The Influence of Early Childhood Activity Levels on Physical and Mental Health in Middle Childhood

• In Event: Physical and mental health across the lifecourse

Abstract

Physical activity helps facilitate good physical and mental health (Pate et al., 2015; Roychowdhury, 2019). Despite this, young people do not engage in sufficient amounts of physical activity (Thompson & Eijsvogels, 2017) which, in turn, poses threats to their overall health (Patton et al., 2016). Currently, a rising prevalence of both physical and mental health problems is seen (Adams et al., 2017). However, few studies have investigated movement in young children (ages 2 to 5 years) and, therefore, little is known about the ramifications of early childhood activity (Timmons et al., 2012).

The current study investigated early childhood temperamental activity (ages 3 and 4), 5-year-old household chaos, and children’s health behaviors and somatic symptoms at follow-up (ages 7-13) as they related to children’s somatic (parent-reported) and anxiety (child-reported) symptoms at follow-up. It was hypothesized that activity levels and health behaviors would negatively predict somatic (H1) and anxiety (H2) symptomology, whereas household chaos and (child-reported) somatic symptoms would positively predict those outcomes.

Families were tested as part of a longitudinal study of twins. At ages 3 and 4, parents rated the children’s temperament, including physical activity levels. Parents rated overall chaos in the home when children were 5 years old. During middle childhood, a subset of 93 children participated in a follow-up study, where children completed a self-reported rating of somatic and anxiety symptoms and parents rated children’s health behaviors and somatic symptoms. Mixed multilevel modeling (MLM) was used to test our hypotheses predicting parent-reported somatic symptoms (H1) and child-reported anxiety symptoms (H2). It is favorable to use MLM in a twin study because this approach accounts for hierarchical data (e.g., analyses include siblings within families). Six models were tested for each hypothesis. For both hypotheses, the best fitting model indicated that, when accounting for these data being hierarchical (i.e., a significant within-family effect), a main effect was found in the predicted direction for nearly all independent variables, except parent-reported somatic symptoms (see Tables 1 and 2).

Overall, analyses demonstrated that early childhood activity levels significantly influenced physical (somatic) and mental health (anxiety) outcomes in middle childhood (ages 7-13). Specifically, parent-reported somatic symptoms (H1) at follow-up were negatively predicted by 3-year-old activity levels and positively related to household chaos. Similarly, children’s self-reported anxiety symptoms (H2) in middle childhood were negatively predicted by 4-year-old activity levels and positively associated with children’s health behaviors (physical activity and dietary routines) and parent-reported somatic symptoms at follow-up. Importantly, these results were found across multiple informants (parent- and child-reports) using a longitudinal design (ages 3, 4, and 5 to ages 7-13 years).

These findings build upon previous research demonstrating that decreased physical activity and increased family dysfunction (e.g., household chaos) are predictive of greater physical/mental health problems in childhood (Brown et al., 2013; Klemfuss et al., 2018; Roychowdhury, 2019). Taken together, these results support the overall importance of early childhood activity for promoting better health outcomes in middle childhood and, in turn, healthier lives for young children.

Authors

• Matthew R. Jamnik, Southern Illinois University
  Presenting Author

• Lisabeth Fisher DiLalla, Southern Illinois University
  Non-Presenting Author