Children are the most precious thing that the family and society have. Through children, the family and society continue ethnically, and they also fulfill many psychological, social, cultural and economic needs. In order to keep these children healthy and effective in their roles in the family and society, three prerequisites must be available for their growth during the first twenty years of life:
1- A complete daily diet.
2- Sufficient physical exercise daily or at least weekly.
3- Living a healthy life in its psychological, social and environmental health in the family, school, neighborhood and society.
It is noted globally (unfortunately) that individuals and societies do not engage in daily exercise for their bodies, which is reflected in the family and children with more diseases and physical disorders and the spending of large percentages of their financial income on obtaining treatment with medications that may sometimes harm more than they benefit..
If the family were more attentive to the nutrition of the children and their physical exercise as means to protect them from weakness and diseases, it would have saved them a lifetime, money, soul and suffering than wasting all these human capabilities on treatment.
While the problem of the lack of physical exercise by children in Arab families and societies seems less dangerous to them health-wise.. given their generally active daily movement at work and meeting the needs of survival inside and outside the family environment, the panting of many Arab families to live in cities and obtain permanent jobs that do not require sufficient movement for their bodies, not to mention the use of their members of the mother, father and children for public or private transportation, then going to rest and sleep and spending most of the time outside of work or study sitting on the Internet and watching satellite TV programs and talking on the phone, and sleeping day and night, all began to produce negative results on their physical health.. It appears with their frequent visits to the doctor, and their taking many medications with or without prescriptions directly from the pharmacy worker who is often ignorant of the truth of their health complaints.
In developed countries, the situation of physical exercise was not better. In Canada, specialized reports indicate that about 63% of Canadians do not practice regular exercise for the health of their bodies. While in the United States, young people suffer from overweight and obesity to a harmful degree, as statistical studies indicate that the number of young people suffering from obesity or its diseases has tripled during the fifteen-year period extending from 1981-1996.
The unfortunate facts above regarding the lack or scarcity of exercise by children, are due in one of their roots to the forgetting of young people in the East and West, as it seems, of an obvious fact, which is that God created the human body to move.. and that young people put their bodies on the “shelf” with lethargy, laziness and a tendency to not move, while they eat meals that exceed their physical need for consumption or absorption, certainly leads them to their personal unfitness with weight gain, flabbiness and excessive obesity, and what accompanies them of course of psychological suffering and serious early diseases such as: diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol, hardening of the arteries, fatigue, excessive sleep and many others.
While children have 15-18 hours of wakefulness per day outside of sleep, they are not expected to do sports activities for half an hour or an hour of this time. Rather, we invite them to divide it up several times, each lasting about ten minutes. It may be distributed between walking to a nearby place such as school, the store, or the market, completing some physical household tasks, going up and down the stairs several times, or exercising on a home-available exercise machine. With this gradual, indirect method, exercising becomes less burdensome or stressful for them, and they practice it through their normal daily training activities without even realizing it sometimes. The result? High physical and psychological health.
Benefits of Physical Exercise for Children
When children exercise indoors or outdoors, alone or with one or more peers or family members or with a group of children, or young adults in playgrounds, fitness clubs, swimming pools, public walking areas, etc., there are many health benefits for their bodies, the vitality of their personalities, their behavior, and their human relationships with others and the environment, the most important of which are the following:
1- Getting to know new peers and building new friendships with them.
2- Developing the ability to participate and adopt roles in play, study, and work groups.
3- Adopting the principle of justice in playing and dealing according to roles, rights, and duties.
4- Renewing the soul and psychological enjoyment of playing and practicing physical exercise.
5- Improving children’s respect and appreciation for their bodies.
6- Building bones and the skeleton and strengthening physical muscles.
7- Gaining physical flexibility in movement and performing daily tasks and chores.
8- Maintaining a healthy weight appropriate for age and body.
9- Improving appearance and personal balance.
10- Improving personal/physical fitness.
11- Strengthening the heart.
12- Visiting the feeling of relaxation.
13- Increasing the growth and healthy development of children.
14- Increasing the body’s immunity against serious chronic diseases such as blood, diabetes, and others that can be.
The harms of abandoning physical exercise on children
We summarize these harms that result from children not practicing physical exercise, especially when they reach maturity and advanced age, as follows:
1- Inactivity, laziness and lack of enthusiasm in general.
2- Weak personal vitality in appearance, orientation and general behavior.
3- High blood pressure.
4- Heart disease
5- Exposure to strokes and heart disorders.
6- Exposure to diabetes.
7- Excess weight and exposure to physical obesity.
8- Colon cancer.
9- Osteoporosis.
10- Exposure to psychological depression disorders.