This weekend, I attended a wedding of our closest friends’ son in Woodstock, Vermont. I was speaking to my friend Janice there who is a physical education teacher in Hanover, New Hampshire. What was she talking about? She spoke to me about the influence of John Ratey’s work on the benefits of exercise! Do you remember that we talked about his research on the positive influence of exercise on the behavior of children with ADHD? I told her that a mother of one of the children with whom I work told me that when she walks for about 15 minutes with her daughter who has ADHD-hyperactive type before she does her homework, that her daughter is much more focused as compared to when she does not exercise before doing her homework.
Janice told me that in Hanover, they were facilitating a program for all of the elementary children where the children had to exercise one hour a day. She told me that the children were more focused, less hyperactive and that their test scores had gone up. Honestly, I think that it would be very difficult to get children to exercise one hour a day, but certainly it was interesting to hear from someone who works in the schools that exercise does indeed have a positive influence on children’s focus, behavior and academic achievement.
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