Physical Activity Levels during Therapeutic Camp Activities in Youth with Disabilities in the United States

Abstract

Youth with developmental disabilities (DD) face challenges that may impact their participation in physical activity. One of the biggest challenges is the availability of opportunities to engage in activities that are adapted for youth with DD. In addition, due to challenges with current physical activity assessment methods for youth with DD, the activity levels during modified activities remain unclear. The purpose of this investigation was to determine the activity levels of youth with DD during structured and unstructured activities offered during a therapeutic camp. This camp was a five-day, overnight experience in an outdoor camp center in the southeastern region of the U.S. Youth (n = 29; 14.6 ± 3.9 years) with more than one DD and with varying abilities wore accelerometers while they engaged in 13 activities of varying categories (functional/gross motor, game, sociodramatic, fine motor, free play) and contexts (ropes, horses, outdoor adventure, music and movement, yoga, come on down, sports and games, theatre, cabin challenge, arts, cooking, mad science, free play). Activity level varied by activity category and context and the intensity level of the majority of the camp activities was classified as either sedentary or light. There was a time course effect on activity; most activities resulted in a gradual decline over the session, except for cooking, sports and games, and free play. This therapeutic camp provided an opportunity for youth to engage in physical activity that would be classified as light intensity. The activities available at this camp were designed to address specific goals and objectives and provided enrichment opportunities (e.g., life skills, social skills) for youth to obtain multiple skills while using movement as a framework to deliver the content.

Dyadic Predictors of Willing to Engage in Physical Activity and Emotional Eating in Children and Adolescents with Mild and Moderate Intellectual Disability

“…As is well known, there area whole range of factors determining lifestyle, and these will be both individual factors (e.g., beliefs about oneself and one’s body; physical limitations related to disabilities and/or comorbidities) and environmental (e.g., including family ones—parental beliefs, attitudes, and practices regarding child feeding, motivating the child to a healthy lifestyle, and maintaining such a healthy lifestyle by the parents) [ 3 , 4 ]. However, what is important in this context is that many currently available reports in this field refer to the functioning of children without a diagnosis of intellectual disability, and, as we know, due to numerous individual and environmental barriers, children with ID may function differently in this context than their peers [ 5 , 6 ]. Therefore, using the perspective of dyadic research (based on data from both individuals of the child-parent pair), it is worth analyzing in more detail from which selected variables of the child’s and parents’ functional range we can predict children’s willingness to engage in physical activity and the tendency to eat under the influence of emotions.…”