FITT Youth Combats Obesity
By Helen A. Hartman, Senior Lecturer in Kinesiology,and Lisa R. Baldi
THE SOUNDS OF LAUGHTER AND CHILDREN at play can be heard coming from the Conference Center Wing of the Reading Hospital once a week. These children are participating in FITT Youth—Fun, actIve, healThy, youTh, a joint program of the Reading Health System, Penn State Berks, and Penn State Berks Cooperative Extension.
FITT Youth is a coordinated effort for children who have been referred by their pediatricians as being at-risk for childhood obesity. The program integrates physical activity, nutrition, and education for parents and caregivers. It is free to participants, and each component is vital in helping curb the obesity epidemic.
Each session begins with one hour of fun physical activity, led by Helen Hartman, Senior Lecturer in Kinesiology at Penn State Berks, and Penn State Berks students majoring in Kinesiology. The children then learn about nutrition from Reading Hospital Clinical Dietitian Christine Bucher. While the children are engaged in physical activity, the parents learn how to shop and prepare nutritional meals for the family, and they also prepare a healthy snack for the children along with Iliana Almodovar, Penn State Nutrition Links and Education Adviser with Penn State Extension-Berks County. Each component of the program is coordinated by Colleen Sauls, Family Advocate for the Children’s Health Center of the Reading Hospital.
FITT Youth is held once a week for eight weeks during the fall and spring semesters. Each semester targets a different group of students: one semester will target grades 2-5 and the next semester will target grades 6-8.
When asked why the program is aimed at changing the behavior of young children, Hartman explains, “We found that the older youth were already set in their habits and that the parents really struggled with change. Sometimes by the time the children reached a certain point, the parents or guardians had given up on trying to make a change.”
So how do they motivate the children to participate and make physical activity fun? Each child gets a pedometer to wear during the weekly session. Then they engage in a simple activity with the Kinesiology students. It doesn’t take long for the children to find a “Kines buddy” who they work with each week. According to Hartman, often these children do not have an adult mentor in their life, and it’s wonderful to watch the bonding and trust that develops and grows each week.
The warm up consists of about ten stations involving some type of motor skill—hand-eye coordination, balance, agility, symmetrical or asymmetrical movement. Their buddy records the number of successful attempts. It doesn’t take long for the children to become adept at the different stations. When that occurs, they are challenged to switch from using the dominant hand to the non-dominant hand or using alternate hands to keep it interesting.
Hartman states, “My philosophy is the more we move, the better we are at moving, the more successful we are at moving, the more we will want to move. The more we move in different environments or settings, the more confident we will be throughout childhood and adulthood in taking that first step of physical activity.”
Next the children are taken through their FITT Yoga routine. The purpose of FITT Yoga is for the children to follow along with audio and visual cues. They practice fun, zany movements involving changing direction and balance, and the parents/guardians are asked to participate so they can interact with the children at home during the week.
The children also work on eye-hand coordination using a myachi (small bean bag similar to a hacky sack in which players use hands rather than feet). The movements involve individual and partner activities. The children work individually with their buddy and sometimes as a team on skills such as cooperation, strategy, and leadership. These activities may include flag tag, builders and bulldozers, musical spots, or themed events like egg-stravaganza, monster relays, egg hunts, and scavenger hunts. In nice weather, they take a walk to the Reading Public Museum for Frisbee golf and everyone’s favorite game–ultimate chicken, which is ultimate Frisbee with a rubber chicken instead of the Frisbee.
As the Kinesiology students take the children through their stretches, Hartman collects the pedometers and records their steps for the hour—1,855, 2,304, and even 3,336. The children are always interested in knowing their number of steps and if they improved from the previous week. They have learned many new skills in the session–most importantly, that physical activity is a daily requirement to living a healthy lifestyle.