Were you an active child?

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I was just listening to somebody on the radio talk about children not being physically active, spending their waking hours on screens rather than going outdoors and run around with their friends.

When I hear this, I can't help thinking that I was never really active. A couple of years ago, I posted a picture of me, as a child, reading a volume of an encyclopedia in an armchair, which I spent a lot of my free time doing. On rare occasions, other kids would include me in their games, for example I can recall having played horse in the alley where one of the neighbors had mounted a basketball hoop over their garage. But other kids spent hours running around a field with lacrosse sticks (for some reason that seems to me the most common sort of impromptu group athletic activity) and I was never a participant.

What I did do was explore on my own. I would walk by myself all over the neighborhood, sometimes encountering kids who were friendlier towards me than the neighbors (I tended to make a good first impression) and sometimes riding my bike, even to other neighborhoods, even one that was considered somewhat "rough". But that isn't exactly vigorous exercise. The bike riding was for transportation not physical fitness.

Anything else of an athletic nature happened under adult supervision of some sort, but left on my own I was quite sedentary.

Who else was sedentary as a kid, and do you think it affected your long term health in any way?

Left to my own devices I was extraordinarily introverted and just wanted to be alone. I read a lot or built tents to hide in with my plushies. We had a swimming pool so I liked to swim and dive but that stopped around age 10 when I lost interest because I was too self-conscious.

When I wasn't left to my own devices, and I had to do what my family was doing, I did a lot of active things. My mum made me take ballet, tap dance, gymnastics, skating lessons, swimming lessons, etc. I was pretty spaced-out and not particularly good at them, but I participated a bit. We snowmobiled on our property and had horses at my grandad's, so I learned to ride. I always had a bike and a skateboard but I don't remember using them very much. I think I got them because all the other kids did. One thing I did into adolescence was roller skating. I loved it, because the roller rink was dark with coloured lights (my best stim), and they played cool music. I thought I was pretty cool whizzing around to my favourite rock songs.

*I should note that I also have ADHD

I think I might still have old school reports somewhere from when I was really young. Apparently I had a tendency to run off during class time to go play outside and I had to be dragged back in.

Generally, I had a fair amount of nervous energy. I fidgeted a lot. Never liked to sit still. It was a nightmare to photograph me.

I was never athletic in any sense. However, I liked to play on playgrounds.

My mother signed me up for various dance lessons. I was never that great and was usually teased.

The reports went from 'student has a tendency to run off during class time to play outside' to 'student has a tendency to leave class to work on art projects instead'. Apparently I was quite the rebel.

When I hit the teen years, I became a lot less active. Although I was always constantly fidgeting. To the point where this girl asked if there was something wrong with my nerves or something because I was often shaking. I had my reflexes tested and my nerves are fine. It was just nervous energy.

I've definitely mellowed out since then. Granted, when I worked at my last job, the whole sitting at a desk for long periods of time did get to me. I used to pace up and down in the storage closet, during my break, because the lack of exercise was getting to me. Unfortunately there wasn't anywhere that I could really go during my break.

I was active and full of life as a child until the spring that I was 10. Something happened to me when I was 10 that made me feel that my life was over and I was no longer filled with life until the late November of 2018.

I am an active child. The kind that actually outruns, outjumps and outclimbs most kids.
Despite also spending so much time on television and sleeping at odd hours.

I was also active as a teenager. The kind that actually walks hours a day.
Despite spending so much screen time and among other things.
After my 2+ year worst year induced hiatus did not put me out of shape; the worst thing it did was mess up my handwriting by not holding a pen for so long.

I'm still an active person now.
Despite still spending most of my time sitting, reading or doing whatever.


I'm habitually active.
But not necessarily healthy. Or even live healthy in general.
My health is affected by very different factors, likely also undiagnosed with an untreated unknown condition. It's like I don't appear sickly, but regularly feel crappy in several different ways in the inside...
And just grew up to flat out ignore it, just like anything else I've been dealing my whole life simply because no one seem to be doing the same thing or if they do, claim it's just 'normal'.

If I happened to have some sort of complication or something that can shock someone, it won't be a surprise to me.
And I likely wouldn't care unless it hurts or grow to be constantly more annoying than just discomfortable.

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I wasn't athletic or gifted in that area so I didn't participate in sports or even individual sports, but I wouldn't say I wasn't active. We spent summers at the beach where I would swim or in the mountains where we would go hiking so summers were quite active. During the school year not so much. I mostly played by myself with dolls and toy cars, and I made crafts and art, and read a lot. But we did have a family we were friends with whom we visited on Saturday afternoons for a time, with my parents, and we usually played hide and seek with the kids, which is a fairly active sort of game. I didn't make friends in the neighborhood. If there was anything going on or people to interact with I just clung to my sister. I did have a best friend at school though, most of the time.

I was fairly active physically. I had one of those soapbox carts, a sledge, a bicycle, roller skates, and I remember using those things. Dad used to take me swimming, and I loved that. A lot of my activity was solo stuff. I remember going round the estate with pencil and paper to make a map. I also spent quite a bit of time with other kids, roaming round with them, often as a pair, and looking for something to do. I was poor at sports but I was interested enough in them for a while. Luckily we didn't take sport very seriously in those days, it was just a bit of fun. We invented some of the games we played, and created variations of others. So we'd do stuff like running round the garden till we were tired out.

I used to play alone in a sandpit in the garden, and at one point I went out every day to work on digging a hole as deep as possible, just to see how far I could get. I took to going downstairs by climbing over the rail at the top, hanging by my hands, and dropping to the floor. Sometimes I'd forget to take my house key to school, and when I got home I'd climb up the drainpipe and get in through my upstairs bedroom window. I also enjoyed climbing up onto the flat shed roof.

But when I was about 11 years old, I became rather lethargic. I found it hard to get up in the mornings and I tended to confine myself to sedentary interests. I'd just started going to the grammar school and found the work so long and hard that I was genuinely tired out. And my social life had dried up by then, as most of the kids I knew had moved out of the area and the school was a long way from home so it wasn't really practicable to meet up with the very few friends I'd made there.

I was an active child. I was outside whenever I could be. I'd go walking around and always try to find new places in town I hadn't been to. I'd climb trees (or anything else I could), ride a bike, skate, all kinds of stuff. I did a lot of it solo, but I did have some neighborhood kids I'd go off with to. There were a few playgrounds around me, each about half an hour from my house to and sometimes I'd venture over to one of those and mess around. If I could swim, I'd do that to. I used to love being in water. I didn't play much sports, I was rather asocial and didn't always play well with others, but people liked me being on their baseball team because I was pretty fast. I couldn't catch for nothing though. Lol.

ToughDiamond, "lethargic" was a term my mum used to describe me before I reached my teens. She was always trying to get me to take vitamins because she was sure that low vitamin levels were the reason I was so inactive.

I picked up in my teens, though, always riding my bike somewhere. Sometimes for fun I'd ride 8kms around the lake near home. When I got older I did army cadets for three years and martial arts for two. Those were active.

I spent a lot of time alone with my marbles, legos, and other little things. I would organize them.

But I would also do the same with plants outside. I would walk around collecting bugs or rocks or or playing with the dirt or water. Or I would pace around my yard. Or go on walks with my parents.

I also loved the trampoline and swings.

Yes, I was extremely active child, constantly playing outside, jumping, running, socializing with other kids. It all changed first time I got my period but I don't really know if it is related, that is to say I don't know if my overall health problems are hormonal.

Relatively, but not very social.
I liked climbing trees and reading, especially combining the two.

Yes I was. My mother to this day regrets not changing my name to "Storm". She says I was like a little tornado or thunderstorm.

I was very active due to ADHD. But I mainly ran around inside because my parents didn't want me out of their sight.
Once I started taking ADHD meds I calmed down, but I still can't get through a day without some kind of movement.

I was not very active as a child and would rather read, draw, watch TV or role-play with my toys. My mother grew up in an era when parents made their kids practically live outdoors, especially summer, and she was always trying to get me to go outside more and run around because of my weight problem.

And I had a harder time than other kids my age playing outdoor games like jump rope or hopscotch or anything else that required running, jumping, climbing, catching or throwing something. As a kid I remember once being excused from class and being tested by a physiotherapist by having to do all these things. The one activity I was good at was swimming.