KidsTerrain Topics In The News

Earlier this year, Food Network’s chef Jamie Oliver launched a televised food revolution about saving America’s health by changing the way you eat. Oliver stresses that parents must find out what their child is eating at school, and urge schools to switch from processed to fresh food.

Alarmed by the rising obesity rates and the amount of junk food being served to kids at school in his native Great Britain, Oliver met with then-prime minister Tony Blair back in 2005. He issued a challenge: Fix the dismal state of hot lunches. The School Food Trust was born, with its motto, “Eat better. Do better.” By 2008, the British government initiative swapped fried fare for wholesome vegetables, and began providing ongoing training to school kitchen staffs, slowly transforming how British kids eat.

Oliver saw parallels to the United States, with its epidemic of childhood obesity, “the increase of Type 2 diabetes being diagnosed among young adults and even children, and the vending-machine mentality of many school lunchrooms in this country. What we eat affects everything: our mood, behavior, health, growth, even our ability to concentrate,” said Oliver. “A lunchtime school meal should provide a growing child with one-third their daily nutritional intake.” Read more »

If your child has been diagnosed with a learning disability, you may be thinking about and wondering how your kid will get through homework, tests, class projects, and school reports.

Understanding Special Education Programs is not easy for parents. How can you ensure your child has the best chance to reach his or her full potential?

One vital step is to enhance your understanding of that alphabet soup called IDEA - the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004. All public schools must adhere to specific federal and state laws and regulations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004 regarding special services for qualified children with special education needs. As a result, special education and general education requirements have been unified. Read more »

While we tend to think of summer foods as hot dogs, hamburgers, and barbecue chicken, parents should take these months to get their kids involved with understanding proper nutrition. A great way to do this is to teach them how to cook. Rather than rely on fast food and the above-mentioned summer staples, web sites such as Cooking With Kids and the Food Network’s Cooking For Kids are great resources for turning your picky-eaters into gourmands. And the benefits will be multifold. Read more »

When it comes to children’s Internet safety, most parents are not savvy enough. And it is not because we aren’t hip, hep, cool, phat…choose your jargon…it’s simply that new social web sites seems to appear with the blink of an eye.

What can you do to protect your child without infringing too much on his or her perceived rights? It’s as simple as A B C: Ask, Believe, then Check.

Ask your child about the social media sites they belong to. Ask how often they visit the site. Ask what personal information they post. Ask about their Internet friends.

Believe that your child is telling you the truth. Believe that your child is careful. Believe that your child knows the dangers of Internet predators. Then…. Read more »

A comprehensive anti-bullying legislation is, at last, law in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is now, however, up to the schools, the parents, and the kids themselves to take all the necessary steps to eliminate bullying from our schools, our streets, and cyberspace.

I’ve written numerous blogs on this topic, beginning with the 2006 suicide of Megan Meier, who hanged herself three weeks before her fourteenth birthday. It took more than a year of prodding and prompting by Meier’s parents to get an investigation into the matter. Megan’s suicide was attributed to cyber-bullying through the social networking website MySpace. Lori Drew, the mother of a classmate of Meier, was later indicted in 2008. But in 2009, Mrs. Drew was acquitted on the basis that there “are no laws making the cyber-bullying, harassment and abusive actions” of Mrs. Drew a felony. Read more »

A few weeks ago I had to prepare a short talk on finding sparks of holiness. As I pondered where those sparks may exist in the ordinary moments of life, I thought about the remarkable young people whose stories I’ve shared via this blog. It is in the resilience of children that I find these sparks…sparks that set my soul ablaze with hope for the future.

One such spark is 12-year-old Jake Olson. When Jake was one-year old he was diagnosed with retinoblastoma, a condition that caused cancerous tumors to develop in both retinas. Jake’s left eye was removed, but with chemotherapy and radiation, doctors were able to save his right eye.

The cancer returned several times, and each time Jake beat it. However, in September 2009, the cancer returned for a ninth time, and this time the prognosis was grim. Jake was to lose his right eye, too. As ESPN’s Shelley Smith* reported, when asked by his mother how he was dealing with this, Jake replied, “This is just going to be a new stage of my life.” Read more »

In 2004 after Hurricane Charlie swept through Florida, seven-year-old Zach Bonner went door to door with his little red wagon to collect water, tarps, and other supplies. He collected 27 pick-up truckloads of supplies for those in need. Moved by the generosity of others, Zach founded the Little Red Wagon Foundation in 2005 to help underprivileged children.

In 2006 and 2007, Zach threw holiday parties for kids living in hurricane FEMA trailers and filled 2,000 backpacks with food, toiletries, candy, and toys for homeless children. Inspired by a documentary about Mildred Norman, the “Peace Pilgrim,” who walked 25,000 miles during the last 28 years of her life to spread her anti-war message, Zach decided to raise awareness by walking from his house to the White House. The 1,225-mile journey would be completed in three segments. Read more »

In 2001, KidsTerrain co-founder and president Maggie Moran wrote a book for children about finding one’s magic. The Magic In Me offers a simple, yet vital lesson for our children, helping them identify the talents and abilities that represent the magic in each child.

Eight years later in his address to the school children of our nation, President Obama said, “Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is.”

Now, putting aside all the political controversy, when you get right down to it, the message was a good one…and one I would think that every parent would, should, and ought to teach their children. Read more »

A couple of nights ago I was awakened at 3:45 a.m. by a torrential rainstorm. After the intense thunder and lightening subsided, and still unable to get back to sleep, I turned on the television and began flipping through the channels. That mindless activity halted when my ears pricked up upon hearing an unfamiliar word: bullycide. Understanding instantly what the word meant — suicide as a result of bullying — I grabbed my eyeglasses so that I could watch the news report.

Later in the day, I spent a few hours researching the Internet for bullycide stories. Actually, when you Google “bullycide stories,” the result reads “about 26,100 for bullycide stories.” Eventually, I ended up on You Tube. I still get goosebumps thinking about the plethora of videos I discovered there. I’d like to bring two of the videos to your attention. Read more »

Eleven-year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover hung himself after enduring daily taunts at school about being gay. This child’s death is one of several middle-school aged child suicides linked to bullying this year. Carl, a junior at New Leadership Charter School in Springfield, MA, who did not identify as gay, would have turned 12 on April 17 — which, coincidentally, is the same day “hundreds of thousands of students will participate in the 13th annual National Day of Silence by taking some form of a vow of silence to bring attention to anti-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) bullying and harassment at school” reports the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN).

According to GLSEN’s 2007 National School Climate Survey of more than 6,000 LGBT students, “nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT youth (86.2%) reported being verbally harassed at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation, nearly half (44.1%) reported being physically harassed and about a quarter (22.1%) reported being physically assaulted.” Read more »