Even the expression ADHD is annoying to me. I always ask myself why any intelligent person would say that someone who is high energy is attention deficit…that’s like saying that someone who is tall is short, or someone who is a Native American is European.

One of the gifts of humanity is being supercharged. I was once asked by a yoga instructor if I “liked being hyperactive” and I laughed and said, “yes!” I mean wouldn’t anyone like to simply never run out of energy? Wouldn’t most people like feeling that they had delicious miles to go…and rarely if ever feel tired…and even then, when drained of their last strength – regroup in five minutes and have more energy to go for another several hours or days…

About one in thirty people is supercharged or hyperactive. A hyperactive person has been endowed by their creator to face a 33 world in a 45 or 78 format. (That’s a phonograph record comparison.) A hyperactive person can and usually does twice the work of anyone else in half the time. We are made to move faster and think faster than regular people. It’s a gift…annoying to many others, but none the less a fabulous gift.

And we really do think differently than other people. Most people think linearly…this than that…takes them a while to get where they’re going.  Hyperactives think like an explosion; all their information is suspended in their brain, and when they want something they grab it fast, line it up and make a neat package in record speed.

A hyperactive will do everything fast…sleep, eat, run, work, read, write, play sports…because it’s more comfortable than what we consider “slug mode.” Waiting for the world to catch up is a liability of hyperactivity. It’s about as scintillating as watching grass grow…

There are two kinds of hyperactives – directed and non directed. When a hyperactive does not have a family or parents who are willing to form him, he has no place to put his energy, his skills, his desire to move, accomplish and do. He is a whirling dervish of movement that often finds discomfort in the world around him, because he’s got all this motion that has not been directed, and that’s the fault of the parent. Parents are the primary educators of children, and when they have a hyperactive child, their responsibility is to direct that child in an appropriate manner and form him or her.

Much to the discredit of the psychology world, not all poorly behaved children are hyperactive, and few hyperactives are poorly behaved when you give them direction, and when the parent makes demands and holds them to a formative agenda. Is that tough? Of course, but it’s the challenge of rearing a hyperactive. It’s the work that MUST be done.

And cruelly, and much too often, a child who is pathetically poorly behaved is labeled “hyperactive,” because a doctor does not understand exactly what hyperactivity really is. It’s a personality type not a mental illness. Of course there are many slow moving and slow thinking people out there who are annoyed by and can’t understand anyone who works, thinks, and produces circles around them. Jealousy rears it’s snake like head and labels these achievers as mentally ill. High energy people are often the enemy of “slug mode” simply because slow movers can’t quite figure out why it is that the hyperactive never gets tired. It must be infuriating!

When you look at history, you can see the hyperactive emerge: St. Paul, Alexander the Great, Columbus, Theodore Roosevelt…were all obviously hyperactive. Look at their writing, their life stories, their tireless agendas.

I hear a lot about medicating the hyperactive to make him more equal to his peers, and this usually causes me to ask, “Would you medicate an artist so the artist couldn’t draw anymore? Would you medicate a genius so he couldn’t think anymore? Then why would you want to repress the natural energy of someone?”

The answer, of course, is simple. “Yes, I want to medicate my hyperactive child because I can’t keep up with him and don’t want to try.”

The next question I want to ask is, “Do you know why you have a hyperactive child?” The answer is: Hyperactivity is a family trait. One hyperactive married to a non-hyperactive will produce many hyperactives – 4/4 in my family. Half of the children of two hyperactives will be hyperactive. So if hyperactivity is not one of your attributes, your child is probably not hyperactive, no matter how badly behaved he is.

Some of the early signs of hyperactivity in children are, excessive crying, early crawling, talking and walking, food bolting and excessive eating, sleeping with eyes open, an ability to do things very early – like toilet training and making their own lunch at eighteen months. Interestingly enough, many hyperactives are addicted to oranges.

Rearing a hyperactive child should be a pleasure, but I’m speaking from the hyperactive side of the counter. I am, my four children are, and my husband is not. I loved the excitement of children who always tried to excel, to accomplish, to reach higher and higher for their accomplishments. The motto for a hyperactive is, “let’s see what I can do…” and the possibilities are like their thinking pattern…explosive.

So back to the initial ADHD title…the very idea that someone who is directed and supercharged is not paying attention is ludicrous…that’s like saying dogs don’t hear well….sheesh!

Every year, we always take our school group to Lincoln’s Boyhood Home as our first field trip. It’s our shortest field trip and it’s close enough to home so that if we have any really severe issues, we can get back to town without a lot of trip engineering.

It also gives us a full field trip that is familiar enough that we have time to examine the following could be problems: general behavior of the children, who is going to react negatively to the bus, food prep problems, and length of day.

Every year, we notice and make notes about which children can’t and won’t follow directions, line up, use a bathroom when directed, or which ones won’t or don’t know how to eat a sandwich.

For the most part, the children are wonderfully behaved. Our children are expected to play with each other without aggressive punches, pinches, pushes or tattling. We expect our children to say “thank you, please, and no thank you.” We expect our children to stand in lines when required without shouting or making fun of standing in line. We expect our children to be quiet when necessary and always walk indoors. When in a public place, we expect our children to represent not only their homes, but their school.

The worst problem we usually encounter is the older children who bring their big school bad manners to us. We always re-enroll the older siblings of present students and potential students because it’s good business sense.  Older children can and often do help younger ones, add to the discovery of successful field trips for younger children, and show the littles how to.

I always use my grandchildren as a guide to what I expect from older children. My grandkids are 12, 9, and 6, all boys, and have outgrown the GS, but come every year on our field trips because their mother works for the GS. I never even know they are among the children. They ask for nothing, are delighted with whatever they get, and know how to respond positively and politely to any and all situations. Each one is an honors student at school.

And every year, the older children remind us of how firmly we enforce the kind of behavior that separates children whose schools and parents make demands and whose schools and parents who don’t. Sometimes a returnee will be brought up short if he or she has strayed too far from the good manner line. This is our job.

One of our tactics is to watch the lunch routine. My favorite “oops” is to watch those children who throw their lunch on the ground under another child’s place and then come to the teachers and ask for chips, or something they “want” to eat. Our reply is always the same, “If you throw your sandwich on the ground, first you pick it up and tell us it has dropped. Then you get a second sandwich to eat. If you don’t eat that one, if it mysteriously falls on the ground, you’re done. If you finish your lunch, you can have the same privileges that all the other eaters get.” It always solves the problem one way or another.

At the first field trip, we make a list of those children who can’t manage to eat on their own. These are the kids who take a sandwich to a table and put it down and try to do anything but eat. These are the children who find their new place at a special table monitored by a teacher. They have lost the independent prize of being a big kid and choosing where they want to eat.

Does it really matter? When a child passes on breakfast because he’s excited about the trip, and then passes on lunch because he’s excited about getting back to play, there is a nutrition problem. He might not eat again until snack, and that’s too long. So it does matter for the health and safety of the child.

One of the problems we encountered yesterday was a disrespect for other people’s property, and a general disrespect about what we were doing and why. When a person goes to an historic site to visit, it’s a visit to look, listen, and try to understand. When a child’s primary response is to act as if this whole thing is a joke, then the reigns must be pulled up tightly, and being able to know which children can be taken without this disrespect, and which children must be temporarily separated from the group and monitored by a teacher is the goal of the first field trip.

This summer we will be going to an historic place, two science museums, a zoo, a nature preserve, and five lakes. In order to manage children who push, pinch, punch, act disrespectfully toward what we are doing, or disregard the property of others, a firmness about who and what we are needs to be established quickly. The result of any poor behavior will be to sit at the entrance of the activity with yours truly and watch how the well behaved children act…as a lesson. It’s a good life lesson, and one I’m very willing and eager to teach.

Taking children on long and exciting field trips every week is my pleasure and my invention. The idea of staying in town and playing put put golf or going to the same miserable playgrounds all summer with a thousand children is about as exciting as watching TV all day. But at the same time, it’s the privilege of well behaved children to enjoy these places, and these trips without the embarrassment of those who bring bad manners from home or other schools as their example.

It’s going to be a fine summer. Next trip is the Exotic Feline Rescue Center in Brazil, Indiana. Let’s see who sits at the entrance with Miss Judy.

So I’m checking out at Rural King…you know, the K-Mart for farmers, and I’ve got one hundred and sixty pounds of ground corn cob for my guinea pigs to play in, a small bag – forty pounds – of potting soil, some last minute veggie plants all heading to school. So there I am, at the check out lane…so glad it went without a hitch, because my precious and wonderful son called from Detroit on his way back to Germany so he can be home for his son’s birthday.

Now my precious and wonderful son builds Proton Therapy Units all over the world for cancer treatment. He’s the top guy and flies everywhere — in the next month he will probably be in St. Petersburg, Riyadh, Taiwan, San Diego, and probably many places in Europe. It’s his job. When he tried to take his female lawyer to Saudi Arabia, they asked if he “owned” her…you get the picture.

So here is a young man with an important job talking to his mom who is now sitting in a very used parking lot in the light industrial section of Evansville, Indiana, in her seventeen year old jeep loaded down with ground corn cobs and potting soil. He’s in a business suit with five hundred messages waiting to be answered on his phone, and I’m wearing short blue jean shorts and a $3.00 shirt from Walmart and using my “smart phone” which is usually smarter than I am.

How does this happen that a dichotomy of life styles has grown up between  mother and child to this extreme?

Hope.

I have come to believe that hope is the magic word…the magic wand in rearing children. I love what I do, where I am and my life. I wouldn’t change anything about my life…it’s sweet…but at the same time, my life is not my children’s. It’s mine. So while I’ve been living my own life, I have had great hopes that my children could do the exact same thing…live their own lives, doing what they want to do, and doing it well.

When my son was born, I hoped that he would do good things with this life, and I encouraged him to do great things at every point in life. I told him that he could reach for the sky and get there with enough effort and enough solid living.

When my daughters were born, I hoped that each of them would do good things with their lives, and I encouraged them in the same way I encouraged my son. “Anything is possible if you work hard enough.”

I’ve gone round and round with several people over the years who believe that hope is a worthless passive waste of time. For me, hope is all the possibilities tied together…it belongs to a life lived cautiously, carefully, and prayerfully. It is open, healthy, broad, and encompasses all the human passions while it remains gentle and lovingly looks forward instead of back.  Hope is life’s polish.

So as the sweat is dripping from my smart phone into my ear in the worn jeans, car, and parking lot, I talk freely about family, the cancer of a friend, his travel schedule, what Patrick wants for his birthday until they call him to board the plane. I’ll talk to him again when there’s time. Meanwhile he’s living a good life and doing good things for others, and I’m living my life enjoying it to the hilt!

Normally, I am slightly suspect of people who are chronically ill. Those who simply always don’t feel well; those who dwell entirely on the self as a virus abused individual; those who can’t stop medicating; those who are ten years their own senior because they have been raked over the sick coals. You know the type.

As for me and my house – I’m never sick, and I think it has a lot to do with H2O, sleep, a fairly good diet and being active. Also, I think it has something to do with sleeping hot…at any rate, I’m rarely if ever sick…until last week. Somehow, I picked up a staph infection. I didn’t even know what it was for a couple of days…then it invaded my person like a wildfire. Head, neck, ear, face, leg…I did the prescribed “MEC” gig, and they apparently put a band aid on a hemmorage.  By the time I got to my own doctor, she said, “Oh, my God…it could have killed you” and treated me with a super antibiotic which she said would probably rip me apart. Well, it didn’t. I engineered a ways and means of taking the drug so that it didn’t bother me.

The wound drained for seven days. I was unsightly and stayed home. Actually aside from the day I went to MEC, I felt fine during the ordeal. So this was my maiden voyage in illness. Yes, in 60 plus years, I’ve had a couple of colds and I had the flu once for four hours, and I’ve had a few bronchitis experiences when my son brought home an atypical virus…but generally, I feel good, and I want to keep it that way.

My compassion level has risen for those who fight the chronic attacks of sinusitis, allergies, IBS, arthritis, and other body disturbances and malfunctions. I can’t fathom what it must be like to struggle with this daily. It was bad enough for ten days…

What I can’t understand, however, is how someone can “live sick” and not do something proactively to change their situation for the sake of feeling good! People who could make their situation better by changing diet, losing a little weight, getting more exercise, drinking water instead of soda, and getting to bed on time. These are simple enough to do, and if the alternative is chronic illness…good grief.

I love being healthy…you might say I’m an advocate. Hope this speed bump doesn’t indicate a future filled with obnoxious hurdles to be jumped every couple of months. That would truly be a nightmare. I like my freedom. I like being free of medications, free of body aches, pain, and that feeling that “I can’t.” Truly, I am very grateful for being free.

Now let’s consider the kids…it’s no different with children. Parents build children’s bodies from the first moment of conception. What you give your child from conception to college is health through good habits and discipline. We’ve been talking about setting good examples at school, how that works, who should set examples, and how it’s done. When parents offer great habits to their children, children benefit for the rest of their lives.

Here are the questions to ask about setting some basic health examples:

Is my child sleeping 10 hours at night?
What is my example for him or her? Am I up all night and then drag out of bed every morning?

Is my child drinking water during the day?
Am I drinking water in front of my child, or is my 1000 calorie latte or supersized soda providing my health example?

Is my child eating 1000 quality calories every day?
Am I weaseling out of my nutritional duty by stopping to pick up worthless calories for dinner too many times a week?

Is my child getting two hours of exercise every day?
Am I getting any exercise? What is my strength and vitality example for my child?

Is my child washing his hands EVERY time he comes indoors?
Am I?

It’s a start.

This week…our book fair arrives. Parents and children will be able to view and shop for books this week. These are reasonably priced books and will make an excellent addition to your home library this year. Your children have learned so much this year, they are more than eager and able to do some reading for real. Please think of buying some books for your child this week.

Just read a nice facebook post from a lovely friend who is grateful to her mom for teaching her to cook for lots of people cheaply. I herald this teaching because sooner or later, we will want to have a party and it’s not cheap!

So this week I’ve started teaching reading again. We have an excellent program for the very young child. Every child gets thirty minutes of reading, writing and arithmetic every day – Monday through Thursday. Our teachers each have a specialty: Miss Dayna is our arithmetic teacher; Miss Lisa is our handwriting teacher; and now, Miss Judy is our reading teacher.

It’s Monday again…time to get back to work…only seven weeks till summer!

This week is a regular school week. Lots to do as spring weather continues to lure us outside and away from the books!

Every year people ask, “What do you do to your egg salad that makes my child crazy about it>”