Encouraging team sports good practice for parents
By Dipali Pathak
Parents can get their children to turn off the television and computer by placing value on strenuous team sports and other activities.
In a recent study that appeared in the journal Health Psychology published by the American Psychological Association, researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and Duke University found that that both boys and girls whose parents conveyed the importance of high-intensity team sports watched less TV and spent less time on their computers.
"Playing team sports, especially the more strenuous ones, really makes a difference in decreasing both boys' and girls' media use and making them more active,” said Cheryl Anderson, Ph.D., assistant professor of pediatrics at the USDA/ARS Children's Nutrition Research Center at BCM and lead author of the study. "It is a good idea for parents to adopt a positive attitude toward all types of vigorous physical activities for boys and girls and to know that girls can and want to do them.”
Gender bias
The study also indicated that a gender bias remains on encouraging boys more so than girls to participate in such activities.
"The difference between activity levels in the girls and boys had to do with the parents' attitudes toward the types of activities,” Anderson said.
Parents encouraged sons to partake in vigorous and moderate-intensity team and individual sports as well as vigorous-intensity home chores, such as heavy yard work, more than they encouraged these activities for their daughters, Anderson explained.
Suggested activities
Vigorous team sports included basketball and soccer. Moderate team sports included baseball, softball, volleyball and football. Intense individual activity included running, cycling, swimming and skating. Moderate individual activity included walking, biking around the neighborhood and golf.
Household chores were also included as a form of physical activity. Vigorous household chores included heavy yard work and moving furniture. Moderate household chores included cleaning, raking leaves, weeding and carrying groceries.
Parents' attitudes toward household chores had unexpected influences on children's attitudes and activity levels, the researchers said.
Role of household chores
"Cleaning house and doing laundry was associated with a decrease in boys' sport team participation and more TV watching,” Anderson said. "Right now, we do not know why, but it could be that active boys spend less time inside and more time outside, so staying inside may detract from outdoor activity with friends. Boys shared their parents' attitude about the importance of vigorous household activities such as yard work and moving, whereas girls did not. Parents did not believe girls should do these activities, but girls did not agree.”
Demographic, ethnic and education levels of parents also played a role in attitudes toward physical activity. Also, having more children in the family influenced whether the parents valued sports for girls. Researchers found that more children led to more interest in the girls' being active.
Researchers studied a sample of 681 parents of 433 fourth- and fifth-graders from 12 Houston schools. The study can be found at http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/hea284428.pdf.
