Challenged? I blame Bear Grylls

Published May 21, 2015

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London - There's music blasting out full volume and two of the four children are doing sit-ups on the carpet. Their little faces are bright red.

When I ask what the hell’s going on, they tell me it’s a challenge. “We’re seeing how many we can do in one minute,” the 12-year-old replies. This is confusing.

I understand why my energy ball of a son, who’s eight, is doing it. He’s like a chipmunk who’s downed six strong espressos these days, but my more relaxed eldest normally avoids any form of sporting activity.

She doesn’t like to break out in a sweat: she is the girl who opted for high jump on sports day so she could “be out as quickly as possible”. The most excited I have seen her about PE is when I discussed buying a sports bra. “Do they come in leopard print?” she asked.

So her sit-ups are a mystery, though I note a Wispa chocolate bar and a bag of popcorn beside her. “For energy,” she explains. It seems my children have succumbed to the new “challenge” culture. Everywhere I turn, outwardly sane people are taking part in some form of extreme activity.

Some of the moms at the school gate are doing the 30-a-day squat challenge and claim their bottoms are getting firmer in minutes.

“I do it while I am cleaning my teeth,” one says. “It gets it out of the way.”

And instead of just going for a gentle morning jog as they usually do, normal friends are taking up marathon running.

It’s all very disconcerting. I blame survival expert Bear Grylls, or the “world’s poshest Boy Scout”, as one of the papers dubbed him.

He’s constantly on TV “pushing people to live beyond the limit of human endurance” (from the back of a speed boat in the Pacific).

I fear his reality show The Island and others such as Ninja Warrior - where super-fit people with normal day jobs battle a giant obstacle course - are making us all feel failures for leading lives with hard-earned creature comforts, such as pizza and biscuits.

I’ve always been suspicious of Bear. He has the demeanour of a small, inquisitive woodland animal who’s been surprised doing something extremely naughty.

But my fearsome foursome have been gripped by The Island, and it’s this that has turned their minds to completing challenges.

One night after school I find my 11-year-old and a friend in the kitchen staring at a teaspoon of cinnamon. The plan is to swallow the spice in one go and hold out for a full, uncomfortable 60 seconds before having a glass of water.

When I Google it, I find this daft challenge is a global phenomenon, with people posting videos of their spluttering, choking and gagging. But I much prefer it to the Chubby Bunny challenge, which they tried secretly in the bedroom because they knew that I’d disapprove. This is to find how many marshmallows you can get in your mouth without spitting them out.

Britain’s Got Talent prompted a contortionist challenge in our house. The four-year-old and eight-year-old spent ten minutes trying to put both legs behind their heads after a double-jointed contestant made his limbs pop out of their sockets.

The moment Simon Cowell uttered “We’ve never seen anything like this before,” I knew a million under-tens would attempt it.

Today, we live in a culture where you earn kudos for pushing yourself “out of your comfort zone” so, unless you’ve set fire to your head while on a 22-day fast, covered in spiders, you have not achieved much in life.

It was all much easier in my youth when the subliminal influence of children’s TV amounted to what you saw on Baywatch. No one went out of their comfort zone, unless you count the high-cut swim-suits or David Hasselhoff’s hair.

I’ve had to put a stop to the children’s challenges as I fear they will get increasingly extreme. I’m not impressed by this “unreality” TV, as my 11-year-old calls it.

We were pondering how extreme TV could become when a visiting child piped up: “My dad can kill a hedgehog with his hands. He’s got survival skills from living in the woods.”

Killing a hedgehog with your hands? That is an impressive challenge. Odd, but impressive.

Daily Mail

Lorraine Candy is editor-in-chief of Elle magazine.

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