EmpoweringParents.com

Many of you have been talking about the effects of diet and food additives on kids with ADHD, so I wanted to weigh in on this topic.

In a well-known UK study last year, the effects of artificial food color and additives (AFCA) on kids found that food additives make hyperactive behaviors more pronounced in children as young as 3 and up to middle childhood, around 9 years of age. The study found that a significant though small group of children exhibited hyperactivity as a result of drinking a specially concocted drink containing food colors and preservatives.

Read more »

In the news this week, there have been stories of misconduct by teachers, students and other school authority figures, from the teacher who duct taped his student to a desk, to the Pre-K teacher in Texas who was caught on tape saying “You all are stupid kids. If you’re mean to me, that means I get to be mean to you—got it?” And then there was the school bus driver in Phoenix who got into a shoving match with a 15- year-old student. (The student was suspended, the bus driver is now on paid leave pending further investigation.) In this post, James Lehman talks about what’s going on in our schools, and why teachers need training, too.

Read more »

When you drive into DeKalb, Illinois, there is a large sign with a flying ear of corn on it—yes, corn with wings—proudly proclaiming “Home of DeKalb Corn.”

Read more »

I have long believed that behavioral therapy is the key to helping kids with ADHD. In fact, a new study on ADHD said that comprehensive behavioral therapy works as well as medication over the long haul. Also, earlier studies showed that after 14 months, 30% of the behavioral therapy group did just as well as those with medication. Of course, there are no side effects to behavioral therapy—except, perhaps, much happier parents and kids. Read more »

Do you know how much time your teen-ager spends online? Or how many “friends” they’ve made through social networking sites? The Norton Global Online Living Report came out today, and according to the study, 41 percent of teens said their moms and dads “had no clue” what their kids were doing online.

Read more »

The February issue of Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology features a study that says kids with ADHD are more likely to be bullied at school–or to actually be bullies themselves.

Read more »

Recently, some more teen-agers took explicit photos of themselves—one girl was topless, and two teens, a boy and a girl, were engaged in a sexual act—and sent them, via cell phone, “to a few friends,” a practice known as “porn swapping.” Now the police have been called and are going to prosecute anyone at the kids’ high school found with either of the photos stored in their cell phones. You see, the kids who did it are underage, which means—you guessed it— those images now constitute child pornography. Of course, the police didn’t get there before the pictures went viral. Both have been sent from phone to phone, and most probably have found their way onto the Internet by now. Read more »

Is paying kids for good grades a good idea? An article in USAToday this week mentioned that some states are getting in on the act–and paying students for good academic results.

In my home, we had a system where if our son got on the honor roll, he got a monetary reward—one we could afford. Not one that was a stretch for us. If he didn’t get on the honor roll, he didn’t get punished. He just didn’t get the reward. And I asked him, “What did you learn from this?” And, “What are you going to do differently next time to make the honor roll?” We focused him on the steps to take to get the reward next time. That fit our family just fine. Yes, we used money. But this is a decision that has to be made on a family by family basis. Read more »