Idolising Children?

The ongoing sensational reporting of research into the eating habits of children is driving me nuts!

“THOUSANDS of school children feast on junk food and fizzy drinks for breakfast, sparking fresh concerns over Australia’s childhood obesity epidemic,” writes Jill Stark in The Age.

There is no reference to the name of the study, who the authors were, or what the sample size was. No basic information that allows the general reader to make an assessment of this claim. Nothing to tell us about who those “one-in-ten” might be and why they have such a terrible diet to begin with..

Blogs always border on being mere immeadiate reaction rants - and that is what this post threatens to be. Needless to say, the broad sweeping brush strokes offered by much of the field of “public health” contribute to poor understanding of obesity and the overused term of “epidemic” does an injustice to children whose self-esteem is crushed by the moralising over weight in western society.

Children shouldn’t be eating junk food for breakfast, yes they need to eat healthy and the scrapping of any programs - like Nutrition Australia’s healthy eating program discussed in the article should be reported with concern. But, the issue of obesity is far more complex than we are yet willing to acknowledge. Easier to just point at the fat kids and say “get thin” - rather than develop a sophisticated idea about body image and weight that acknowledge body mass index and other population health measures do little for the individual child or family whose personal circumstances mean weight is one of the leats of their concerns.

The SMH published an extract from Idolising Children recently that discussed the value homework.

Consequently, I have had a lot of correspondance from people like Sara Bennett in the USA who are calling for a more sophisticated approach to the development of our children, rather than just curriculum based homework.

I still find it scary that homework may have already infiltrated our kindergartens.

In the Victorian State Budget announced yesterday the treasurer announced a commitment of $10 million dollars over 4 years to improve access to kindergarten for all children. The solution:

“This funding will provide the opportunity for four year olds at childcare to benefit from kindergarten programs, and encourage kindergartens to offer extended hours which are more convenient for working parents”

This policy approach is a confusing one. Are the Victorian government trying to make childcare centres more like kindergartens or kindergartens more like childcare centres?

I would argue this is a clear example that reform is now needed in early childhood services. The old kindergarten vs childcare dichotomy doesn’t hold in a policy environment that argues for us to support the development of children for 0 - 6 years. We need a dynamic system that incorporates tertiary trained early childhood development teachers working in early childhood development centres that cater for all children before school age.

The issue, as usual, is federalism. States have control over kinders, while the Federal government looks after childcare. The Council of Australian Governments has done some splendid work around human capital, specifically related to children and it is time they knocked heads again and sorted out a national early childhood development system - not a framework or set of guidelines, but an actual system that embraces the hub and spoke and partnership models to provide parents and the community with an early childhood system that works with us to raise our children.

Andrew Leigh has posted a piece about a former colleague of his in the States, Sara Mead, who has written a little policy paper that questions the hype around early childhood development.

She argues we have been “oversold the importance” of the early years.

It is refreshing, and Andrew rarely points to research that isn’t robust. So, I’m keen to have a read and will report back.