In the past few months I’ve had the great pleasure of spending increasing amounts of time with a couple of wonderful kids, 4- and a 7-year-old girls. Not a parent myself, having not had the experience of watching them grow from speechless transportable bundles into these highly interactive, inquisitive, and extremely high energy packages of beautiful chaos, this immersion has been, to say the least, eye-opening and personally expanding. I feel like I’m learning more in this, my 40th year, than I have since my own 4th.
The thing I’ve learned that I’ve found most profound? The extent to which children are always watching and listening to the things the adults around them are doing and saying. Over the summer, on weekends their mom and I weren’t with them, she and I would disappear into the mountains of our home, Vancouver Island. We’d return Monday mornings happier than when we’d left, with our cups filled – full also of bright-eyed stories of adventure that we’d share with the girls. It wasn’t long before the girls, on the alternate weekends, were pressing us to go on adventures with them, to see for themselves that light we brought home in our eyes. This time last year the 7-year-old wanted to be a princess; now not so much: “Princesses don’t like to get dirty; they don’t run through the forest like my mama.” They’re asking for camping equipment for Christmas.
As you read this, we’re halfway through the first, Fall, Challenge of the 2014-15 Heart and Stroke Foundation 60 Minute Kids’ Club program year. For 30 days kids have been tracking their movement, their eating and drinking habits, their sleep, screen time and mental health – through the Challenge and the supports of their teachers and parents they’ve been holding themselves accountable to be(com)ing) fit, for the future.
As part of the Innovative Fitness family, you too are supporting these kids. With our gratitude many of you will do so directly later this month via your contributions – and the abuse you dole out on your trainers – at IF’s 2014 Train the Trainer Fundraiser. But, equally importantly, through the commitments you’ve made to your own health, and the example you’re consequently setting to your kids at home, you’re influentially modeling the type of future, today, that together we’re working to create for all of Canada’s kids. As I learn more fully with each passing day, they’re paying attention; we’re having an impact.
You have our thanks. Please keep spreading your movement. And spreading the word: http://60minkidsclub.org/joinus.
Rumon Carter
Director of Communications, HSF-60MKC
