BRAIN AWARENESS WEEK is this week, March 12-18. So take a few minutes to ponder the brain in your head or in the head of that twice-exceptional child you raise or educate. Maybe visit the site of the Dana Foundation, which co-founded Brain Awareness Week. Or find brain resources at the site of The Society for Neuroscience. Separately and possibly in observation of BAW, the Diane Rehm show on March 14 featured the topic of "The Emotional Life of Your Brain," about the interaction of chemistry, thought, and emotion; find the show.
AD/HD DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT. A pediatrician writing for the Boston Globe describes what are apparently common but sketchy approaches for diagnosing AD/HD in children, and the tendency to treat symptoms rather than the underlying causes. She also notes that current practice makes it possible to diagnose and treat AD/HD without ever learning about family history or stressors in the child's life. In response to all this, she offers changes to the process of diagnosis and treatment of AD/HD. One recommendation: having a minimum of two 50-minute visits [!] in order to evaluate the child's issues. Read more.
IT'S OKAY TO BE NOT NORMAL is the message from a psychiatrist writing at a Fox News site. He bemoans the increase in rates of diagnosis of AD/HD. He suggests that Huckleberry Finn would today be on Adderall. He says, "We must empower individuals to think it's ok to be 'not normal' and change the mindset that everything can be 'fixed' with a pill or a few therapy sessions." Read more.
SENG. The March issue of the SENGVine Newsletter is out, with articles focusing on the topic of diversity within SENG initiatives. Find the newsletter.
ASK DR. JUDY. Judy Willis is presenting a free webinar on April 5 (rescheduled) titled "What Makes the Adolescent and Teen Brain So Different and What Should Educators Do about these Differences?" Find out more.
AND FINALLY, THIS. Got a crabby kid? (Or a crabby spouse?) It could be trans fatty acids, which according to a new study are linked to irritability and aggression "in men and women of all ages." Find out more.
NEGLECTING THE GIFTED. The Wall Street Journal has concluded that the "national focus on the lowest-achieving students has helped boost their academic performance, but it has left the country's brightest young minds behind their international counterparts." The article quotes NAGC's Jane Clarenbach on the myth that GT kids are fine on their own. Read more about the problem and possible solutions.
LD ADVOCATE. A world-class lacrosse player and Johns Hopkins graduate is focusing on athletics as a way to help kids with LDs succeed. Paul Rabil, who has auditory processing disorder, was featured in an article about the Washington, DC, Lab School for kids with LDs. Also featured in the article is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former "dummy table" occupant, Philip Schultz, who learned about his own dyslexia when his second-grade son received a diagnosis. Read the article.
MEMORY AND OCD. People with remarkable autobiographical memory may be more prone to OCD-like behaviors, according to a new study. It turns out that two areas of the brain that are larger in people with exceptional memory are also larger in people with OCD. Find out more.
GIFTED HOMESCHOOLING PIONEERS. The New York Times Magazine contained an article about a couple who were homeschooling pioneers in the 1970s, four years of which focused on travel. The article is titled "My Parents Were Homeschooling Anarchists." Find it.
AD/HD AND THE BRAIN. A particular area of the brain works much harder in children with AD/HD. The area in question is the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. The reporting scientists concluded that "This fundamental difference in brain function might be an underlying cause of the inattentiveness, impulsivity and focus problems that make it hard for ADHD children to concentrate in the classroom." Find out more.
AND FINALLY, THIS. We discovered from a press release that apparently the U.S. Congress is considering legislation to categorize pizza as a "vegetable" for the purpose of school lunch menus. The irate whistle-blowers behind the press release? A group of retired military leaders who support policies that will help young Americans succeed in school and later in life. Read more at the group's website, www.missionreadiness.org.(Part of the group's motivation, from their website: "75 percent of 17- to 24-year-olds in the US cannot serve in the military, primarily because they are physically unfit, have not graduated from high school, or have a criminal record.")
DYSLEXIA GOES TO COLLEGE. An event at Stanford University for college admission deans was intended to help colleges appreciate dyslexic applicants. Organized in part by expert Sally Shaywitz, the event featured speakers who shared their experiences with dyslexia -- Charles Schwab was among those. Also covered: topics such as the effect of dyslexia on the testing and admissions process; accommodations in college; and tips for dyslexic students on choosing the right college. Read more.
COMPOUNDING THE PROBLEM. Research by Autism Speaks notes that more than half of the young people in their registry also show symptoms of either attention problems or of hyperactivity. Researchers noted that the AD/HD symptoms further burden children with autism, and stressed the importance of identifying AD/HD symptoms so that they could be addressed. Read more.
TREATING OCD. An article in Time Magazine noted the effectiveness of a therapy called exposure and response prevention (ERP) in reducing OCD symptoms, especially when used in combination with medication. Among kids in a JAMA-reported study, about 67 percent of kids treated with a combination of medicine and ERP reduced their OCD symptoms by a 30 percent benchmark. Find out more.
GIFTED STUDENTS AND ONLINE LEARNING was the topic of an Education Week online chat this week. Interested persons may find the chat at theEducation Week website.
GIFTED ISSUES DISCUSSION FORUM. The Davidson Institute maintains a free public forum for the discussion of gifted issues at http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/. Some of the threads deal with twice-exceptional topics, such as giftedness and AD/HD, or low working memory, or visual processing issues.
AD/HD AND STIMULANTS. About 2.8 million children in the United States were prescribed stimulant medicine for AD/HD in 2008, up from previous years. The study covered the years from 1996 to 2008. Usage is higher in boys and children not of color; usage is lower in Western states. Find out more.
BEST STEM HIGH SCHOOLS. Want to find out which high schools rank highest in the teaching of science and math? US News can tell you.
SMARTS AND PROCESSING SPEED. Adolescents become smarter (as measured on intelligence tests) because their processing speed increases, according to a new study. Read more.
BRAIN RESOURCE. Healthline has a cool interactive tool for visualizing the brain. You can turn it, split it, see different layers, identify components, and read about them. Find it.
AND FINALLY, THIS. You can buy your child a pair of $40 sunglasses with a hidden video camera inside. According to a reviewer, the set-up includes a battery, 128MB of RAM, and a USB port for downloading the video to a computer for viewing and editing. Read the review or go to the vendor's website.
THE LEARNING STYLE DEBUNKERS are at it again. NPR's health blog "Shots" quotes psychologist Dan Willingham, whom you've read about before in this blog, in saying that teachers should not "tailor instruction to different kinds of learners." This seems counter-intuitive to many of us parents and educators, but the blog also mentions another psychologist who, in reviewing studies of learning styles, "found no scientific evidence backing up the idea." So the debate goes on... Read "Shots."
KNOW AN ASPIE KID? Read a great article about Noah Egler, 13, who because of his intelligence and interests recently got a chance to participate in a med school seminar on prosthetic limbs, bonding with his 23-year-old lab partner in the process. In Noah's mind, "Asperger's is what makes him him," according to the article. Read it.
DYSLEXIA MYTHS. Read about them in blog at "Accredited Online Colleges," where all of the posts seem to involve a number. (10 Scary Red Bull Facts Every College Student Should Know. 25 Funniest Academic Raps on YouTube. And more.) Myth 10: "Dyslexia is rare." The reality? It impacts up to 20 percent of us. Find the myths.
YOU KNOW YOU'RE A BAD MOTHER WHEN you don't get you son a birthday card he really appreciates -- and you don't include money in it. At least, that's what an 18-year-old son of an attorney, divorced from the boy's mother, thought when he and his sister filed a lawsuit (through the father) against his mom for bad mothering. Two years into the suit, a judge dismissed it. Read more and marvel.
ONLINE DEGREE FOR STUDENTS WITH AUTISM. Sage Colleges in Albany, New York, will in January initiate an all-online bachelor's program for students with autism or LDs. The school promises individualization and flexibility. Find out more.
LAUGHING AT CHAOS is the name of a blog by the mother of two, one apparently 2e. Last month she blogged about the family move from Colorado to Illinois: "For the record, you haven’t lived until you’ve driven across Nebraska in July with a flatulent dog. We’ve been playing a New!Awesome!Game! 'Where’s the feedlot or was that Rosie?'" This is obviously an astute and discriminating person, because yesterday she picked up on Monday's quote of the week on the 2e Newsletter Facebook page and riffed on that for awhile. Find the blog.
"DUH!" OF THE WEEK. The Canadian Paediatric Society and the American Academy of Pediatrics (not Paediatrics) are against boxing, saying that "Boxing is not an appropriate sport for children and teens." We agree; save young brains. Read more.