The year was 1983 and the first summer of the Jasper Mountain Program. There were only six children in the Program at that time and they were out of school and ready for an active summer. The three staff had divided up times to supervise the children and I did most of the recreation with the children. I was a runner and when the children were in school I was able to run by myself, but now they were out of school and I had the children to supervise. My plan was to run first thing in the morning before breakfast and sometimes one or two of the children asked to run with me and we took off along a trail that used to be the former railroad track. As more children asked to come along, running on a trail was not ideal because the children all ran at a different pace and all had differing levels of endurance as to how far they could go. This would go on for the next three years until we built a running track on the property. During the fourth summer the children worked together and leveled off the ground, went to the local lumber mill and brought back many pickup truck loads of sawdust to make the running track. The result was an ideal running surface on a level field where 17.5 laps equaled one mile. With the track in place I could supervise the growing number of children (now up to 12) while I ran. Although periodically a child had shown interest in running with me, I did not anticipate that many of our emotionally disturbed children would want to do something difficult like running. So the children would sit next to the track while I ran my four miles and then we would all head to breakfast. Partially due to their efforts to make the track and partially because they got bored just sitting there, but more and more children asked to join me for a few laps periodically running and walking. Each morning there were more children running more laps.
My personal experience with running was not wonderful. I had found running unpleasant and very difficult and I avoided it growing up. The first time I ran a mile without stopping was because it was required to join the football team and I found the experience horrible. Despite being very involved in high school and college sports, I was not a runner. I only began running grudgingly at the age of 26 when all the team sports were no longer available and I wanted to stay in good shape. The health effects were so beneficial that I became a committed runner, but it was never fun. With my bad attitude about the experience of running I would never have expected emotionally disturbed children to be interested or willing to do something so unpleasant. I was wrong as it turned out. It is not that the idea of breathing hard, enduring the pain, getting sweaty and pushing yourself beyond what you thought were your limits was all that appealing to our children over the years. Actually I still am not certain why the children do it other than the practical aspect of the first thing in the morning running is what everyone does in the program. They head to the track before breakfast and some walk/run and other run the whole time for 30 minutes while their laps are counted by the staff so they get credit. We encourage the staff to run as well (a tough sell for some of them) and have found that the more participation from staff results in more participation from the children. There are some positive aspects that encourage the children such as pride when their track shoes are moved each week up the 80 foot long mileage chart, there is some positive peer pressure to be one of the runners, and there are periodic incentives (shoes, MP3 players, running outfits, etc.). However even today I marvel at how many of the children simply put in the effort and learn the amazing positive things that running can do for your personal health. After all the benefits have keep me religiously doing this activity that I have never really liked for the last 39 years.
Decades of research have shown the same findings—running has consistently been found to be the most healthy single activity a person can do. The benefits are too numerous to give a complete list but the main benefits to emotionally disturbed children are: belief in self, personal confidence, meeting a difficult goal, achieving success at a difficult task, improved respiration and circulation, improved stamina, developing coordination and muscle tone, weight loss (running helped one child last year lose 77 extra pounds), reduction in the need for numerous psychiatric medications, better sleep patterns, improved self-regulation, improved relaxation, reduced stress, enhanced stem cell development in the brain and overall improved brain health. The list goes on and for decades it has been known that these benefits are available to everyone, but running is just difficult enough that not everyone can or is willing to do it. Emotionally disturbed children in an intensive treatment program are the ideal population for the benefits of running. The challenge is how to entice the children to run. At Jasper Mountain it is the environment that does the enticing and this gradually developed over time to be what it is today.
However we have found that running can be incorporated into an existing program. When we developed a second residential treatment center at first it had no running program but through planning it was incorporated into the structure and the results were the same—the children participated. There is no sign of the interest in running fading even after 30 years. Just this year the children set new mileage records in both treatment centers. The children collectively ran 3,000 miles in ten weeks. This breaks down to an average of 1.5 miles per day for every one of the children! Is it making a difference—without question! We are not a track and field program not are we preparing the Olympians of the future. Running is a small part of our treatment program, a small component with huge positive gains. Will I personally continue to run? Yes, just as long as I am able because of what running gives back to me. Will our Programs continue to have a running program? Yes, as long as the adults do their part to make running available and teach the children the benefits of healthy lifestyle decisions like aerobic activity.
Jasper Mountain 