Katy wants you to turn off the Xbox

Sleaz274 said :

Wii, PS3 Move, Xbox Kinect growing in popularity and increasing gamers numbers considerably, Wii in particular for the demographic you’re talking of. All require active movement often in a vigorous manner and increasingly require fine motor skills.

Attention politicians of Australia the demonising of games and gamers is pointless, join the next century please where games and gaming consoles will become the primary entertainment industry displacing books, TV, movies and music.

Attention parents: Stop feeding your kids crap filled full of processed junk made in laboratories that the human body was never designed to process, with added salt, with added sugar or sugar like substances. Make meals of lean proteins, good animal fats with lots of fruit and vegetables. Hungry kids eat before you all start whinging and bitching about how hard it is to feed kids. If they aren’t hungry then don’t make them eat. Don’t fill up the gap later with snacks foods.

That is why they are fat and diabetes is increasingly common. Not TVs or computer games.

There is quite a solid body of evidence that sitting is a high-risk activity, even controlling for other factors such as activity level, diet and weight. So this means that if you and I are the same weight, eat the same and do the same amount of exercise, but I spend more time actually seated than you do, I am at higher risk of things like diabetes and heart disease. It seems to me this is one of the issues associated with high screen use (although there are others).

Although, I have to agree that food intake is critical. It’s also fairly well established that many people (particularly children) have such a high energy intake they couldn’t burn it off if they tried.

Just because you missed out as a kid and turned out ok, there is no shame in trying to do better for the next generation. You can put your head in the sand all you want but it won’t change the fact that we are growing a generation of fatties.

futto said :

Up until a few years ago, i never cared about the quality of the parks and play areas but now with two young boys, i have become an expert at scouting out fun parks to take them.

Many of the parks in South Canberra are in a state of disrepair. Fadden Pines has half the play area fenced off and has been for over 18 months. Gowrie is being rebuilt now but at the moment is a big pile of mud. I have been to Weston Park. To be honest, it is pretty dirty and sad. Most of the water features don’t work.

Despite this i thought the parks here were ok here but after traveling to Melbourne and the NSW north coast over Easter, i was blown away over how awesome the parks are.

If the minister is serious about getting kids outside, you really have to setup the parks to compete with the Xbox and other entertainment. Kids like cool parks, with REAL equipment, especially for the older kids where a spring loaded frog seat or a swing isn’t enough to hold their attention for more than a few minutes.

P.S Does anyone know of a good Canberra website that lists all the parks? I might not be looking hard enough.

When I was a kid a bike, footy and an oval was enough to keep us amused for an entire weekend. In summer it was a bus pass, a bike and an Olympic pool….with maybe a footy again thrown in. There were none of these ‘parks’ bar the basic swing set and slide.

Kids also need to learn how to make their own fun

magiccar9 said :

I quote the first paragraph of this article saying

“Chief Minister Gallagher has always had a tendency to mothering the public (put a jumper on, wash your hands, blow).”

Um… anyone else raising an eyebrow as to what she wants us to do?

Into the tissue, like mum’s tell their young kids wot to do.

Pommy bastard said :

The epitome of the “nanny” state, Katy comes for yoru children. Sit up straight at the back, stop talking and pay attention!

I’m no fan of the nanny state, but this doesn’t qualify. Telling you what to do isn’t the same as legislating that you must do it, or that you can’t do it.

And there’s nothing wrong with “Sit up straight at the back, stop talking and pay attention!”

I quote the first paragraph of this article saying

“Chief Minister Gallagher has always had a tendency to mothering the public (put a jumper on, wash your hands, blow).”

Um… anyone else raising an eyebrow as to what she wants us to do?

futto I agree. With youngsters myself I have noticed that parks in NSW are far bigger, newer and better maintained than in Canberra. There are parks here that havent been touched for 20 years (eg in Lyneham). And the big playgrounds – like Kambah – have become shrivelled ghosts of their former selves.

That said, we do have lots of treed areas to walk around, like our various mountains. Its not quite the same though, you cant duck down for 1/2 hr to meet up with a friend.

I’m not aware of a website that lists all the parks – I scoured the maps for the park symbol and just drove over to them to check them out (northside)

I dont really think lack of exercise is the key issue for kids – I have lived in places where kids get hardly any exercise (Asia) and they are still pretty thin (that said, I am all for exercise and it clearly has some impact and a greater impact as the kids age). Its what they eat – and you can notice, unfortunately, a fairly solid correlation between a schools socio-economic score on NAPLAN and the size of the kids at the school (the higher the NAPLAN score the thinner the kids).

Wii, PS3 Move, Xbox Kinect growing in popularity and increasing gamers numbers considerably, Wii in particular for the demographic you’re talking of. All require active movement often in a vigorous manner and increasingly require fine motor skills. Attention politicians of Australia the demonising of games and gamers is pointless, join the next century please where games and gaming consoles will become the primary entertainment industry displacing books, TV, movies and music.

Attention parents: Stop feeding your kids crap filled full of processed junk made in laboratories that the human body was never designed to process, with added salt, with added sugar or sugar like substances. Make meals of lean proteins, good animal fats with lots of fruit and vegetables. Hungry kids eat before you all start whinging and bitching about how hard it is to feed kids. If they aren’t hungry then don’t make them eat. Don’t fill up the gap later with snacks foods.

That is why they are fat and diabetes is increasingly common. Not TVs or computer games.

Chop71 said :

colourful sydney racing identity said :

And I would like Katy to turn off the pokies, but as a fully owned subsiduary of the CFMEU/Tradies group I suspect that won’t happen.

Put “Get Out + Play” stickers on all Labor Club poker machines. Brilliant intitative.

Ah, mate, I love it!!!!

colourful sydney racing identity said :

And I would like Katy to turn off the pokies, but as a fully owned subsiduary of the CFMEU/Tradies group I suspect that won’t happen.

Put “Get Out + Play” stickers on all Labor Club poker machines. Brilliant intitative.

Up until a few years ago, i never cared about the quality of the parks and play areas but now with two young boys, i have become an expert at scouting out fun parks to take them.

Many of the parks in South Canberra are in a state of disrepair. Fadden Pines has half the play area fenced off and has been for over 18 months. Gowrie is being rebuilt now but at the moment is a big pile of mud. I have been to Weston Park. To be honest, it is pretty dirty and sad. Most of the water features don’t work.

Despite this i thought the parks here were ok here but after traveling to Melbourne and the NSW north coast over Easter, i was blown away over how awesome the parks are.

If the minister is serious about getting kids outside, you really have to setup the parks to compete with the Xbox and other entertainment. Kids like cool parks, with REAL equipment, especially for the older kids where a spring loaded frog seat or a swing isn’t enough to hold their attention for more than a few minutes.

P.S Does anyone know of a good Canberra website that lists all the parks? I might not be looking hard enough.

“The incidences of overweight and obesity in children has doubled since 1995, prompting this initiative that encourages parents and carers to manage screen time for their children”

We’re also setting a fantastic example to kids who are worried about their reading problems. Apparently you don’t need to be able to construct (or identify) grammatical sentences to become ACT Health Minister, or the Health Minister’s copy editor.

For a member of the ACT Labor Party, an organisation that basically drinks and bathes in the blood of working families by sitting them in front of electronic entertainment for hours on end, she sure is a hypocrite.

The epitome of the “nanny” state, Katy comes for yoru children. Sit up straight at the back, stop talking and pay attention!

Don’t really care about the source, but it’s a bloody good initiative. Could extend to children in their 20s, 30s and 40s too.

And I would like Katy to turn off the pokies, but as a fully owned subsiduary of the CFMEU/Tradies group I suspect that won’t happen.

Not, we note, in electronic media. Which is a shame as that seems to be where the target market is

That’s where the kiddies are, though the actual target is probably parents of 5-12yos… although I suspect that parents letting kids make decisions about what to do with their time could be a contributing factor?

Now that ABC Kids is available pretty much all day, they might need to extend their target market downwards…