As a parent, you may have found yourself asking, “Why do kids have so much energy?” Scientific researchers have looked into this question, and have confirmed what many parents are experiencing: Kids naturally have so much energy, it’s actually impossible for grownups to match it!
One study, for example, showed that children have more energy and recover faster than well-trained endurance athletes. Another study found that toddlers burn so much more energy than adults, that they’re “like a different species.” So if you can’t keep up, it’s not your fault.
According to the first study, published in Frontiers in Physiology, 9- to 11-year-old children have fatigue-resistant muscles and can recover faster from high-intensity exercise (such as sprinting and cycling) than both trained and untrained adults. Without any specific athletic training, the kids in the study were naturally able to use more of their aerobic metabolism (create energy by burning sugars, fats and proteins) than the adults, and were less tired during the exercises.
The other study, published in Science, reviewed energy use at every age of the human lifespan, and determined that babies and toddlers between 9 and 15 months old burn 50 percent more energy in one day than adults do, adjusted for body size. Researcher Herman Pontzer of Duke University commented, “Little people are not burning energy like small adults. They are burning energy superfast…like a different species.”
These scientific findings can help you understand and empathize with some of your kids’ high-energy behaviors — that you may have seen as wild, rude, loud, or aggressive. So next time your kids are bouncing off the walls, take a moment to sit back and appreciate their energy levels before reacting.
Sources:
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Frontiers in Physiology, “Metabolic and Fatigue Profiles Are Comparable Between Prepubertal Children and Well-Trained Adult Endurance Athletes”
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U.S. News & World Report, “Children Have More Energy Than Endurance Athletes”
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Science, “Daily energy expenditure through the human life course”
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Science, “Little kids burn so much energy, they’re like a different species, study finds”
