The sky is dark, it's bucketing down, a wind blows sideways, forcing the rain drops into your eyes and down your face. You're collecting the children from school and they're tired, hungry and soaked through.
The priorities for the rest of the afternoon are food, homework and a bit of downtime.
But what about the vigorous physical activity? Have you scheduled in the 60 minutes of exercise at a minimum, that every child needs?
A new report tells us that only 13% of Irish children are getting the recommended amount of exercise every day.
Professor Donal O'Shea, the HSE's clinical lead on obesity, says the figures are very, very disturbing and will lead to huge problems for our health service down the line.
If you're a parent, it’s enough to make your head explode. We all feel we are doing our best but here’s yet another example of where we need to do more - much more.
With a busy work and home life, lots of homework and, sometimes, reluctant children - is it just an ask too far to expect parents to police physical activity?
We can’t rely on school to do all the heavy lifting - but is it our job to break out the jumping jacks and have them running on the spot until we hit the 60-minute target?
For some parents, walking or cycling to school will eat into the exercise requirement, but for others, it will mean carving out time in an already packed day to hit the target. For many, it just won't be possible.
The Children’s Sport Participation and Physical Activity study shows that many children are active through school and community sports, but we all know that as the work load piles up in the exam years, sport falls down the agenda.
So who should bear the responsibility for making sure our children are physically active? Is it parents, schools or the Government?
We are going to be talking about this on Claire Byrne Live on Monday night.
If you’re a busy parent or a teacher who doesn’t have enough hours in the day, I’d be really grateful if you could use one of your precious moments to tell us what you think.
We’re at clairebyrnelive@rte.ie.
