The study, Societal Values and Policies May Curtail Preschool Children’s Physical Activity in Child Care Centers, found that preschool kids are getting very little exercise during the day, a problem since a sedentary lifestyle may contribute to obesity. According to the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) guidelines, preschoolers should spend 120 minutes every day doing physical activities, but few reach that goal. Says the study:

“Children spend most (70%–83%) of their time being sedentary in child care — even when excluding time spent in naps and meals — and only spend 2% to 3% of the time in vigorous activities.”

Researchers conducted the study to figure out what’s contributing to the lack of exercise and activity. They found that there are three main reasons for kids’ sedentary lifestyle at school and daycare: concerns about injuries, financial limitations, and a stronger focus on academics.

I get the injuries thing. Little Girl got pushed through a playhouse window her first week at school and ended up with a huge scrape on her belly. Those are, I’m sure, the types of injuries parents and educators are worried about, and the reason fear of injuries was the number one worry of those interviewed for the study. I guess we’re all a little crazy these days when it comes to keeping kids safe. Still, as my husband reminds me kids are not veal. It’s okay for them to get bumped and scraped and bruised while they are playing. Or, even more direct: No, I cannot wrap Little Girl in bubble wrap to keep her safe.

As to the financial issue: Schools and daycare centers can’t afford “expensive” outdoor equipment or an indoor gross motor room where kids could play and run during inclement weather. Besides, they are being pressured by parents and regulations to make sure kids know their ABCs, colors, and shapes before entering kindergarten.

The study concludes with the following statement about kids and activity: “Child advocates must think holistically about potential unintended consequences of policies designed to protect children’s safety (eg, licensing codes that have rendered climbers uninteresting, or early learning standards that encourage child-care providers to cut time dedicated for outdoor play). Given that childhood obesity is quickly eclipsing childhood injury as a leading cause of morbidity, and that time in child care [including preschool] may be the child’s only opportunity for outdoor play, licensing standards may need to explicitly promote physical activity in as much detail as is devoted to safety.”

In other words, parents should encourage kids to run and jump as much as possible, and tell schools and daycare centers to do the same.

I don’t worry about my own preschooler. She never stops running here at home, doing laps around my house in her natural speed: fast. In addition, the preschool that she goes to has a policy to let kids play outside every single day as long as it’s not raining and the temperature is above 32 degrees. Between running my halls and running at school, Little Girl is definitely getting the recommended two hours of activity, but I can definitely see how that might be difficult for kids who are in daycare all day or those, like my older child, who prefers reading and art to jumping and climbing. There are things you can do to get kids moving, though.

For example, I bought Big Girl an indoor trampoline and one of those foam hopscotch boards and made sure she was spending time on both daily. I took her to parks, which are free, and on walks — also free — when it was nice outside. When it wasn’t, I made sure she had access to our doll carriages, to encourage indoor “walks.” We also played — and still do — hide-and-seek as well as other imaginative games that include running and moving. One of the easiest is freeze dance, which asks kids to dance until they hear the music go off. Another indoor favorite is family dance party, which gets kids up and moving. Bottom line: Aside from the trampoline, I didn’t need fancy equipment or have to spend a lot of time or money encouraging and fostering a love of movement and exercise. As I learned very quickly, kids want to move and will take your lead, so which path are you going to lead your children down today? I’d love to hear how you’re getting your kids moving indoors and out, especially since another study out of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found that kids who exercise more do better in school. Yet another reason to make sure kids are getting plenty of activity throughout the day.

Mommy: Yes, and all the little babies, too. Baby C. will be there. Baby J. will be there. Baby G. will be there.

Little Girl: Mommy, why my friends have babies and I don’t. Mommy, I want a baby, too!

Mommy: You need to talk to your daddy about that, Little Girl. Mommy can’t do anything about that. Why don’t you ask him for one?

Little Girl: You know what? I not going to ask for a baby. I going to ask for a big girl bicycle with a basket just like Big Sister has. Okay?

1. Drew on the bathroom wall with deodorant. Big, round circles, which have yet to fade even with lots of washing and scrubbing.
2. Stuck Big Girl’s DS stylus up her nose. How did I find out? “Mommy, I put this up and it hurt.” You think?!?
3. Hid so silently that I thought she escaped the house, causing me to gain at least five to ten gray hairs. (This was during a game of sanctioned hide-and-seek, BTW.)
4. Leaped out of her crib — the very first time, I might add — breaking her collar bone. What, you’re a new reader and you don’t remember that saga? Have a read.
5. Swiped her Daddy’s credit card right out of his wallet. We found it a few days later in a random playroom bag.
6. Tried to jump into the pool while at Disney World. We’re all walking together. The water looked warm, I guess, so she ran away from us full-speed at the pool. We stopped her just as she was putting her foot over to jump in.
7. Ate Play-Doh. Yes, I know a lot of kids do this, but it was still gross.
8. Colored ALL over my hallway with big, swooping circles of crayons.
9. Stole my keys and hid them in the playroom, causing a huge ruckus. (This happened today!) Sigh.

The part that’s difficult is that all of these infractions happened when I was with her (except for the crayon thing.) She was RIGHT there, and then boom, she was off two seconds later doing something wacky. I could only imagine how much trouble she would get into if I didn’t helicopter parent that little girl.

We had it much, much easier with Big Girl who, in her seven years, has only done two crazy things. The first: One day when she was about two or so I went into to take her out from her nap, and found she had loosened the screw from the crib (!!!), and had it in her mouth. She couldn’t answer me when I asked why she would do something like that.

The other was the day she got her gorgeous, very, very expensive big girl bed. I went in, again after a nap, and found she had taken her dry erase board marker and scribbled all over the headboard. It came off, but it was puzzling nonetheless.

Hope you’re enjoying your Sunday. Me, I am nursing my voice, which is threatening to go away completely. Think good thoughts that it doesn’t because I have a heck of a lot of interviews to do this week.

Inexplicable, really. How does one so young have such an evolved sense of humor? She frequently declares that we should stop, “joking” her, recounting stuff that she says we say. She also likes passing gas, and can do it on her own whim. Again, laughing and laughing. It’s especially funny to fart ON people, BTW. The kid even takes credit for other people’s gas. She finds humor everywhere.

Today, for example, as we played tea party with her dolls and tiny toy pets, I asked her what her dog’s name was. “Poop,” she said with a smile, laughing hysterically. Then she jumped up, grabbed the pretend potty, and made the small dog go poop, except oops, it fell in. I got fake indignant, of course. No! Dogs don’t use potties. Ewww! And she laughed some more.

It’s not just scatological humor that she’s got down, either. Last night we were playing with an empty toilet paper tube. I was using it as a secret-sharer, putting it up to each girl’s ear and telling them a secret. I started with Big Girl:

Me: I want to tell you a secret.
Big Girl: What?
Me: I love you.
Big Girl: That’s not a secret. And then she laughed, and my heart melted.

Then came Little Girl’s turn. I put the tube against her ear, and she started making whispering sounds as I tried to talk. Big Girl and I looked at each other, not being able to control our laughter. No, I told Little Girl, Mommy goes first. You listen, and then you get a chance to talk. But she wanted none of it, preferring to whisper, whisper as I whispered, laughing the whole time. We all collapsed laughing until their daddy, my husband, came home soon after. This kind of stuff happens all the time. It’s rare that she’s sad, pensive, or upset.

Tonight — just a few minutes ago, actually — was one of those rare occasions. She had a nightmare. I heard her crying in her room. I went in, my arms aching for her, and picked her up. What’s wrong, mama, I asked. Are you okay? And then I carried that little bundle over to the chair and rocked for what seemed like forever. Smelling her little head, rubbing the small of her neck. No jokes, no laughter, just a tiny girl clinging to her mommy. I wondered to myself if she senses how serious the rest of her family is and tries to make us all laugh. I wondered if she thinks she has to be funny. Crazy, right? She’s only two. But I still wonder. Because of that I will try harder to make sure she knows I love her whether she’s funny or not. That she knows we love her and not her funny jokes and infectious laugh. Oh, I’ll still laugh just as hard at her jokes — who wouldn’t — but I want to make sure as she grows up she realizes that there’s more to her than just being funny.

I really appreciate you apologizing so profusely when, out of the blue, your 20-month-old went postal on my 2-year-old and smacked her as we passed by. I really do. I wasn’t that fazed by it, actually. Kids are kids. They do nutty things. And I didn’t think a second thought about the fact that the kid was bouncing off the walls and screaming at the top of his lungs so early in the morning. (Wow, he can really shriek, can’t he!) Or that he wasn’t listening to a word you said when you were asking him ever so nicely to apologize. Until, that is, I saw what you were feeding him. A huge cup of Froot Loops, a cup of some otherworld-colored red juice, and a bag of cookies. Hmmm.

Hey, lady, don’t take this the wrong way but how can you expect your kid NOT to be hyped up and wacky when you are feeding him crap for breakfast? Yes, I said it. Crap. A quick read of Fooducate’s excellent blog post — Froot Loops is NOT a “Smart Choice” — about the topic explains why. See, that large cup of cereal you’re giving your kid? Well, it’s probably bigger than the actual serving size that has — get this — 12.5 grams of sugar and 150 calories. In fact, the first ingredient, according to the good folks at Kellogg’s, is SUGAR! Here’s the ingredients list taken from the Google cache of the Kellogg’s website. (I couldn’t get the actual Kellogg’s ingredients page to load live.)

SUGAR; WHOLE GRAIN CORN FLOUR; WHEAT FLOUR; WHOLE GRAIN OAT FLOUR; OAT FIBER; SOLUBLE CORN FIBER; PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL (ONE OR MORE OF: COCONUT, SOYBEAN AND/OR COTTONSEED OILS)†; SALT; SODIUM ASCORBATE AND ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C); NIACINAMIDE; REDUCED IRON; NATURAL ORANGE, LEMON, CHERRY, RASPBERRY, BLUEBERRY, LIME AND OTHER NATURAL FLAVORS; RED #40; BLUE #2; TURMERIC COLOR; YELLOW #6; ZINC OXIDE; ANNATTO COLOR; BLUE #1; PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6); RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2); THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1); VITAMIN A PALMITATE; BHT (PRESERVATIVE); FOLIC ACID; VITAMIN D; VITAMIN B12. † LESS THAN 0.5g TRANS FAT PER SERVING.

I love Fooducate’s take on this, so I will just provide it below.

“In fact, Froot Loops is 41% sugar by weight. And Whoa(!) partially hydrogenated vegetable oil too. Doesn’t sound like a smart choice to us. A 1 oz serving (which by the way is too small for regular people) contains 12 grams of sugar – that’s 3 teaspoons. 48 of the 110 calories per serving are from sugar.”

I will give Kellogg’s props for going for the real sugar over the high fructose junk, but still…that’s a lot of sugar! What, you don’t think sugar riles kids up? Okay, well you can’t dispute the fact that the artificial colors do. About two years ago The Center for Science in the Public Interest formally petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to ban eight artificial colors that had been conclusively linked to hyperactivity in children: Yellow 5, Red 40, Blue 1, Blue 2, Green 3, Orange 8, Red 3, and Yellow 6.

The FDA in March will finally get around to determining whether or not the ban should happen. Meanwhile, in Europe, there’s already a warning label on foods that contain these chemicals: “Consumption may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.” But I digress as always…

By my count, there are four of the six offending colors in Froot Loops. Wow. So maybe, just maybe that’s the reason your kid is acting a little wacky? Kid eats food dyes and LOTS of sugar. Kid goes bonkers and starts smacking anything that walks by it. Sort of like a rabid dog. But instead of rabid we’ll call it hopped up on sugar and food dyes kid. And we haven’t even touched the colored water masquerading as juice or the bag of cookies!

Okay, so getting back to the point of this letter. Again, I am so fine with the fact that your kid smacked my kid in an unprovoked manner. Kids that young are just learning. I can even overlook the frenetic behavior. Big resort. Micky and Minnie hanging out close by. However, I am not fine with the fact that you’re giving him food that’s possibly making him nuts. Maybe you could try a more healthy alternative next time? If not for your kid’s health but the health of the innocent bystanders?

Getting off my soap box now, and thanks in advance! Love, –KB

This post is how I am participating this week in Real Food Wednesdays and Fight Back Fridays — two awesome campaigns to get people eating real food again.

Last week we were running late. I had to drop my father-in-law off at the airport, so we didn’t hit the nursery school until 9:40. The halls were empty. It was quiet and calm. We stepped inside and, for whatever reason, Little Girl went right into her classroom. No whimpering. No pulling her off of me. No tears. Hmmm. Could it be? Could she be overwhelmed by the crowds? I don’t know where I got the idea, but I decided to try an experiment. That Friday I got to the school late on purpose. Again, no one in the hallways, no one in the parking lot. And again, she went right in. It happened on Monday, too, the same day one of the teachers proclaimed Little Girl to have had an, “excellent, day! She had so much fun today,” she told me. It had to be: She was overwhelmed by the crowds of people. Makes sense. She’s a tiny little girl, a minnow in a sea of grownups and siblings and teachers all milling around in those hallways.

Today, five minutes late, Little Girl almost ran into the school. She didn’t even look back at me. She marched into the classroom like she owned the place, showing one of the teachers her little backpack that contained Elmo, a stuffed dog, and her favorite haiku book. My lesson: Sometimes it just takes a small change to reap big rewards.

This week I will be looking for my small change with Big Girl. I need to find whatever it is that is making her so upset and angry. I am actually wondering if it’s the new school. It’s a very challenging place for someone who is shy and hesitant. I wonder if it’s just too scary and tiring and frustrating for her to be a minnow in a giant sea of kids, some of whom write threatening letters on the bus.

At my house, my mom was good for a damn or an S-word, but she never dropped any F bombs. Meanwhile, I never, ever swore in front of my mom. Still don’t. Of course, I am weird in that I never swore period until I was like 18. I have no idea why. (Okay, well, maybe the memory of me as a 5-year-old having my mouth washed out with Ivory Soap might have something to do with it.) And there are some words that I won’t ever, ever say. (And my game night pals will back me up on that since they always write the most disgusting swear words as answers trying and get me to say them. But as always, I digress!)

Not surprisingly, my husband swears in front of the kids sometimes. It’s part of his regular vernacular. No C-bombs, but he will say all the others when extremely agitated. Me, I am a crap gal. As in, “Don’t eat that candy in the party goody bag. It’s from China. It’s crap!” Or, “Uggg, McDonald’s. I would never eat that crappy food.” It’s my go-to word. And now I have to decide if I am going to break my crappy habit, or let the kids expand their vocabulary as well.

Let’s look at Little Girl’s take on it. Today Mommy dropped the mayonnaise bottle on the floor. I screamed, as I watched white stuff fly all over my newly washed floor, “Oh, CRAP!” So why wouldn’t Little Girl be compelled to scream the same expletive? It sounded funny. Mommy — I — looked funny when I said it. And of course, when I told her not to say it, it must have been really, really funny watching my face as Little Gril yelled, “Crap, crap, crap.”

Then there’s Big Girl. She asked me outright why I am allowed to say crap when she’s not. I tried to explain how coarse and unsavory it sounds when a pipsqueak like her says something like crap, but it doesn’t really ring true to her. Why is it a bad idea to say that when you’re little, but okay when you are big, she wanted to know. (How could it be okay for me to say just because I forgot to call my friend back, but it’s not okay for her to say when her sister tries to run away with her Zhu Zhu pet. A good question actually…)

I don’t have an answer, but I do wonder if profanity has anything to do with maturity. As in, my husband has always been treated like an adult by his parents. My mom, however, still reminds me to put a sweater on before I go out, and asks me if I want to sleep over on the off chance my husband needs to go out of town. Does the fact that my in-laws and my husband speak to each other as equals — swearing included — help them see him as an adult? Just as maybe my avoidance of all things crap and crappy around my mom contributes to keeping me a child in her eyes? And if that’s the case, do I let my little ones say the occasional crap? I’m thinking no, but maybe that’s a crappy answer?

What’s your stance on profanity and children? Do you swear in front of your kids?

About two minutes into our wait the kid starts losing it. Granted, her mother is stressed, and she’s probably feeding off that. Still, she’s running around the studio waiting room. She’s whining really loudly about how she wants to go home. She’s hitting her mother. She’s trying to open the mother’s purse to get money because she’s thirsty, she says. She’s making such a spectacle that Little Girl was staring. She even asked me, “Why that girl yelling, Mommy? She sad?”

The mother, in her embarrassment, is doing everything in her power to placate the kid. Explaining that they will drink when they get home. Trying to distract her. Threatening, cajoling, sweet-talking. I felt for the mother. I did. Then, in desperation, she pulls a bottle of Coke out of her pocket. I instantly stopped feeling bad for her.

“Here, drink this,” she tells the little girl. The kid tells the mother she doesn’t like soda. The mother keeps foisting it on her. The kid, giving into her thirst, finally grabs it and starts chugging. And I do mean chugging. The kid must have been really, really thirsty. The mother warns her not to drink so much and tries to grab the bottle back. “You’re drinking too much. You’re not going to be able to eat your dinner,” she tells the kid. I couldn’t help it. “Forget dinner,” I said. “She’s not going to be able to SLEEP.”

I walked out of that place with a headache and a heavy heart. The mother made a bunch of wrong moves, IMHO. I can’t understand why she handed a three-year-old a bottle of caffeinated Coke. Just sad. As some people have commented, she should have taken the kid to the car rather than losing it and giving in to whatever the kid asked for.

Okay, so the title of this blog is Little Kid Freak Outs — Outs, as in multiple freak outs. Today, I went to a local library’s book sale. Little Girl is being her adorable self. Talking, finding books she “loves.” (“This my favorite, Mommy. Oh, my goodness, Mommy, look what I find!”) She was putting a smile on every person’s face in the joint. A woman stopped to compliment me on what a beautiful, smart, sunny child I had. She’s so happy, she said. Little Girl, not pleased to be ignored by me, decided she was going to show me how displeased she was. She started knocking over the books. Then she lay down on the floor and started kicking them. Then, when I tried to put her on a time out, she reached out and hit my arm. At that point, I picked her up, screaming, I might add, and carried her to the car. She was done. No second chances. She screamed the entire way home since, as we were leaving, her little friend arrived. Once she realized that she wasn’t getting her playdate the screaming got even louder.

When I got to my driveway she threw herself on the concrete and refused to walk into the house. I calmly picked her up, carrying her into her crib. She had to eat lunch, but I needed a time-out by that time. Once I removed myself for a bit I went back and took her out of the crib, helped her soothe herself, and brought her downstairs for lunch. She finished eating, and went down for a nap.

Yes, freak outs happen, but I think I handled my freak out better than the other mom because I created instant consequences, and enforced them. I hope, after some time, that Little Girl will get the point that poor behavior choices result in not having fun. The other little girl? Well, she just learned that if she hits her mother, eventually she’s going to get soda. Not the best message in my book.

I hate smoking. Hate it. Loathe it. My mother smoked on and off throughout my childhood. Some of my earliest memories are of my mom sitting in the kitchen — a phone in one hand, a cigarette in the other. She smoked so much that the ceiling above that chair was stained yellow from the nicotine. I often wonder, when I think back, what all that second hand smoke did to my insides. Was it the reason that I had ear infections and allergies as a kid? (Both pretty much gone in adulthood.) Or why I had exercise-induced asthma in my late teens and early 20s? (Again, gone completely now.) I also wonder what, if any, lingering health effects it will have on my body. Will I get lung cancer some day? Dementia? Emphysema? After all, I smoked via second hand smoke for years. (As an aside: None of us — not me, not my sister, and not my brother — ever smoked as teens or adults.)

Digressing as always…so here I am. At a park with my kids who, to this day, have never been exposed to second hand smoke. And I couldn’t help myself. I went up to that woman and, in a very non-confrontational way, reminded her that it is illegal to smoke in a Nassau County playground. (Or park or workplace or beach for that matter.) She looked at me, muttered, “Yeah, yeah,” and just kept smoking. I was seething, but I just took my kids to the other end of the park far away from that stupid, ignorant, selfish, trashy woman.

There are smokers who are, as a group, as rabid as they come. They don’t want anyone infringing on their rights. Why should anyone tell them where or when they can smoke? I’ll tell you why: Because it is WRONG and immoral to force children to inhale smoke. Today we had to go home for dinner, so I didn’t pursue the matter. However, that woman had better watch out. Next time, I’m calling a cop to enforce the law and bounce her and her nasty habit right out on their butts.

Do you smoke? If so, WHY? Have you ever encountered a parent who smokes? Did you say anything? I’d love to know.

The first one didn’t work out. It was a Montessori. I dropped her off and was jarred by the atmosphere. Very chaotic and more like a daycare than a school. The room wasn’t neat and tidy. No educational bulletin boards. No desks. It wasn’t what we were promised, that’s for sure. And at $350 per month, well, it should have been nicer. When my husband picked her up that day (I was in the city), he was also underwhelmed. So we yanked her out that same night.

Her new nursery school is very different. Tables and colored chairs. Blocks. Toys. Puzzles. A classroom hamster named Speedy. And two teachers — Strict-but-nice cop and super-mushy sweet cop. It’s a really welcoming place. Before we arrived I told Little Girl about what her day would be like. That she would go in and start the day doing quiet table time. Then she would play. Then she would probably hear a story, do some coloring, eat a snack. Heck, she might even play outside.

We got to the school, she went in, and sat right down ready to do table time. I was stunned. How could she understand what I meant? She’s two! And yet there she was sitting down playing with manipulatives. I stood there taking pictures. She glanced up as if to say, what, you still here? Go home. I’m good. I’m ready to have fun. The director of the program was there to greet everyone. She knows me well. She had my big girl for four summers (pre-3, 3, 4, and 5) and two years (the 3- and 4-year-old programs). She looked at me and said, “I think you’re having a bigger problem with this than she is.” I think she was right.

My little digression: I never expected to be able to put a two-year-old in a program. Well, before I gave birth I did. But once I met her not so much. And yet I have done it. I feel really torn. As my husband says, it’s 7.5 hours a week. It’s not like she’s going all day. But I still wonder if I am doing the right thing.

Back to the story…I was so nervous that around 11 a.m. I called the school. I got the director on the phone. How is she, I wanted to know? The director told me she was fine until a wailing little boy sat next to her. She cried out of empathy, the director thought. She put the phone down and went to check on her. She was smiling and playing, I was told. She was fine.

When I picked Little Girl up today she was so excited. She ran and hugged me, but not before stopping off to give one of the teachers two high fives. And then she told her she would see her soon. I grabbed the other teacher and asked if she thought Little Girl was ready for school. It’s a 3-year-old program after all. She’s only 27 months. I didn’t want her to interrupt class or be a distraction. No, she told me, Little Girl was going to do just fine, she thought.

And what did Little Girl think? When we got into the car I asked her: “Did you have fun, baby? Do you want to go back again?” Yes, she told me. I had fun. I want to go back. And then she proceeded to tell me, “I cried, Mommy. The little boy cried and I cried.” And then I heard the smile creep into her voice. “I gonna cry again next time.” I turned around and sure enough, she was grinning ear to ear. “Are you joking with Mommy?” She laughed. “Yes, I joking, Mommy. I not gonna cry.” I’m glad. That means only one of us will be shedding tears.

How was your kid’s first day of school? How young is too young when it comes to preschool? How do I stop feeling so guilty? I’d like to know.