AJ woke up with a slight fever again this morning, but it disappeared quickly. He seemed so much better and he was driving me so insane that I let him go back to school today. Ordinarily, I probably would have kept him home one more day, but he has a special assembly today to kick off his school�s 6-week fitness challenge.

The assembly is being led by none other than Staley Da Bear, the mascot of the Chicago Bears football team (Go Bears!). Gee, he looks a little bloodthirsty. Staley, are those your teeth or are you not finished chewing a Cheesehead? Are you sure it�s safe for you to be around tender, juicy young children?

I can�t help but wonder if Staley Da Bear is the best role model for a fitness program. According to the Bears website, Staley is �not your average sized bear� and weighs a whopping 340 pounds. Gee, Staley, that�s almost as much as William �Refrigerator� Perry. Maybe you should practice what you preach.

In any case, Staley will be inspiring a bunch of preschoolers to slim down and work out. I�m a little concerned about how AJ will take his recommendations. He tends to be extremely earnest about recommendations about his health. He was afraid to have ice cream after dinner last night because after he threw up in the morning, he overheard me telling Mr. Spy to give him water at room temperature because it�s easier on the stomach. I don�t want him to start obsessing about his weight. I can barely keep his pants on as it is.

I�m all for schools supporting fitness. Somewhere I think I still have my certificates for successful completion of the Presidential Fitness Challenge from junior high and high school. That was the only time I liked gym class, because I didn�t have to play nicely with others. I think schools should do what they can to help kids be healthy. They should provide healthy food in their cafeterias � low fat, compex carbs, fresh fruits and vegetables and a minimum of sodium and refined sugars. They should have gym and/or recess daily. AJ�s elementary school has just gone from weekly to daily gym class for all grades past kindergarten, as well as one or two recesses per day, depending on age group and other scheduled events for the day. I think this is great. Kids need to run around more. I think we�d have a lot fewer ADHD diagnoses if schools hadn�t cut back on recess so drastically. And they should teach kids about nutrition and give them the information about how to make healthy choices.

What I�m not sure they should be doing, is weighing and measuring. But apparently many schools are doing just that. For a public school to be weighing and measuring its students seems, to me, to be crossing a line. It is invasive. I would have been mortified. I am reminded of a legendary part of my college�s history, the posture pictures. For decades, women attending that particular institution of higher learning were photographed either naked or in their underwear (depending on how the story goes) in order to assess their posture. They were photographed upon arrival and exit and possibly each year in between. There were often scandalous rumors of the theft of posture pictures for pornographic purposes. But whether or not they were ever stolen doesn�t really matter. It was highly personal and intimate and not an experience anyone would wish to have mandatorily enforced by a person or institution with power over them.

An article in Sunday�s New York Times suggests that school recommendations about weight and diet are sometimes causing undue anxiety and alarm for students and is possibly contributing to a troubled relationship with food. The article begins with a discussion of a six-year-old girl of normal weight who has been refusing most food since a letter was sent home from school listing her BMI. I find this very alarming. The whole premise is presumptuous. Yes, it�s true that some children get better nutrition at home than others for a whole variety of reasons. Yes, ideally it would be great to educate parents about how to give their children the best nutrition. But to do that by subjecting students to a process that is likely to make them uncomfortable and may possibly frighten them is irresponsible. And to assume schools know more than parents is folly. And you�d better not start addressing the issue without taking into consideration socio-economic and cultural/ethnic backgrounds.

In Illinois, as in most states, schools require annual proof of vaccinations for all students. As of last year (I think � it might have been two years ago), pediatricians are required to measure and report a child�s BMI to parents as well. This means that the information is being communicated the students and their parents in a much more appropriate manner and place: in the doctor�s office between doctor and parent and child. I hope this means there will be no question of BMI measurement in AJ�s school. But I�m not holding my breath. If I have to, I�ll sit AJ down when he gets home. �Don�t worry about your weight,� I�ll say. �Staley Da Bear weighs more than 8 times your weight. And he�s a fitness icon.�

[There's a new entry up at AJ's Clubhouse. And there were three (count 'em: 1, 2 3) entries here yesterday. Click back if you missed any of my scintillating prose. Or don't, and save yourself some time.]

2 people said it like they meant it