Danialle Karmanos has a friend who has two sons to whom he said not long ago, "Go outside and play." The mystified boys responded, "Play what?"
Karmanos, as it happens, also has two sons. At 7 months old, the fraternal twins are too young to venture out on their own, but they're already taking swimming lessons.
They have nothing to do with Danialle Karmanos' Work It Out (DKWIO), the nonprofit she founded to encourage children to do things like things like exercise and pound down fewer french fries. They are absurdly cute, however, and I love the notion of Compuware CEO Peter Karmanos Jr. having 30-minute conversations with one of them that consist entirely of the word "Oooh."
So we'll get back to them shortly. But first, feel free to be appalled at a world so sedentary that kids can't imagine what fun might be had in the front yard. Maybe Xbox needs to come up with a "Play Outside" game, just to plant some hints.
Karmanos, 36, designed DKWIO as an antidote to childhood obesity. She's recently come across statistics that say nearly 20 percent of children ages 6-19 are overweight and 23 percent of children 9-13 get no exercise more strenuous than walking to the refrigerator.
In four-plus years of working mostly with inner-city kids, she has discovered that they respond most enthusiastically to yoga. They don't recognize that it's commonly associated with yuppies in stretch pants grabbing mats from the rear compartments of Range Rovers; they just know it's peaceful and it helps their instructors' other messages make sense.
Back on the home front, meanwhile, she has discovered that her husband is an absolute goofball when it comes to babies.
Oohs and clucks
When the ultrasound showed twins, Danialle says, Peter punched his fist in the air and said, "Keep looking! Got any more in there?" When she came home after the delivery, he said, "Good going, sweetie pie! You're 40 percent there!"
At 66, with eight grandchildren, he's acting like a first-timer, hunkering down on the floor with Leonidas (the one who ooohs) and Socrates (the one who mostly clucks). They're known as Leo and Soc for short, except to their dad, who tends to call them Yo-Yo and Peanut.
Their mom was on complete bed rest the last three months of her pregnancy. She had morning sickness throughout the process -- and not just in the mornings, either -- and gained 30 pounds, but managed not to hold it against the boys and is already running half-marathons.
She understands that not everyone can be as fitness-driven as she is but also understands that portly and unmotivated are not helpful qualities for kids.
DKWIO, which is holding its first post-pregnancy fundraiser Feb. 11 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, finds that yoga resonates because 1) it's a stress reliever, 2) the only expense is a mat the kids get for free, and 3) kids feel useful when they can go home and pitch poses to their parents.
The weekly fitness programs run in three-month cycles at schools, clubs or rec centers. "One session might be balance," Danialle Karmanos says. "We'll talk about a balanced diet and then do balance poses." Often, the instructors will use visual aids, like test tubes showing the amount of sugar in a pop or the fat in a serving of french fries.
Those resonate, too. Sometimes they even generate a sound she's grown familiar with at home:
"Oooh."
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