At NACD, we emphasize the importance of brain health through nutrition. Research continues to show that high-sugar breakfasts lead to blood sugar spikes, crashes, and difficulties in learning and behavior. While this affects everyone, children with ADHD, autism, and other neurodevelopmental challenges often experience these effects more severely.

Many parents unknowingly fall into the trap of feeding their kids what they assume is a healthy breakfast. But much of what is marketed as a “balanced meal” is anything but.

Why the Standard American Breakfast Fails Kids

Most traditional breakfast foods are built around sugar and refined carbohydrates. Cereal, toast, bagels, waffles, pancakes, and flavored yogurts may seem like normal morning staples, but they spike blood sugar quickly.

When blood sugar rises too fast, kids may seem energetic at first, but soon after, their levels crash. This can lead to:

• Fatigue and sluggishness
• Difficulty focusing in school
• Emotional outbursts and irritability
• Strong cravings for more sugar

For children with special needs, these crashes can be especially problematic. Unstable blood sugar can contribute to hyperactivity, increased anxiety, aggression, and difficulties with emotional regulation.

Beyond the immediate impact, long-term exposure to high blood sugar contributes to inflammation, cognitive decline, and metabolic issues like insulin resistance. A morning blood sugar spike can also make children more prone to cravings throughout the day, setting them up for poor eating habits.

Read more: The Science of a Smart Breakfast

The Best Type of Breakfast for Brain Function and Stability

A well-balanced breakfast should be built around protein, healthy fats, and fiber. This combination helps stabilize blood sugar, sustain energy levels, and improve focus and behavior.

Rethinking Breakfast: It’s Just Another Meal

What we consider “breakfast food” is largely shaped by marketing and cultural history, not nutrition. There is no scientific reason why breakfast needs to include cereal, toast, or pancakes. In fact, many cultures around the world start their day with meals that resemble lunch or dinner—often including meats, vegetables, and healthy fats.

A child could just as easily eat chicken and roasted vegetables in the morning as they would in the evening. What matters most is the nutrient content, not the label of “breakfast food.”

Smart Breakfast Choices

Instead of relying on processed foods, focus on whole, nutrient-dense options.

Great choices include:

• Eggs, which provide high-quality protein and choline to support brain development
• Meat such as chicken, turkey, or beef, offering amino acids essential for neurotransmitter production
• Avocados, rich in healthy fats that support brain health
• Nuts and seeds, a great source of protein, fiber, and minerals
• Leafy greens and other vegetables packed with essential vitamins

For those who want a little sweetness, organic dates are a great alternative. Unlike refined sugars, dates contain fiber, vitamins, and minerals that slow down sugar absorption. They provide a natural sweetness without causing extreme spikes in blood sugar.

Fruit can also be part of a healthy breakfast when eaten alongside protein and fat to help balance blood sugar. A few berries with nuts, or apple slices paired with almond butter, can add flavor and nutrients without the negative effects of a sugar-heavy meal.

The Cereal Myth: How We Got It So Wrong

Many parents grew up believing that breakfast should include grains. That belief wasn’t shaped by science but by decades of cereal industry marketing. Companies spent millions convincing families that cereals, granola bars, and other processed grains were the best way to start the day.

The reality is that most of these products are ultra-processed, stripped of nutrients, and packed with sugar. Even those claiming to be “whole grain” often cause the same rapid spikes and crashes as refined sugar.

Making the Switch to a Healthier Breakfast

Changing a child’s breakfast routine doesn’t have to be difficult. Gradual adjustments help make the transition smoother.

• Start small by replacing one processed item at a time. Swap out cereal for eggs or replace toast with avocado and nuts.
• Focus on protein first. Ensuring kids get high-quality protein at breakfast helps stabilize blood sugar and keep them full longer.
• Reduce sugar gradually. If your child is used to sweet flavors, introduce healthier alternatives like organic dates or berries alongside protein and fats.
• Get kids involved. Let them help with planning and preparing breakfast. Giving them choices—within healthy options—makes them more likely to enjoy their meal and feel empowered.

Some simple meal ideas kids can help prepare:

• Scrambled eggs with spinach and chicken sausage
• Turkey and avocado roll-ups
• Roasted vegetables with shredded chicken
• Hard-boiled eggs with cucumber slices and hummus
• Sautéed greens with beef and olive oil

The Bigger Picture: A Healthier Future for Kids

At NACD, we work with families to develop customized programs that optimize brain function, learning, and development. The right nutrition is a key piece of that puzzle. By shifting away from sugar-heavy, processed breakfasts and embracing whole, nutrient-dense foods, parents can help their children improve focus, energy, and emotional stability—especially those with special needs.

A small change at breakfast can have a huge impact on a child’s ability to learn, regulate emotions, and thrive.

 Learn more about NACD’s approach and how we help families build healthier, stronger futures.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 39 No. 1 , 2025 ©NACD

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We all have the tendency to get stuck in many patterns and ruts that can make it very difficult for us to achieve our potential as individuals, parents, and as families. When we take time to assess what and how we are doing, we can usually come up with a list of things we acknowledge that we could do better. 

There have been many things said and written about good intentions, mostly related to our failure to execute them. But every positive step forward begins with the intention to do it. Intention needs to be followed up with execution; and execution requires a plan and commitment.

I would like to suggest that although we may often lack the commitment to change and do things for ourselves, we love and care enough about our families and children that we create a plan that structures us into regular assessment of how and what we are doing and creates the intention to improve it, followed by a plan, commitment and execution. What we do today, tomorrow, and going forward matters. Every day and in every way, what we do impacts our families’ and our children’s futures. Let’s identify the ruts we are stuck in and the proactive things we need to be doing to move forward in an organized, structured way to make positive lasting changes. 

Patterns are habits, and habits are not easy to change because we are good at them, and they generally require no thought. Changing habits and patterns requires commitment and a plan. I suggest a plan for parents who wish to really do something with their children that can truly improve all their lives. To this end I would like to propose a Family Reset Challenge. 

The goal of the Family Reset Challenge is to help parents create an ongoing mechanism for family/child development and progress.

I want you to imagine something incredibly simple, something that would generally take less than thirty minutes per week and very possibly as little as ten minutes per week. Something that could improve your lives as individuals, your relationship with your spouse, and the lives and futures of your children.

What I am suggesting is that parents make the commitment and accept the challenge to have a scheduled targeted weekly meeting. Single parents need to schedule this special time as well. Prior to meeting together, I suggest that you take time individually to think about what you could, should, and would change that would benefit your family. Following what could be as short as a five-minute meeting with yourself, meet with your spouse, and when appropriate, with your children as well. Share your thoughts, evaluate where you are, where you want to be going, and create a plan– a plan built around the realities of what is needed to break old habits or create new ones. 

To create a new habit pattern generally takes 30-60 days, so for our challenges I am suggesting that from the get-go you make a one-to-two-month commitment. See it as an investment in your family’s future.

Challenge number one is to make the commitment to the weekly meetings, then in those meetings make the joint decision to create new 30-60 day challenges with the intention of creating ongoing new life changing habits and patterns. 

I have created a list of possible challenges to give you some ideas, but the challenges you create need to be the ones that fit your family and circumstances. 

Challenge Options: 

• Commitment to schedule an implement a weekly parent meeting
• Commitment to dedicate 5 minutes per day thinking proactively as to how you can help your spouse and each of your children 
• Commitment to have a weekly family outing/field trip
• Commitment to a daily family walk or indoor physical activity
• Commitment to not have your children eat any meals alone 
• Commitment to have at least one whole family meal per day
• Commitment to eliminate dairy from the family diet
• Commitment to eliminate sugar from family diet 
• Commitment to eliminate gluten from the family diet
• Commitment to actively teach, schedule, and build the list of your children’s chores and responsibilities
• Commitment to read to your child daily
• Commitment to give each of your children 4 positive comments to every negative
• Commitment to be consistent with feedback and consequences
• Commitment for parents to improve their function by using Simply Smarter
• Commitment to creating very specific holidays from electronics
• NACD Family specific challenges
  • Commitment to do x percent of your child’s program 5 days a week
  • Commitment of each parent to assume responsibility for specific program activities
  • Commitment for parents to read an NACD article or watch an NACD video with discussion weekly
  • Commitment from a sibling(s) to assume responsibility for one or more specific program activities

Do you care enough to accept the first challenge of a weekly meeting? After you succeed in the first challenge, the next is easier; and it just keeps getting easier as you create a new pattern of accountability and acceptance and learn that if you have the intention to make changes and improvement, you are up to the challenge to make it be.

I would encourage families to comment on the challenge concept and to share their challenge experiences and the challenges they have created.

This first challenge of a weekly meeting to assess, evaluate and proactively improve your family is very possibly the best investment of time you will ever make, less than 30 minutes per week, that is 1/336 of your week that has the potential to change everyone’s lives for the better. 

It’s tough to find a better investment and is worth the commitment.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 35 No.4, 2022 ©NACD

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Most of us have no idea what creatures of habit and patterns we are, nor how stuck we can be in these behavior patterns. I have three dogs that keep reminding me of what a creature of habit I am. If I’m watching TV in the evening and pick up the TV remote, my dogs notice; and if I turn off the TV, they all jump up ready to go. Which way they go is determined by the direction of my first step when I stand up. In the morning if I pick up my cup from the coffee machine and if I turn left, my dogs run down to my office. If I turn right, they go about their business because there are too many options as to what I might do. You probably put the same foot into your pant leg first most every day. The point is that we humans create hundreds of behavior patterns, most of which we are oblivious to.

When dealing with children, particularly children with developmental issues, the connection between the child and the parents and caregivers is amazing. This connection leads to each learning each other’s patterns. Patterns can become ruts, ruts that both parent and child can get stuck in.

One very common pattern or rut that creates problems involves what children will eat. In a very significant percentage of children who come to us, ranging from severely involved children to those who are gifted, a common problem is picky eaters. Back in the early ‘70s when we created a program specifically for children with autism, I worked with a teenage girl who had eaten no food other than apples for virtually her entire life. To compound the mystery of this child, she also had pica—she would put most anything in her mouth and eat it. This included everything from dirt to bugs and her dog’s feces from the yard, but not food. The issue with her eating a greater variety of foods was obviously not an issue with taste or smell, although this can be an issue for many children, particularly those on the spectrum. It was simply a matter of an established pattern, a habit. It should be noted that food cravings that come from eating a lot of some specific foods can also be a contributing issue. Kids are not simple.

In a previous article (Independence and the Developmentally Challenged Child) I discussed how important and vital independence is for the overall development of the child or young adult. The child’s and the parent’s patterns and habits often have a very negative impact on the development of independence.

An example of a common pattern that slows down the development of independence in many children is helping them dress themselves. Most parents who assist their child in dressing and undressing assist in virtually the exact same way every time, and the child participates, or does not participate, in exactly the same way. As an example: Mom approaches Johnny with a T-shirt. Johnny sees it and waits for Mom to put it over his head, at which point he lifts his arms and she helps put his arms in the sleeves. Then she pulls the shirt down. Every day they follow the same pattern. If Mom doesn’t do something to change her pattern, the odds are great that Johnny doesn’t either; and Johnny’s development of independence in dressing himself goes nowhere. Parents need to become acutely aware of the hundreds of such patterns, habits that have been created by them and their children, and consciously work to break them.

It’s helpful when trying to grasp the significance of patterns to see how differently children perform with different people and in different places. Children who work with their parents, caregivers, therapists, and teachers are often going to react and perform differently with each person, or in each place, because patterns and habits are created together and are often person and place specific. Each adult establishes a new pattern, and to some extent the physical space helps establish a new mental picture and a new pattern as well. Most children on the spectrum are strong visualizers, creating mental pictures and videos associated with many aspects of their lives. For these visualizers anything that changes their picture (or habit) can lead to them becoming upset, with the net result being that family members and caregivers avoid upsetting the apple cart and work hard to maintain and reinforce the habits.

One of the most devastating and pervasive problems associated with patterns negatively impacting many of our children with developmental issues is prompt dependency. Prompt dependence is actually taught through creating a patten by which the child is prompted, generally verbally through virtually every step of what they are being instructed to do. Some children, after years of such instruction, develop such a strong pattern that they will do almost nothing without a prompt, requiring someone to guide them through most everything they do, creating greater dependency and stifling independence.

Referring back to the picky eater problem, parents often discover that their child will eat foods at the grandparent’s house that they won’t eat at home, or in a restaurant, or even outside. This is because a new place helps change the pattern.

The teenage girl with autism I met had her eating problem largely resolved within the week she and her family spent with us. Guess what we did to fix it? Almost nothing. The child had spent her whole life at home, eating by herself in the same kitchen at the same table and given the same food—apples—because her family been convinced that she wouldn’t eat anything else, and had established a very strong behavior pattern. When the family flew across the county, stayed in a hotel and at our offices, and ate at restaurants together, they broke the pattern. My little suggestion was to not have any apples nor bring apples to the restaurant and to simply order her the same food the parents were eating and tell her they didn’t have apples. She ate the food and within the week established a new behavior pattern, which was to eat what the family ate.

Patterns and habits affect all of our lives to amazing degrees. Having healthy diets for most people means establishing a new behavior pattern or habit. Exercising regularly for most people requires establishing a new behavior pattern or habit. Many people realize how difficult it can be to break an old pattern and create a new one and realize it doesn’t just happen. You have to very consciously work to create that new behavior pattern; and the longer a pattern exists, the tougher it is to change it, whether it is a good or a bad habit.

Typically developing children are neurologically changing rapidly, and that neurological change pushes them to do new things; and in the process it tends to break many previously established patterns of behavior. Typical children and their parents can certainly fall victim to habits. But when you slow down the developmental process, life tends to become just a series of pattens that essentially rule the child and the family’s life and can significantly and often dramatically inhibit change, development, and expectations. These patterns can affect all areas of development and function. An example is children learning patterns of communication. If whining works to get attention, and Mom interprets that as the child wanting something and becomes trained to start offering the child options until the whining stops, then the odds are good that the child will maintain that pattern of communication even though they neurologically are ready to start verbally communicating. In a similar vein there are children who develop a functional vocabulary of only a few words, who may go years without expanding that vocabulary. It becomes their pattern, and if the expectation is that it’s all he or she can do, then it becomes the perception of what can be, and it is accepted. A child who has a vocabulary of three words is demonstrating that they have the cognitive ability and the oral motor ability to think in words and produce words, why not ten words or twenty words or a thousand words?

If a child lacks mobility, the ability to move either through crawling, creeping, or walking to get to something, and learns to simply lay on the floor and space out, cry for attention, or whine until someone brings something to them, then often these become patterns and the child has no perception that they could move to go somewhere or get something. These children may have the cognitive and physical pieces that would permit them to move, but they are stuck in a pattern.

Looking at pieces of the child in isolation makes it very difficult at best to determine what is a reflection of the child being stuck in a pattern vs. what can, could, and should be. The perception of what can be is then easily limited to what has been, and doors are closed not based on the innate potential of the child, but rather on what patterns have been and are in place.

If, however, we view the “whole child,” the gestalt of the child, we can then see what could be and what pieces need to be put together to break the habits or patterns and move forward.

For example, one vital piece of the “whole child” is cognitive function. If we have understanding, auditory sequential processing, that says the child mentally has the ability to use language functionally and put two or three words together, as well as adequate oral motor skills for speech, but they only use a few words, then we know we have a child who today could be speaking much more, if not for being stuck in a pattern. If, however, we have the cognition, but not the needed oral motor function, then we know we need to work on the oral motor function hard, as well as working behaviorally to create the internal need to communicate. Conversely, if the child has sufficient oral motor function, but not the cognitive function, then the primary focus becomes the cognition.

Looking at a child as their isolated pieces and not understanding their patterns and habits can produce misdirected efforts and priorities, and more often than not turn the focus toward alternatives that lead to poor, low, or limited expectations that can negatively impact the child’s ultimate potential.

Not understanding the “whole child” or the impact of patterns can lead to pursuit of poor alternatives. For the child with limited language, the alternative may be an augmentative communication device that for the vast majority of children fails. If full mobility is deemed to be improbable, then putting the necessary developmental pieces together gets scrapped, and the therapy gets directed toward a child who will spend the rest of their life in a wheelchair. Or a child with unresolved behavior issues ends up being medicated, rather than having his pieces put together and patterns broken.

Habits and patterns impact all of our lives. For our children with developmental problems, these habits and patterns, both theirs and ours, can have devastating consequences. Every child needs to be viewed through the lens of the “whole child” and seen as a creature of habit if we are going to begin to provide them with a real opportunity to realize their innate potential.

Lack of function needs not and should not be viewed as a prognosis or predictor of potential.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 34 No.5, 2021 ©NACD

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Javier was born in Santiago, Chile on October 14, 2014. He was born by Caesarean section, weighed 3.5 kg and measured 52 cm, with an APGAR of 9. It was all normal and correct.

When he was 2 months old, he had a urinary infection and had to be hospitalized, where he was given heavy metal medications.

His growth and physical development were normal. He learned to walk when he was 1 year old. It took a little longer to start talking and we were concerned about that, since his older sister (1 year and 3 months older than him) spoke very well when she was 2 years old. However, Javier, at that age still could not communicate well or interact much with others. As parents we worry about that, but we were told that it was normal, that each child has their own pace in the physically and cognitive development.

In February 2016, we moved to Bolivia, and enrolled Javier and Maria (his sister) into the kindergarten, Javier interacted very little with his classmates, he did not follow instructions, and did not remain calm and seated when the teachers asked him to do so, the teachers shared these concerns with us, being his lack of interaction with the other kids the area that was worrying them the most. Javier did not look at people and seemed to always be in “his own world.”

We took him to different specialists (speech therapists, physical therapist, pediatric neurologists, etc.). In the area of gross motor and fine motor skills, Javier didn´t show any problem at all; in fact, he was pretty advanced for his age. However, the conclusions that the speech therapists and neurologist came to was that Javier had autism and that we should enroll him in an institution for children with autism to be treated.

Talking with some family members, we found out about NACD. My sister´s son is enrolled in the program. We contacted Marta Palmes in May 2017 and we started right away.

When Javier started the program, the evaluation showed that he was between 1 and a half to 2 years behind in his language and communication skills comparing to his peers. Bob Doman told us that he would make us a customized program to level him up and outperform his peers.

At the beginning of the program, we also changed his diet (as per NACD suggestion), eliminating dairy, sugar, and gluten from this diet.

From the moment we started until today, Javier’s progress has been really great, he has done so well that he not only leveled off in communication and language with his peers, but he is also above the average level and with a lot of potential to be able to do even better.

The program helped him boost his long and short-term memory, which helped him with his concentration and attention. His communication skills are now very good and if we compare Javier from 2017 versus now, no one could believe that he was diagnosed with autism.

We want to thank the program for what they did in the development of our son. If we’re with NACD now, it’s not because Javier has a “problem,” but because we see that he can further enhance his skills and the program helps him to do so.

We definitely recommend NACD to families because they really bring out the potential that children have to develop.

We are a happy family!

—Javier’s Parents

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 33 No. 11, 2020 ©NACD

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We have all heard it a thousand times: eating better, sleeping better, getting physical exercise helps our overall health. While this is something that our NACD families in general are very conscious about with their children with developmental issues, it is not uncommon to hear that those rules don’t really apply to everyone in the family. Let’s face it, it is easier to be more lenient on our neurotypical kids or ourselves, but does that help everyone in the long run? It is important to really get serious across the board about our overall physical health in the family, as that impacts our mental health significantly.

Sleep is such an important part of one’s life. According to the National Sleep Foundation, children ages 6-13 years old need 9-11 hours of sleep each night to be at their best. Teenagers ages 14-17 need 8-10 hours of sleep to be at their best, and adults should have between 7-9 hours of sleep per night. This is good, quality sleep! Not being in bed on your smartphone scrolling, but actually ASLEEP! Unfortunately for most teens, their biological clocks shift during that stage, where they tend to have more energy at night, increasing the desire to stay up later and sleep in longer. If your children are like mine, they start school at 7:20. They are up and out of the house before 7am. This can leave them already sleep deprived as they aren’t always ready to fall asleep by 10pm the night before. A study from the British Medical Journal in 2015 researched the effects of screen time and lack of sleep in a substantial sample of adolescents, over 9000. They found that the more screen time the subjects engaged in each day, the longer it took for them to fall asleep. If they had four or more hours of screen time per day, they were 360% more likely to have less than five hours of sleep a night and 49% more likely to take over an hour to fall asleep (Hysing, M. et al, 2015). When our brains are tired, mental health issues such as depression and anxiety increase. We are not able to think as clearly and have more difficulty handling stress than when in a rested state. NACD recommends consistent nighttime bed routines starting when children are little, such as no screens in the bedrooms, and devices are to stay with parents. We suggest having at least an hour to an hour and a half of no screens prior going to bed. We also encourage very dark rooms (blackout shades or curtains) and white noise to help facilitate a good night’s rest.

I hear many times “my kid has a balanced diet; they eat some of everything every day.” But how much of those foods happen to be processed? Have extra or hidden sugars? Artificial ingredients? More and more research on the foods we eat are targeting how they impact our mental health. “In recent years, a direct relation between the occurrence of anxiety disorders, sleep disturbances, and mood disorders has been observed as a consequence of poor or inadequate diet. Eating habits in Western societies have greatly changed in recent decades, with an increase in the consumption of foods low in vitamin and mineral content, high in caloric value, and rapidly prepared and easily consumed.” (Fernandez-Rodriguez, M., et al., 2017) There is a direct interrelationship between physiological health and neurological function. NACD has known this since its inception in the ‘70s. Time and time again our clients have shown that those who eat better function better. In general, diets rich in plant based foods, healthy fats (in the form of plants, nuts, seeds, and fatty fish like salmon), and lean meats are far superior in promoting mental function. In contrast, diets high in sugar, dairy, breads, and processed foods have been shown to be related to depression, chronic inflammation, and anxiety. This isn’t just for adults! According to Natalie Kling, a Certified Clinical Nutritionist from NACD’s Professional Advisory Committee, “the human body is always moving towards homeostasis, or perfect balance. When a body is out of balance, we see or experience symptoms (physical AND mental). We can soothe symptoms by giving the body the interior environment it needs to return to balance. Rest, hydration, oxygen, nutrients, detoxification, and a healthy and loving environment provide the ingredients the body needs to repair, regenerate, and reorganize. In contrast, when we introduce processed foods, sugar, not enough sleep, chemicals, environmental toxins, or stress, we push the body out of balance and create obstacles to the body’s ability to thrive.”

Personally, I have noticed a great difference in my son’s “teenager attitude” when he doesn’t eat these foods. When his diet is clean, whole food based, there is a positive difference. Often times I see parents eating healthy, but their kids are eating foods loaded with sugar and the “bad stuff” because “they’re kids.” NACD suggests to parents to develop a palate for healthy food with their children in infancy. NACD recommends to our families to work with one of our nutritionists if you need help in getting started. Natalie Kling, who also happens to be an NACD mom, has suggested that parents can start by just focusing on getting more vegetables into your kids. Smoothies (without added sugars and dairy), homemade sauces, etc., are ways to start that process. If you are a new parent with young children, keep their diets high in plant-based foods so that they develop a taste for it. If you are a parent with a picky eater, they don’t have to be. By giving the brain and body the correct fuel it needs, this can help to improve your child’s physical AND mental health as well.

Many children and adults struggle with anxiety due to lack of physical exercise. If we sit back and look at our lives today, we lead more sedentary lifestyles. We watch our TVs, screens, sit and scroll through our phones, many of us work all day at a desk, and many of our children are in school for 6+ hours (sitting for a huge chunk of that), many without daily physical exercise. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services (2018), children ages 3-5 years of age should engage in at least 3 hours of physical activity with varying degrees of intensity. Children ages 6-17 should engage in moderate to vigorous physical activity (aerobic, muscle, and bone strengthening) for 60 minutes DAILY. Adults should have a similar amount. Do you get that? Do your children? Exercise stimulates endorphins in your brain that allow for improved executive function, attention, and mood. Essentially, it allows you to handle stress better and not let it handle you. NACD recommends families make an effort to include physical exercise as part of your day. Schedule it in. In fact, on some of our programs we will write screen time = chore time = exercise time. For my children, the screens, homework, and chores don’t happen after school until physical exercise does. It might be going to the gym or doing an online video. Sometimes it is going for a run or even a fast walk. Snow or sun, we make it a priority.

In conclusion, it is important that as parents we really understand how significant lack of sleep, poor diets, and lack of physical exercise impacts our children’s physical and mental health. They work together, impacting one another. NACD looks at the whole child and sees this as a huge piece to impacting the global mental function of a child.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 32 No. 1, 2019 ©NACD

References

Fernández-Rodríguez, M., Rodríguez-Legorburu, I., & López-Ibor Alcocer, M. I. (2017). Nutritional supplements in anxiety disorder. Actas Espanolas De Psiquiatria, 45(Supplement), 1.

Hysing, M., Pallesen, S., Stormark, K. M., Jakobsen, R., Lundervold, A. J., & Sivertsen, B. (2015). Sleep and use of electronic devices in adolescence: Results from a large population-based study. BMJ Open, 5(1), e006748-e006748. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2014-006748

How Much Sleep Do We Really Need? (2019). Retrieved February 5, 2019, from https://www.sleepfoundation.org/excessive-sleepiness/support/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, 2nd edition. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; 2018.

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Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing reported that children who ate breakfast more often had significantly higher IQ scores on the full scale, verbal, and performance tests. The study included 1,269 six-year-old children. After controlling for seven potential sociodemographic variables, the study found children who ate breakfast on a near-daily basis scored 4.6 points higher on the total IQ test, 5.58 points higher on the verbal, and 2.50 points higher on the performance part compared to children who frequently skipped eating their breakfast. Therefore, eating breakfast every morning appears to have immediate vital implications for the cognitive function of children. This research adds to other research reporting long-term implications such as smoking, alcohol use, and infrequent exercise all being associated with a lifestyle of not eating breakfast regularly.

The researchers also report that breakfast eating has nutritional and social aspects that both likely play a role. Children commonly eat breakfast with their parents, which allows for some additional one-on-one interaction during the day. NACD understands that it’s these times of one-on-one interaction with an adult that are vital to expanding a child’s cognitive abilities. Furthermore, breakfast literally means to “break a fast” of not eating all night long, and this is important to refuel the brain. However, NACD stresses that it is not just eating breakfast that is important; what your child eats is perhaps even more important!

Eating breakfasts high in sugar and artificial sugars, such as Pop-Tarts or Captain Crunch, are usually detrimental for a child’s cognitive function. Therefore, aim for breakfasts high in protein, such as eggs, nuts, and lean meats, with plenty of fruits and vegetables. Be wary of dairy, wheat, and other grains, which are common sources of food sensitivities. Food sensitivities may be a problem for your child if three or more of the following apply to your child: sometimes congested; history of ear infections; frequent ups and downs in behavior; poor attention span at times; night or morning coughing spells; variable hearing that is sometimes good and sometimes poor; post-nasal drip; headaches; digestive issues; or periods of restlessness.

For more information on food sensitivities please read our article here.

Source

• Can breakfast make kids smarter? (2013) Science in Action. University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. http://www.nursing.upenn.edu/sia/Pages/Can-Breakfast-Make-tiids-Smarter.aspx

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And as you also know, it’s really hard implementing dietary changes and changing your home environment. If you are not too sure or confident about what you are doing, it makes it almost impossible to really implement change. I think you will find that Isabel’s book provides you with an excellent foundation and gives you the confidence you need to make some life-altering changes, not only for your special needs children, but for all of your children and yourselves as well.

As I speak with our families around the world, I hope I begin hearing more and more stories of diets and homes that have been turned around. And of children and families living healthier and better.

NACD Newsletter, Volume 7 Issue 1, 2014 ©NACD

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