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Early first steps boost physical activity
31st August 2009
Children who begin standing and walking at an earlier age spend more of their leisure time playing sports and do better in school physical education classes during their teenage years, according to researchers from the MRC Epidemiology Unit in Cambridge.
The research suggests that young children with slow development of motor skills such as standing and walking may benefit from help to develop their motor skills. Not only could this improve their participation in sport during the teenage years but may lead to improvements in physical fitness in adulthood.
The study looked at over 9,000 children born in Finland in 1966. These children have been followed since their birth in 1966 with questionnaires and physical data given at ages 14 and 31 years. The researchers compared parental accounts of their child's progress in walking or standing at the age of one year with accounts from study participants of their physical education and sports participation when they were 14 years old.
They found that children that stood unaided or walked supported at an earlier age went on to achieve higher physical education grades at 14 years old. When these children were teenagers they also participated in sports more often and played a greater number of different sports. This association still remained after taking into account other factors such as sex, socioeconomic status and the time of year they were born. A one month delay in infant motor development showed a comparable reduction in physical education grade to a one unit increase in BMI..
"Motor skills are known to be important for sports participation, and indeed enjoyment of sports activities. Our findings suggest that development of motor skills, even in infancy, may be important. This suggests that infants with slower motor development may benefit from help to improve their motor development and skills as this may increase their participation in sports and in turn increase physical activity levels later in life."
Charlotte Ridgway, lead author from the MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge
Previous research on the same Finnish cohort has indicated that people who take part in more sports as teenagers tend to be more physically active as adults. The MRC Epidemiology Unit has also previously shown that earlier motor development during infancy is associated with better physical fitness in adulthood. Given that there is some evidence that interventions, such as parents encouraging and helping their child to stand for the first time, can aid infant motor development, it is suggested that this may also improve physical activity in adolescents and later life.
The findings described in this article are taken from the following publication:
Ridgway CL, Ong KK, Tammelin TH, Sharp S, Ekelund U, Jarvelin M-R. Infant Motor Development Predicts Sports Participation at Age 14 Years: Northern Finland Birth Cohort of 1966. PLoS ONE 2009 Aug 31;4(8):e6837.
doi: www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0006837
