Most people who have ADHD children or treat ADHD patients know that there is a strong link between certain foods or food ingredients and behavior; it doesn’t take a genius to know that high-sugar foods will trigger hyper behavior, but less well-known are triggers in food dyes, preservatives, etc.

This Scripps research suggests that we all have to be more careful about junk food.  As a passionate lover of Doritos and whatnot, I have a hard time with this, but I see every day in school the effect that some foods have on our ADHD students and the associated negative behaviors and poor class performance.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6451119/Junk-food-as-addictive-as-drugs.html

High-sugar, high-fat muffins or donuts may be an acceptable treat now and again, but probably not before school.  Why?  Because lots of students end up lethargic and and dull-witted until the effect wears off.  Protein in the morning is always a better option.   Part of our mission at Elijah School is to educate the whole student – understanding foods’ effects, both positive and negative – and that includes their bodies.  

The same goes for various high-energy drinks: a 16 oz. Monster has about almost more than two-and-a-half times as much caffeine as a Diet Coke.   It is a reasonable hypothesis that a young person who drinks said Monster will not be in a condition to do any serious learning.  Or focusing.  Or even thinking.  His brain will be in overdrive until the caffeine wears off, and even then there may be an even worse “crash”.

We strive to educate students with learning differences to make wise decisions in school and in life.  Go ahead and have that Monster – at a sleepover or a youth retreat, but not before geometry.  I firmly believe that when donuts are offered, it is our moral obligation to have one: but it shouldn’t be the only thing we eat for breakfast, and if you’re being offered them every day you need to move.  Or call me.

In recess (or PE), students learn actual physical skills, group dynamics, social skills, and even build neural pathways as they learn and repeat different physical actions. 

At Elijah School every student has PE for at least 45 minutes every day.  Middle schoolers have PE in the morning and a 30 minute recess after lunch.  With a population of non-traditional learners (many of whom have ADHD and the like), the time to burn off some excess energy is critical to their ability to focus on schoolwork.  It is also important in their social development. 

We think this survey is an important piece of information for our schools – homesschoolers, too.  What do you think?

http://www.rwjf.org/vulnerablepopulations/product.jsp?id=55249

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2010/02/04/critics-slam-disney-child-stars-clothing-line-racy/?test=faces

Pardon me, but am I crazy to think we should never have to even think about whether or not an 8 year old’s clothes are “too racy”?  The very thought is a wee bit nauseating, after all.  But if you check out the link, sure enough, the headline isn’t too far off. 

Right after that, I saw this : http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,585108,00.html.  I’ll save you some trouble and tell you that it’s a call from the International Planned Parenthood Federation calling on America to rethink explicit sex education for all children age – wait for it – ten and up.  That we should think of these kids as “sexual beings”.  We need to show sexuality as a “positive force for change and development, as a source of pleasure, an embodiment of human rights and an expression of self.”

You read that right.  Kids who are still playing with dolls, forming elementary school friendships, learning to read and write, now require detailed sex ed. 

Now, I know that the IPPF has an agenda to push, but this is just plain indoctrination.  Read the above sentence carefully: sex isn’t a force for change, but sexuality is.  You mean, like homosexuality?  Or bisexuality?  This is, in my opinion, just evil.  Kids of that age simply aren’t capable of understanding sex as part of a healthy relationship according to God’s standards.  There are plenty of kids a lot older who have the same trouble.  Sex as an “expression of self” is what has led to half the problems of modern society: sex isn’t about self, it’s about a couple bound in marriage. 

Educate your children so that they understand the depth and breadth of God’s love for them as expressed by His son, Jesus Christ Our Lord.  His Word tells us the appropriate boundaries for sex, and they don’t include ten year olds.  Protect your young ones from a media who wants to sell them false idols of every description and lure them into growing up too fast.  Self-esteem does not come from wearing the right clothes or acting like adults.  It comes first and foremost from knowing they are precious and unique creations of Our Heavenly Father who loves them dearly.

Have we really sunk so low in our society that this is the best we can do?  How is it we expect so little of men today in terms of behavior, but see him almost exclusively as a provider of material wealth and sexual gratification?  Speaking as a man with two young daughters, I want better for them, and they have the right to expect better.  I want to see more young men who are willing to give up their obessions looking good and feeling good for actually doing good and being good. 

As a Christian school, it is our job to point students to appropriate male role models (e.g. Biblical ones), but also to give them examples to live by.  The Bible is full of them: open the pages and they leap out at you.  Work, love, the difference between the sexes, and God’s expectations of men (and women) are there for all too see.  If we don’t provide the teaching and coaching of character, we can be sure that our media-driven culture will fill the void. 

At Elijah School it is our objective to educate the entire student – body, mind, and soul.  Our classes extend beyond the core subjects to include social skills, critical thinking, and life skills.   We do so because we must.  The alternative is the vapid and self-centered men we see on TV – no thank you.

Lately, though, with events in Copenhagen, “Climategate” e-mails, and even movies like “Avatar”, we see a disturbing trend towards people worshiping creation rather than the Creator.  This is pantheism, the idea that God and nature are one, a spiritual movement that calls us into communion with the universe.  This has been a popular idea for years, especially the ‘pantheism lite’ of Hollywood in which spirituality is really nothing more than political correctness and leftist enviro-orthodoxy without any real commitments.  Personal obligations regarding holiness, morality, and ethics are set aside in favor of groupthink about our planet. 

I would like to argue that all Christians are responsible for the care and stewardship of our planet – with the understanding that reasonable people may differ on how best to carry them out – precisely because God loves us and His Creation.  But we must never confuse the object of our worhip – Christ the King and the Trinity – with earth.  We should be getting to work now on transforming the world and our culture with and through the power of the Holy Spirit before Christ comes again and ushers in His new creation.  “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.  I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down from Heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” (Rev 21:1-2)

Ross Douthat has an excellent column on “Avatar” and Hollywood’s pantheism in the New York Times, of all places:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/opinion/21douthat1.html?_r=3

1. Give your child clear and specific instructions about what you want your child to do.
2. Avoid using similes and paryicularly letaphors unless you can explain them accurately.
3. Don’t ever presume that your child can pick up the rights and wrongs of certian behaviors along the course of his or her life.
4. All things need to be spelled out clearly to any child, but a child on the autistic spectrum needs things spelled out to them more than most.
5. Teach them about the value of money and the rights and wrongs of taking other people’s things.  Explain clearly that this is a rule.
6. Explain things in a way that is very clear and use comparisons that your own child is likely to understand.  Analogies from their specialist subject will capture their attention.
7. Keep checking with your AS kid to make sure they have understood.

Great advice from a 13-year old with Asperger Syndrome.  For Elijah School, I think the greatest of these is #1: give the child clear and specific instructions.  This has really helped us communicate more effectively with our students.

I am very concerned about the amount of time young people spend immersed in technology without interacting with real, live, warm bodies.  There’s nothing funamentally wrong with You Tube or Facebook, for example, but there’s lots of ugly, dark, and corrosive materials on both sites.  Sexual content is among the most pervasive.

One of the more worrisome aspects of all this is that it becomes very commonplace and hence young minds can see it and watch it without even really noticing anymore.  Here is an excerpt from a column of David Brooks in the New York Times:

“Across the centuries the moral systems from medieval chivalry to Bruce Springsteen love anthems have worked the same basic way. They take immediate selfish interests and enmesh them within transcendent, spiritual meanings. Love becomes a holy cause, an act of self-sacrifice and selfless commitment.

But texting and the utilitarian mind-set are naturally corrosive toward poetry and imagination. A coat of ironic detachment is required for anyone who hopes to withstand the brutal feedback of the marketplace. In today’s world, the choice of a Prius can be a more sanctified act that the choice of an erotic partner.

This does not mean that young people today are worse or shallower than young people in the past. It does mean they get less help. People once lived within a pattern of being, which educated the emotions, guided the temporary toward the permanent and linked everyday urges to higher things. The accumulated wisdom of the community steered couples as they tried to earn each other’s commitment.

Today there are fewer norms that guide in that way. Today’s technology seems to threaten the sort of recurring and stable reciprocity that is the building block of trust.”

“…they get less help”  really resonates with me.  As parents, educators, and Christians it is our job to helping young minds make proper decisions and to see things for what they really are; it’s very easy to romanticize or think idyllic certain situations which are bound to have destructive effects on a young life.  We need to be there with the Truth for our society – who else will?

As part of my preparation to teach essay-writing, I have been reading essays – lots of real essays written by real people for real people (as opposed to essays written by students, to be read by test graders, because they have to do well on their SAT’s).  In “On the Transmission of Christianity”, by C.S. Lewis (from God in the Dock), the author discusses the failure of Christianity to be transmitted to the younger generation.  He proposes that the younger generation had not accepted Christianity because it had never been explained to them.  The onus is placed firmly back on the previous generation.  He states, “None can give to another what he does not possess himself.”

He goes on to say:

                                “We are often told that education is a key position.  That is very false in one sense and               very true in another.  If it means that you can do any great thing by interfering with existing              schools, altering curricula, and the like, it is very false.  As the teachers are, so they will teach.       Your ‘reform’ may incommode and overwork them, but it will not radically alter the total effect   of their teaching.  Planning has no magic whereby it can elicit figs from thistles or choke-pears       from vines.  The rich, sappy, fruit-laden tree will bear sweetness and strength and spiritual      health:  the dry, prickly, withered tree will teach hate, jealousy, suspicion, and inferiority complex – whatever you tell it to teach.  They will do it unknowingly and all day long.  But if we                 mean that to make adult Christians now and even beyond that circle, to spread the immediately   sub-Christian perceptions and virtues, the rich Platonic or Virgilian penumbra of the Faith, and    thus to alter the type who will be teachers in the future – if we mean that to do this is to perform          the greatest of all services for our descendants, then it is very true.”

While Lewis was speaking about the institution of education, I believe that the principle is true on the personal level.   If we are not being  “fed” spiritually, we will have nothing to pass on to our children.  If we are not allowing God to discipline us and build our character, how can we build the character of our child?

Are you spending time in the Word?  Are you spending time in prayer?  In fellowship with other believers?  In corporate worship and teaching?  Do you have people in your life who will hold you accountable to God’s standards?  If not, how will you be equipped to pass these things to your children?

A friend recently asked me if I had thought about what kind of grandmother I would like to be (first grandchild coming in March).  Of course I have.  I want to spend time with this and future grandchildren.  To have fun and learn and make memories.  Most importantly of all, I want to pass on a legacy of faith, which I must first possess.   How about you?  

by Marilyn Groop

At Elijah School we spend a good deal of time teaching self-monitoring skills.  Not only are they necessary for good and healthy relationships, but research suggests that these skills are very good predictors of both academic and social success in life. 

In Ephesians 4:15 Paul told us “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.”  We need to be honest with each other, but also with ourselves.  We ask our students – BEFORE they speak – to ask themselves: Is it true?  Is it kind?  Is it necessary?  If you can answer “yes” to all three statements, they should go ahead.  We don’t want to limit their thinking or their fruitful speech, just provide appropriate outlets and guidelines. 

In this interview, Laura Berk suggests some ways to help teach our children critical skills in self-discipline, handling intense emotions, and impulse control.

http://www.bamradionetwork.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=148:teaching-your-child-self-control-&catid=35:educators-channel&Itemid=89

At Elijah School, we pride ourselves on teaching core subjects that every student and every American ought to know.  We just do it with more hands-on and multi-sensory experiences.