the child down to practice hand-eye coordination by transferring water from one bowl to another in a teaspoon, without spillage. If noise sensitive, use a plastic bowl. Or if it’s china, make silence part of the task. The idea here is to give the fine motor skills a workout and, incidentally, keep the hands busy not eating.

Music and noise

A round plastic coffee container, a round cardboard oatmeal box — either one can be a drum. Remember, the main thing a little kid wants is your attention. Sit down for a while, and take turns tapping on the “drum” with one finger. Introduce some rudimentary notions of rhythm. With any luck, a child will catch on to not only the exuberant joys of percussion, but the vast world of intricacies, nuance, and subtleties.

If you partly fill a glass soda bottle with water and blow across the bottle’s neck, it makes a spooky noise. It’s fun to sit outside after dark and send ghostly greetings to passersby.

Of course, not everything is for everyone, but a certain kind of child will latch on to some oddball skill like the Tap Code and grow an obsession, and become inspired to pursue other areas of knowledge.

Useful little abilities

A child of a certain age can be amused indefinitely by a rousing game of “guess which hand.” A slightly older one will enjoy using their skills of dexterity and misdirection to hide the object from you.

If there is a cooking or postage scale around the place, one that measures in ounces, collect a bunch of small objects that are very close in weight. Demonstrate how you hold one in each hand and feel which you believe is heavier, then how you verify it with the scale.

In many households, a jar full of pennies can be found. Age makes a difference, but with the right kid you can lay down pennies one, two, three, which they imitate by laying down one, two, three. Then let them lay down five pennies in a different configuration, which you then imitate… And how high can pennies be stacked, anyway?

By the way, a game does not always require scorekeeping. There is enough competitiveness in the world already. Just appreciate the stage where a child can be amused for an incredibly long time by doing the same boring thing, over and over. Because the secret sauce is you. Never again will they grant you their attention so fully, so enjoy it while it lasts.

Round up some other coins, and practice making change. Even knowing they will grow up in a world of digital transactions, it can’t hurt to develop this anachronistic skill. It helps with math and involves neither eating nor watching a screen.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Images by Sheila Sund, Ruth Temple, Randy Stern/CC BY 2.0

Even Behind Closed Doors

Pat Hartman July 14, 2022 No Comments

This page has been looking at alternative things that children can do rather than stare at screens. Of course, not all kids are alike, but it has been shown that activity is energizing, and can make the idea of additional exercise seem appealing. There is evidence that even a small amount of motion is more beneficial than an inert state. And a silly game that a parent initiates as a time-filler might strike a spark of curiosity that leads somewhere amazing. With any luck, an older child will learn time-consuming tricks and enjoy playing the wise elder by passing along the art of filling time by actually doing something.

How many steps does it take to get from place to place? From the front door to the bathroom basin? Compose a list of starting points and destinations, and ask for a report. Or request an inventory of things in the home that are round, and a complementary list of things that are not round. It doesn’t need to make sense, as long as the child is moving, and out of your hair for a few minutes. Give up notions of utility, and cultivate a philosophy of discovering what might seize a child’s imagination or promote a sense of mission in wanting to master an obscure skill. you never know what odd abilities might come in handy, later in life.

The world’s smallest planetarium

Turn a paper cup upside down and poke holes with a pushpin, in the shape of a constellation. Turn off the lights and shine a flashlight up through the cup. If you are lucky enough to have a bathtub, you can plant a child in there with a set of finger paints and let them go crazy making art on the sides of the tub, or themselves, with easy cleanup. Inside an apartment, a parent can use string or masking tape on the floor to make an imaginary tightrope, or a maze.

Use an old lipstick or something else removable, to draw a puppet face on a hand. Figure out how to make monsters with hand shadows.

Save that paper

Paper can serve many purposes, and recycling different kinds of it can be rewarding. Maybe you can get hold of a roll of newsprint, or flatten out sheets of the paper that shippers crumple up to protect things in boxes. Stand the child up and draw around their feet, and ask them to use the outlines to design shoes. A big enough sheet can be laid on the floor, and a grownup can trace the outline of a child to make a lifesize paper doll, which the child can color in.

Show the child how to draw a circle by tying a string around a pencil. With sturdy paper and tape, you can make glove puppets (see the illustration) and color them in and put on a show. Fold paper a few times and cut out bits with scissors, to make snowflakes and other lacy designs.

Save up magazines to cut out pictures of animals, then mix and match the parts to create new animals. Make cards with collage pictures, scramble the cards facedown and pick one to make up a story about. From near-lifesize photos of faces, cut out parts to reassemble in a new way, and make a mask. Cut out mouths, and paste them onto popsicle sticks, to create a bouquet of smile flowers.

Learn how to do origami (see picture above). Of course, you can buy special multi-colored thin paper, but many kinds will work fine. After a holiday, sections of gift-wrap paper can be salvaged and cut into workable squares to make little sculptures of folded art. With string and a place to hang it from, origami shapes can make an attractive mobile.

Yes, it is still possible for a child to survive for an entire day without an electronic screen.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Images by Lorenzo Tlacaelel, vmiramontes, sheldonschwartz, GlueGunGlory/CC BY-SA 2.0

For the Sake of Movement

Pat Hartman July 13, 2022 No Comments

The broad topic here is mental and emotional health, because as inevitably as night follows day, mental and emotional problems will manifest through the body, and destructive fat is one of their favorite channels. Childhood Obesity News mentioned a recent meta-study whose message is worth repeating:

[S]ignificant associations were found between greater amounts of sedentary behavior and both increased psychological ill-being (i.e. depression) and lower psychological well-being (i.e. satisfaction with life and happiness) in children and adolescents.

In a manner of speaking, we are all allergic to sitting around. But not everyone has suitable recreational opportunities, especially in a plague situation. No one wants more of that, but the virus seems to have other ideas and intentions for us. Apparently, its newest iteration is as transmissible as measles, which is known for being ridiculously contagious. The upcoming winter could be like nothing we have ever seen before.

Even without a pandemic, a parent cannot always have the luxury of time to indulge an older child and meet the needs of a younger child. Some people live with a whole family in three rooms, or even one room, so many amusement ploys are unworkable. But everybody can’t just sit around and stare at an electronic device all the time. Sedentary, depressed, and joyless kids are likely to become obese kids.

A little help is better than none

Still, as many authorities have pointed out, even a small amount of activity can change the inner environment and promote overall health. If seclusion becomes preferable or even enforced, it is good to be ready with some original and creative entertainment ideas. Of course, places are different, and children’s safety is always important. In a neighborhood where outside play is safe, choose it because of:

1) fresh air
2) easier cleanup
3) chance of improved caregiver sanity
4) farther from the kitchen

Some activities suggested for outdoors could work fine in a garage or basement where a bit of mess or spillage (or noise) can be tolerated. Practice carrying a cup, a bowl, or a pitcher of water from place to place without spilling. Practice pouring neatly. If you happen to save up bubble wrap, the little bubbles are fun to pop with fingers, and the big ones are fun to stomp. Empty plastic bottles can be used to set up a bowling game. Or they can be arrayed across a floor at intervals and knocked down one by one. With materials at hand, kids can improvise their own version of the “Twister” game.

A child who is fairly new at walking can practice stepping up and stepping down, forward and backward, to develop muscle memory before encountering an actual curb. As this page illustrates, it is not that hard to construct a rudimentary balance beam. For smaller children, it is even helpful to practice on a wide board set very low.

Winter Bonus Idea: Fill three or four spray bottles with water tinted in different colors with food coloring, and let kids spray-paint colorful designs on snow.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Role of Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior in the Mental Health of Preschoolers, Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta Analysis,” BachLab.pitt.edu, 04/16/19
Images by Jennifer T., VSPYCC, mel0808johnson, VSPYCC/CC BY 2.0

Wiggle Room Strategies

Pat Hartman July 12, 2022 No Comments

From a child-oriented perspective, the greatest cost of the COVID pandemic has been the loss of parents, grandparents, and other adults who are no longer around to pitch in with babysitting and homework help. Another great cost has been the lack of socialization, in some cases quite severe. Also, it is obvious that childhood obesity is gaining by leaps and bounds.

The virus has kept a lot of kids at home, and conditions could return to high levels of restriction. Between the stark necessity of sheltering in place and the actual physical danger of going out, it is hard to say which situation is worse for children and teens. Under very limited circumstances, it is still important that kids move around and do things — even with tight financial and material resources, even with cramped space, and even if the activity does not involve a huge caloric expenditure.

Wiggle room is all about figuring out how, within unavoidable boundaries, to generate some movement. Parents and caregivers need to be creative in introducing ways to put bodies in motion. Motion begets motion. If kids are busy doing physical stuff, it primes their systems to crave more activity. Also, if they are busy doing physical stuff, they are less likely to be eating. Want to be a great parent? Demonstrate that life can be lived to the fullest without food constantly at hand, or drink either. (Unless it’s plain water.)

Imagination counts

In the previous post, one subject was yard work, which can be done at different levels, depending on age. For the family that does not own land, there are other possibilities, like communal farming or volunteer park maintenance. If you do have some grounds to take care of, don’t aim for efficiency. The object is not to get the job done quickly. The object is to keep those youngsters interested in something other than sitting around like inert lumps of protoplasm.

Take chestnut collecting, for instance. Or the aforementioned stray gravel roundup. If a child walks back and forth to replace stones one by one, let them! This is not the time to be all managerial, demanding that they use a tin can to move several little stones at once like experts in logistics. The point is to see those kids burning even a few calories; to keep them from screen-glued immobility, etc.

Think outside the box

Even in a small yard and with no budget, it is possible to knock together a pair of functional stilts, or construct a twine maze (see yesterday’s illustration). Set out three balls and ask the kids to invent a new game. A bit of originality goes a long way. If a driveway is available, or sidewalks, colored chalks are a cheap investment that can pay off admirably in terms of fresh air activity.

Maybe the kids could spend some outdoor time with a chain-link fence. Have you by any chance saved up used holiday gift-wrap ribbons, in hopes of someday finding a use for them? Do you have a rag bag? Cloth can be torn into strips with ease, and used to weave designs on a fence, as seen in today’s illustration. One or more strips can be attached to a stick, for a child to run around with and wave in the air. Or get hold of some bubble-blowing supplies. As in so many other cases, an online search can reveal inexpensive DIY alternatives to commercial products.

Even if a young person is not crazy about a particular activity for its own sake, any motor skills gained from it are transferable. The use of certain muscles and neural pathways could make the difference between acceptance or rejection in a chosen sport, in the not-too-distant future.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Images by Martin Pettitt/CC BY 2.0, RJ/CCC BY-SA 2.0, Quinn Dombrowski/CCC BY-SA 2.0, Twilight Taggers/CC BY 2.0,

Tough Choices With Wiggle Room

Pat Hartman July 11, 2022 No Comments

Hopefully, all parents want their children to have the best recreational opportunities. For a number of reasons — personal, financial, societal, medical, etc. — the adults in charge of childcare sometimes have to function within less than optimal circumstances. We mentioned Julie Pearson Anderson and Melissa Fuller, who are interested in alleviating or, better yet, preventing the emotional damage that children can experience from confinement and limited social interaction.

They quote a study conducted by the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health:

As well as improving symptoms of poor mental health during adolescence, there is also evidence that exercise exerts a protective effect and may reduce the incidence of mental illnesses such as depression and psychosis in the future.

The authors quote associate professor of general pediatrics Rebecca Dudovitz, M.D., as saying,

Exercise is a key component for recovering from and preventing obesity, and it’s a key part of coping with and preventing mental health problems.

They make the point that any kind of active play is not only helpful but crucial to the maintenance of both physical and mental health. Exercise does not have to mean specialized equipment or strenuous effort.

And “sports” doesn’t have to mean organized sports… With rising costs and families struggling financially these days, finding low- and no-cost ways of keeping kids active can be key. Getting them moving is what’s important… Walking the dog, biking the trails, running in the sprinklers, playing hoops in the driveway, gardening and yard work…

Yes, kids can be induced to do yard work, at different levels depending on age. Little ones: If pieces of gravel are where they don’t belong, offer a penny or a nickel for each stone returned to the gravel bed, and let the child practice addition to keep track of them. Or just use a point system, with a prize that is not food. (Maybe a small privilege you would have granted anyway, heh-heh.)

At any rate, the object retrieval activity has other uses. Does a tree shed berries whose juice you don’t want to be tracked indoors? Have the little nuisances picked up. If the child goes off-task, who cares? As long as they are moving around and nobody is being hurt, no problem.

Older kids

Shun power tools. Forget about efficiency, or saving time. The whole point here is to encourage and facilitate physical activity. If your family is lucky enough to have grass to take care of, maybe you still have a push lawn mower. And never mind the straight-line, back-and-forth method. Let the kid have fun (see illustration on this page) and then tidy it up the next day.

Teach the kid how to trim a hedge the old-fashioned way, without machinery and with string. Some teens are surprisingly practical. They ask, “When will I use this in life?” No one can say for sure. To learn any skill is an advantage. Some day this person may be an actor, respected for the ability to use hand tools with visual authenticity. They might want to join the Society for Creative Anachronism, or become a professional historical reenactor at a theme park or Renaissance Faire. By identifying secateurs, they might win a respectable amount of money from a quiz show or trivia competition.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Kids and Mental Health: The more they move, the better their mood,” PrestigiousScholarships.com, 06/24/22
Source: “How to Trim a Hedge by Hand,” TheSpruce.com, 06/30/22
Images by sand_and_sky, Julita B.C., Iain Cameron, Hsing Wei/CC BY-SA 2.0

Do Animals Have Things Figured Out? Continued

Are animals competent?

Do Animals Have Things Figured Out?

Even bugs have agendas

Do Animals Know What to Do?

Drive-Reduction Theory Dissected

People get involved, and it all falls apart

Needs?

What Is Drive-Reduction Theory?

An incidental question

You Never Know Where It Might Lead

Kitchen table amusements

Music and noise

Useful little abilities

Even Behind Closed Doors

The world’s smallest planetarium

Save that paper

For the Sake of Movement

A little help is better than none

Wiggle Room Strategies

Imagination counts

Think outside the box

Tough Choices With Wiggle Room

Older kids

Profiles: Kids Struggling with Weight

The Book

About Dr. Robert A. Pretlow

Presentations

Food & Health Resources