We are what we eat.  We are facing a national epidemic of childhood obesity, hypertension, and high cholesterol from our bad eating habits. Dr Alan Greene, author of “Feeding Baby Green” joins me in a Skype video-visit to talk about teaching children to love great food by starting them early.  Since Alan is a Pediatrician we also discuss the health and education related issues of the Autism epidemic and other health related issues.

With autism reported by the Center for Disease Control to be one percent of our population and anecdotal accounting by teachers of much higher numbers, we need to focus on strategies for early diagnosis and treatment.  Lynn Koegel Co-director of the Koegel Autism Research and Training Center of the University of California, Santa Barbara joins me in a Skype video-chat to discuss Pivotal Response Training, which has been described as a “kindlier and gentler ABA”. We also delve into several topics including some exciting new news about very early diagnosis and treatment (six months of age) of children with autism. (excerpt)

Can every child learn to read? An intriguing question. We talk like every child can learn to read equally and at the same pace. But in reality, is this true? There has been a lot of quality research into why and how children learn to read. Recently, I was fortunate to speak to Dr. Joe Torgesen, Director Emeritus of the Florida Center for Reading Research. Joe was a very likable guy and we covered many reading issues. (excerpt)