Not allowing kids to run in the playground! Pure madness and child obesity is why

Primary school teacher and child nutritional expert Claire Heneghan argues that fresh thinking around break-time play at school can make a real difference in the fight against Ireland's growing child obesity problem.

Action, movement and play all accumulate to make up the ‘culture of childhood’ as advocated by the psychologist Jerome Bruner in 1983.

However, over the last number of decades studies have shown that children, who have always been deemed the most active of the populace, spend an ever increasing amount of time involved in sedentary pursuits such as watching television and playing computer games. This has caused the fitness rates in children to decline.