I was talking to my mom the other day while she was in town. She was telling me about all the new stuff going on in health and Physical Education. She is a professor at ATM and has been a teacher educator for 30 plus years. She is also quite a crossfitter. She was in town for a planning meeting for TAAHPERD. She is on the board that decides on presenters for the annual conference.

There is an interesting topic coming up this year that has never been brought up in the past. Now that the ADA recognize morbid obesity as a handicap there must be accomodations made for children that are obese or morbidly obese. She did not elaborate on the details of the actual accomodations but that is not what i want to talk about. My issue is with the classification of obesity as a handicap.

Obesity is one of the leading preventable causes of death worldwide! (sorry for not citing this, my first reaction was to cite it then i thought…Fuck it, its my blog…haha). Luckily the FDA has not approved any drug interventions for children but there is an increasing number of teenagers getting gastric bypass and other elective surgeries. Currently the only intervention approved is life style and behavioral techniques.

There was a case recently at Texas ATM where a student sued the school because she was bruised pretty badly from the desks. She did not fit properly because of her obesity. She won the law suit citing the ADA recognition of obesity as a handicap.

Another story my mom told me was about one of her students. His kid brought home a permission slip to go to Gatti Town for an educational field trip. Wait, it gets better. It was a nutritional outing. The kids were supposed to learn about portion size and nutrients. Really? At an all you can eat buffet?? That is lazy and irresponsible on the schools part.

Back to the point… Now that health and physical educators have to make allowances for obese children the children will be excused from activities that are unsafe for them. This probably means any calisthenics, running, or anything with their feet off the floor. I remember in my PE class we had a rope that had to be 25 ft and we weren’t allowed to climb it if the mat wasn’t down. The mat was about 2 inches thick and harder than the floor. My have times changed!!

I understand the safety issue but if we limit these obese kids to the activities left they will never have a chance. I would rather expose them to some more activity and run the risk of injury. Honestly kids are made of rubber so if anything did get seriously injured they would bounce back pretty quickly. How many of you had broken bones as a kid??

You might wonder why i am not yelling and cursing in this post like i should be. The reason is simple. It isn’t the teachers fault these things come about. It isn’t even the kids fault. I feel like kids are high jacked from an early age and sent down a path of obesity and unhealthiness. Kids follow their parents actions and we all know where this is going. It is a sad state and i don’t have an answer to it other than doing your part to pass your knowledge and passion for activity on to your kids. Feed them paleo food and kick them out of the house to play with their friends.