Tara Parker-Pope recently posted on her New York Times blog Well about a British study that showed how often parents may overestimate how physically active their child on.

In the study, 1,892 British school children were equipped with accelerometers that measured their activity throughout the day. A child was seen as inactive if that activity amounted to less than an hour per day. Though the vast majority of parents described their child as physically active, over 39 percent of girls and 18 percent of boys were actually getting less than 60 minutes of physical activity a day.

Interestingly, it was the parents of children with lower fat mass who guessed wrong about the adequacy of their child’s activity, as were parents of girls. I find that fascinating. I imagine that says something to the way we perceive overweight individuals in terms of physical activity as well as something girls and self-esteem perhaps? Just a few front-of-the-mind thoughts that may be worth unpacking…