The reason kids are getting fat

At some point, Americans are going to have to confront the real reason our kids are getting fat.

The obvious answer: They don't get enough exercise, especially outside play time. Duh.

These days, fat kids are more politicized than budget deficits. Every week, it seems, there's a new report telling us more kids are overweight. So politicians demand more tax money for new sports and recreation programs, they condemn and threaten the fast food industry, and they agitate for fully subsidized health care for children.

They even argue that the juvenile obesity epidemic can be reversed by significantly expanding welfare programs, and by having schools provide weekend meals. Poor kids used to go hungry. We're told today's poor kids are fat, not because they eat too much, but because their parents can't afford or don't have access to healthy foods.

First lady Michelle Obama has made childhood obesity her personal crusade, and she visited Las Vegas a few weeks back to promote her "Let's Move!" campaign. She's all for more food subsidies and federal interventions in the grocery trade, but to her credit, she's also encouraging kids to walk or bike to school, among other constructive ideas.

That said, the condescension that dominates this debate is enough to make anyone purge. We don't need political figures and nanny-state activists telling us how to food shop and cook and what to eat. We don't need them spending more of our tax money on social engineering experiments. Getting government to ban Happy Meals won't make fat kids any thinner.

Yes, our children don't get enough exercise, and they don't play outside enough. But no one seems interested in pointing out why they don't get enough exercise, and why they don't play outside much.

Our kids are getting fat because we won't let our kids go outside -- where they burn calories like crazy -- without supervision.

In just a couple of generations, our parenting culture has regressed from one in which children were herded outside to join friends for all manner of games and unstructured adventures, to one where children are kept inside until an adult can plan an activity and is available to accompany them.

We've gone from riding our bikes to the nearest convenience store to buy comics, cards and candy, to not letting kids ride alone at all -- even in the relative safety of suburbia, even if we've bought them cell phones.

Not that they have as much to do if we let them outside.

In the Southern Arizona neighborhood of my youth, the elementary school was also the local park. The grounds were open, so playgrounds and fields could be accessed any time, day or night.

In the Las Vegas Valley and many other urban areas, schools are built like fortresses, and ball fields, courts and playgrounds are routinely locked up before school, after school, on weekends and throughout the summer. Some neighborhood parks prohibit children under 12 from playing without adult supervision.

When I was a kid, early arrivals at school were guaranteed a spot in games of football, kickball, soccer, basketball, tetherball, four square and whatever else we could think of. The sooner you got to school, the more you got to play.

On weekends and during summers, those same fields and courtyards hosted countless neighborhood baseball, football and basketball games, not to mention water balloon and squirt gun fights and bike races (without helmets, of course).

Today, if I want to drop off my son at his elementary school even 30 minutes before the bell rings, I have to walk him inside and sign him into the city-run Safe Key program, or leave him outside the locked main gate.

In a scene that underscores the absurdity of current approaches to the childhood obesity problem, most mornings at 8:30, bunches of kids stand and sit outside the entrance to the school's playground and vast fields, waiting for the gate to be opened about 8:40 so they can have a few minutes of play before the bell rings. They're not allowed in any earlier because the Clark County School District won't provide supervision.

Meanwhile, inside the gate, the few kids in the Safe Key program get the playground all to themselves because their parents pay a few dollars for supervision by city employees each morning.

So we lock our kids out of the taxpayer-funded playgrounds, then get clocked over the head with calls for more physical education instruction during the school day -- at additional taxpayer expense.

Here's an idea: Open the darn gates at 8 every morning and let the kids play -- for free!

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a flawed messenger. I drive my son to school on my way to work -- it's a bit far to walk. And I don't kick him out of the house for hours at a time (mainly because there are no other kids outside). I do my fair share of worrying. I'm busy.

But I think it's a tragedy that we've allowed irrational fears to deny our kids the kind of independence and freedom we had in our childhoods. I blame breathless TV news, opportunistic politicians and a number of shrieking, exaggerating advocacy groups for scaring us into believing there are predators on every street corner, snatching thousands of American kids every month. All but a tiny number of missing children in this country are runaways or kids involved in custody disputes. The Denver Post won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for exposing that truth.

So when, exactly, did the kids-only neighborhood ballgame die? And can we bring it back?

I'd like to turn this space over to readers to try to answer these questions. What was your childhood like in comparison to your children's? Why do you think things are so different today? And what can we do about it? E-mail your brief answers to the address below. Be sure to include your name and the city you live in.

Glenn Cook (gcook@reviewjournal.com) is a Review-Journal editorial writer.