Our country is fighting some serious battles with our young children. We have very young children who are struggling with weight issues and type 2 diabetes. This is not only detrimental to their health but also to their self esteem. There is another battle we are fighting, and that is that too many young children are being left home alone, before and after school, while their parents are working. These are both dangerous situations, and I believe that I have an answer to both.
             I believe that if we can extend the school day a couple of hours for the young (elementary school) children, we can kill 2 birds with 1 stone. It would be beneficial to change the school hours to 8:00 am till 5:30 pm so that schools could fulfill the growing needs of our children. We would certainly reduce the amount of young children staying home alone, and I believe that if that extra time at school is used wisely, it could help out with the weight issues as well. We have got to take control of these problems before it is too late, and we end up losing these children at young ages because of accidents and health problems. Times have changed and we must make changes to adapt.
             Changing the elementary school hours could give us the opportunity to increase the amount of time the children had physical education and maybe we could add a nutrition class to their schedule. We could give the children 2 recesses per day; consequently, giving them more exercise to burn calories. There are many ways we could use this extra time to help our children learn and grow. If the children had a full hour of exercise everyday from longer and more intense physical education and two 30 minute recesses they could burn a lot more calories than they do now. Times have changed and children do not get outside and get the exercise that we used to when we were kids. It is too dangerous to let your kids go bike riding around the neighborhood or go pretty much anywhere
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