Did you ride your bike to school when you were kid? A generation ago most kids rode, walked or caught the bus to school; very few of us were dropped off by our parents at the school gate. These days most of us have experienced the daily traffic jams around schools at drop-off and pick-up times, as parents drive their children to the school gate. While there is no national data on the number of children who walk or ride to school, a recent Victorian survey found nearly half of all children are driven to school every day.

                    Parents choose to drop their kids at school for number of reasons—mostly to do with safety and convenience. But experts say chauffeuring your kids to school every day could mean they are missing out on much –needed exercise and other life skills.

                    Research suggests at least a third of Australian children age 9 – 16 years are not getting amount of daily physical activity recommended in national guidelines. But this not because children’s participation in leisure or sporting activities has dropped off, says Dr Jan Garrard. Participation in this activities has not altered much over the years, Garrard says but what has changed is level of incidental activity children do. “ When you look at countries where children are just active as part of everyday life, they do not have  to be sporty. All they have to do is get around the way the community gets around by walking and cycling, and they get enough physical activity,” she says. 

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