Role of nutrition bringing positive change in child behavior

There is a direct link with right food choices and child behaviour. Normally we can notice that when a child is not properly nourished, he/she cannot perform well in physical or mental tasks at school or home. Nutrition play an important role in not only physical or mental growth of a child but in child’s behaviour as well. This post  provides facts and statistics proving that nutrition can help bring positive change regarding child behavior.


Experts have discovered that food can ramp-up children’s behavior. Now recent research and studies have proved that foods and ingredients can, indeed, make a difference. It makes perfect sense that what kids eat affects their behavior. It is well established that poor nutritional intake and deficiencies in zinc, iron, B vitamins and protein can impair brain function and lead to violence and antisocial behavior in children. Nutritional deficiencies, including zinc, magnesium, calcium and essential fatty acids, as well as carbohydrate cravings, have also been noted in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD).
Nutritional supplements may be helpful in deterring violent and anti-social behavior. When vitamin and minerals were given to elementary school children with behavioral problems, it led to a reduction in the incidence of anti-social behavior.
The researchers said that "undiagnosed and untreated malnutrition may be impairing their brain function to such an extent that normal learning from discipline does not occur."
Malnutrition in the first few years of life leads to antisocial and aggressive behavior throughout childhood and late adolescence, according to a new USC study.
“These are the first findings to show that malnutrition in the early postnatal years is associated with behavior problems through age 17,” said Jianghong Liu, a postdoctoral fellow with USC’s Social Science Research Institute and the lead author of the study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry’s November issue.


How we can make healthy change in food habits?
By:

• minimizing exposure to junk food and food additives, 
• choosing nourishing, primary, low allergenic foods as dietary staples, 

• assuring nutrient adequacy by careful monitoring of the child’s food intake. 


Supplemental Diets 
It stands to reason that an adequate diet is necessary for a child’s healthy growth. Proper nutrition, including an array of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and essential fatty acids (EFAs), is particularly necessary in the first few years of life to support brain development and prevent certain neurological disorders. Even among older children, a lack of certain dietary components such as protein, or an insufficient number of calories, can negatively affect a child’s learning and behavioral abilities, and vitamin or mineral deficiencies can certainly interfere with learning over the course of a school year.
Research shows, however, that a young child must be significantly malnourished in proteins and calories before brain development is seriously affected, and this level of malnutrition is rare in the United States. To date no convincing evidence has shown that a poor diet causes ADHD, or that dietary supplements can be used to successfully treat the condition.


First published at 'factoidz'

Useful links:
 * Your Child’s Diet: A Cause and a Cure of ADHD? 

Keywords: supplements advice, hgh articles

'Child Psychology Research Blog' helping us understand child behavior

It is sometimes very difficult to understand child behavior until we get some experience of dealing with children from some time. As an educator our teaching experience helps us understand the child development and its complications but still we need to learn more about our children. Research based child psychology posts or articles are really helpful for parents and educators in dealing with the children.

Child Psychology Research Blog offers research based commentary on child psychology.

The author of the blog is 'Nestor L. Lopez-Duran, PhD.' who is a clinical child psychologist and neuroscience researcher working at a large Midwest University. She currently conduct research on mood disorders in children and adolescents, and she is the editor of Child-Psych, where she discusses the latest research findings on parenting, child disorders, and child development.

More about the 'Child Psychology Research Blog:

It is a research-based informational blog about child psychology, parenting, and childhood disorders. It provides reviews of the latest scientific findings on a number of psychiatric and neuro developmental disorders in a style that is accessible to parents, educations, and clinicians.

Their mission is to become the most comprehensive online resource of science-supported information on child psychology. They provide a framework that helps readers understand the studies and provide information on how each study fits within previous research.

Follow them at 'twitter'

Tips and ideas to learn about behavior management

Behavior manangement is a skill which parents and teachers should learn to deal with children. This article would help you to get many tips and ideas from various sites. I have given links to the sites, which offer behavior manangement tips and ideas for parents and teachers.

Let's learn what is behavior management?

Wikipedia explains:
"Behavior management is similar to behavior modification. It is a less intensive version of behavior modification. In behavior modification the focus is on changing behavior, while in behavior management the focus is on maintaining order. Behavior management skills are particularly of importance to teachers in the educational system.Behavior management is all of the actions and conscious inactions to enhance the probability people, individually and in groups."

* LD Online offers an article on the topic:

When someone mentions behavior management, our first thought may be about controlling students or stopping them from performing inappropriate behaviors. We expend a great deal of energy managing students so that inappropriate behaviors will not occur.
Read the full article: Behavior Management: Getting to the Bottom of Social Skills Deficits
- Behavior Management Ideas

* Ask Dr. Sears is a site from William Sears, MD and Martha Sears, RN, who wrote 40+ pediatric books, articles in parenting magazines, and their appearances on more than 100 television programs such as 20/20, Donahue, Good Morning America, Oprah, CBS This Morning, CNN, NBC's Today Show and Dateline. After raising eight children and practicing pediatric medicine for more than 30 years, they have answered questions from thousands of parents. Their site provides a lot of articles on discipline and behavior
- Descipline and Behavior articles

* FREE e-book "Rules for Unruly Chilren":
This e-book offer is from "Parenting.Org" an online resource for free parenting help.
Rules for Unruly Children, written by Richard L. Munger for use by Boys Town, is meant to change your child's problem behavior as quickly as possible, using simple techniques that will work with most children. This book offers parenting approaches that:

- Can be learned quickly
- Can be used immediately
- Gives quick results
- Work with most problem behaviors

You can download FREE e-book "Rules for Unruly Chilren" from the link below. And please note that to get the e-book you should enter the U.S. A or Cananda address at the available form.
- Sign up page to get the book

* Intervention Central offers free tools and resources to help school staff and parents to promote positive classroom behaviors and foster effective learning for all children and youth. The site was created by Jim Wright, a school psychologist and school administrator from Central New York.

Visit to check out newly posted academic and behavioral intervention strategies, download publications on effective teaching practices, and use tools that streamline classroom assessment and intervention.
- At download section you can get link to many topics like as:

- Curriculum-Based Measurement: A Manual for Teachers. This 106-page manual gives instructions that educators can follow to prepare, administer, and score Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) probes in the classroom. [106 pages/File size: 3.39MBA Manual for Teachers

There are many other manuals and reports which you can download from the download page.

* This article is from "BehaviorAdvisor, which is from Dr. Mac (Tom McIntyre), a former teacher of students with behavior disorders and learning disabilities, is now a Professor of Special Education and Coordinator of the Graduate Program in Behavior Disorders at Hunter College of the City University of New York. An entertaining presenter, and author of 3 books and over 100 articles, he promotes practical, positive, and respectful management of defiant and aggressive behavior.

- Your Child Has A Behavior Disorder”

* This article is a series of training manuals provided by "Project PARA" which conducts research and develops training materials for paraeducators and teachers who supervise them. Based in the College of Education and Human Sciences Department of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. The project provides Web-based self study programs that offer school districts resources to provide introductory training for paraeducators and/or the teachers who supervise them. These resources are offered free of charge to schools and teacher training programs.

- "Teacher Vision" provides many printables and articles helping you manage classroom descipline. Behavior Management

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