Jul 15, 2026 | I'm a Parent, I'm a Teacher, ILT Blog
Integrated Learning Therapy places great value on a healthy digestive system. Our knowledge about the importance of nutrition for brain health naturally evolved into a concern for the state of our clients’ guts. More specifically, for the contents of their guts. There is little doubt that having a gut stocked with healthy bacteria and other beneficial organisms (collectively called the microbiome) puts a child at an advantage when it comes to school success. The question is: if you suspect that gut problems are present in your child, how can you try to improve matters? How can you help him or her grow a healthy gut garden? This article is summarized from the book ‘Follow your gut’ by Rob Knight (A TED Book published by Simon and Schuster).
As with any garden, it is necessary to nurture the existing plants by feeding them or preparing the ground for new plants by digging in nutrients. This is where prebiotics come in. There isn’t a universal definition for prebiotics but according to the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics, prebiotics are “nondigestible substances that provide a beneficial physiological effect for the host by selectively stimulating the favorable growth or activity of a limited number of indigenous bacteria.”[1] In simpler language, prebiotics are largely soluble fibres that occur naturally in some fruits and vegetables. They provide nutrition for the cells that line our intestines and also produce some of the benefits of natural high-fibre diets. One of the major benefits is that they stimulate the growth of health-promoting microbes. It is logical then to assume that children who struggle to eat enough fruits and vegetables might lack these fibres and so also lack a healthy microbiome.
There are as yet no clear guidelines as to what you should do to improve matters if your child resists fibrous vegetables but at the very least, it can do no harm to provide a prebiotic supplement.
Secondly, once you’ve dug in some compost, you need to put healthy plants into your garden. These are the probiotics that play such an important role our physical and mental health.
They are mainly bacteria that are found naturally occurring in the human gut or in fermented foods (such as yoghurt, naturally fermented sauerkraut and kimchi). Probiotics are defined as live microorganisms that, when administered in sufficient quantities, benefit health. Briefly, they are the ‘good’ or ‘helpful’ or ‘beneficial’ bacteria. If you suspect that gut health is compromised by a lack of these good bacteria, or if your child has had a course of antibiotics that will effective destroy the entire crop that might have been present before an illness, you may consider trying to replace them with supplements, yoghurts, fermented foods and even suppositories.
The problem is that probiotic products have not been formally approved nor have health claims been accepted by official food and drug organisations. This means that you have to be very careful of the product you choose to buy.
There has been huge interest in probiotics in recent years – especially in view of new insights to the significance of gut health for so many different medical conditions. These range from depression to autism with a myriad of other health conditions along the way, including Crohn’s disease, constipation, insulin resistance and autoimmune diseases like Multiple Sclerosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis and even ADHD. Several clinical trials have been done with plenty more in the pipeline. But there is a big problem.
The problem is that currently, there’s a lot more hype than solid research to give concrete evidence to what strains of probiotics are effective for what conditions and which manufacturers can be trusted. If you visit your Health Shop or pharmacist, you’ll see lots of bottles filled with probiotics that are advertised as guaranteed to make your garden flourish. The downside is the lack of real evidence that any of them will work and no insight to which strains will work for you. In addition, you won’t know whether or not the product contains any live organisms after being freeze-dried and shipped long distances to sit on a shelf. Those in the know will tell you that microorganisms need very specific conditions to survive.
Once you try to overcome these hurdles, you will be faced with the biggest problem. This is that many people assume that any probiotic will do. It’s like saying that you took a drug because you weren’t feeling well without being able to specify what drug or why you chose it. Having a friend recommend a probiotic or a pharmacy assistant hand you one casually might lead to very limited results. The best you can do is to ask your doctor or pharmacist for a brand that has some good results (randomized, controlled trial data) supporting its effectiveness. Better still, try to find one that has proved success in treating the specific problem you identify and describe to the pharmacist.
Failing that, live, unsweetened, plain yoghurt is unlikely to hurt. If your child dislikes yoghurt, blend some fruit into it to make a smoothie. Don’t buy the yoghurt containing fruit. That isn’t a food – it’s a sweet dessert with no particular nutritional value.
So choosing a probiotic is not an easy thing to do. It is, however, worthwhile persevering because from our own experience, ILT practitioners have seen notable improvements in children whose gut gardens have been tended and begin to flourish.
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[1] www.worldgastroenterology.org/assets/downloads/en/pdf/guidelines/19_probiotics_prebiotics.pdf
May 6, 2026 | I'm a Parent, I'm a Teacher, ILT Blog
When I meet a child with learning or behavioural difficulties, their parents very often tell me that the child has no nutritional problems and no symptoms of an unhealthy gut. This is ironic, because I’ve very seldom met a child with sensory processing irregularities, ADHD and other learning difficulties who has an adequate diet, no bowel or malabsorption problems, or all of these. It does happen but so rarely that these days, nutrition is being considered an essential part of the treatment plan.
Slowly but surely, people are accepting that nutrition drives not only physical development but learning ability as well. Children need an adequate diet and healthy intestines to absorb those diets in order to grow and have efficiently functioning brains. It does happen that a child shows no clear symptoms of nutritional imbalances but these can be disguised in subtle ways. When a learning or puzzling behaviour is the symptom of a child’s difficulties, It is always worth looking deeper into his or her nutritional status.
Using food as a therapy is not an easy matter and a haphazard, trial and error approach will seldom bring significant results. If your current family doctor, paediatrician, nutritionist or dietician is not fully on board to help you with current, evidence based approaches to restore health to your child’s body and brain, then you may want to look further. Try finding a Functional or Integrative Medical practitioner to give you an opinion. They are trained in medicine but specialise in looking at the individual in an holistic way – seeking to treat for health rather than tackling the symptoms of a disease or other problem. You’ll find them with a Google search.
Individualised nutrition is best
Special diets and supplements for children with ADHD, autism and other disorders have been popular for several years but there is no consensus about whether they really work. This is because nutrition care must be individualised to work best. It is important to go through a process that identifies what would work best for a particular child. There is no one special diet (or even one medication) that works for all children.
To help you to begin, here are some steps to follow in the order given[1]
- Check your child’s basic nutrition status first. Make sure that your child is growing as expected and that his or her current food intake is adequate. Some developmental, learning or behaviour challenges can be due to insufficient total food intake so it is really important to complete this step first. You may need help if you are unsure as to what comprises an adequate diet and growth rate for a child but you will find guidelines on the internet or from your health practitioner. So often picky eating accompanies learning problems – but while maintaining body weight may be possible on a diet of milk and wheat products, for example, other nutritional essentials may be missing.
- Correct bowel flora. Bowel flora are the bacteria and other microbes that humans need in the digestive system to help digest and absorb food and to fend off invasive viruses, parasites or detrimental bacteria. Good bowel flora is also essential for optimal immune system functioning. Antibiotics, toxic metal exposures (lead, mercury, etc) and certain viral or bacterial exposures can disrupt the health of the gut. Restoring a healthy gut may need cutting out certain inflammatory and other foods and giving a good probiotic.
- Replace foods that your child doesn’t tolerate with foods of equal or better nutritional value. The usual suspects are gluten, casein (the protein found in dairy products) and soy. You may consider having tests to identify exactly which foods are most inflammatory for your child’s immune system or digestive tract. A common mistake is to replace cow’s milk with other milks made from rice, almonds or even potatoes. While these are suitable for baking or cooking, they are nutritionally low in value. Children rely on fluid milk for protein and fats so are not adequate substitutes. Try instead to replace the protein and fats with other foods that contain adequate amounts. Very often, the food your child craves is the one that may be causing problems in the gut – be prepared for some resistance.
- Replace micronutrients – that is, vitamins and minerals. Don’t supplement blindly – you need to know which are needed. Ways of finding out are using clinical signs and symptoms that the child shows or having tests done.
- If your child shows distinct signs of digestive tract problems that have not resolved after you’re used the first four steps for at least four to six weeks, you’ll need to revisit the first three steps with the help of a professional. Your child may need to be checked for gut inflammation or disruptive gut microbes, which may need aggressive dietary restrictions and additions.
- If your child is on the autistic spectrum, your medical practitioner would probably have advised you to consider heavy metal screening and treatment. If not, you need to ask for this to be done.
If you implement the first four steps yourself, prepare to wait six to eight months to see dramatic changes. If you don’t see any, something will be missing. In this case, you’ll need to dig deeper with specialized professionals helping you.
For children, growth comes first. For this, they need macronutrients which include proteins, fats/oils, and carbohydrates. While adults can get away with big deficits in any of these for a while, children simply can’t.
Micronutrients include vitamins and minerals, supplemented by available products, ideally after proper diagnosis has been made of which the body needs. It seems easier to simply give the child supplements. Indeed, if the child responds to a supplement, should you give up other efforts to balance his or her nutrition? The answer is NO. If the basics aren’t met with an adequate diet, children simply do not function well, no matter how many supplements they eat. You have to fix the food part, full stop. Supplements (except for omega-3 oils and probiotics) can’t stop inflammation or toxins from the wrong foods, and can’t fix growth deficits caused by imbalanced total food intakes.
The link between food and learning difficulties is well established. The question of addressing food intolerances, nutritional imbalances, unhealthy gut and picky eating isn’t an easy one. Parents and professionals struggle with stubborn children who simply refuse to eat healthily. The key is to persevere. Most children will take medication on the firm insistence of a parent. Well, food is the best medicine, so insisting that it is taken, if only in very small quantities to begin with, needs the same firm approach.
Image supplied by Freepik.
[1] Judy Converse, MPH, RD, LD. 2009. Special-Needs kids eat right.
Apr 22, 2026 | I'm a Parent, I'm a Teacher, ILT Blog
For some time now the health profession has realised the incredible importance of the connection between our guts and brains. This means that for children to learn easily and efficiently we need to take care that their digestive systems are full of ‘healthy’ bacteria. These are also known as probiotics and with this knowledge, sales of probiotic supplements have risen considerably in the past years.
But is this necessary? Humans have always needed a healthy gut so where did our ancestors source the bacteria for their gut microbiome? Certainly not from bottled pills or liquids bought from a pharmacy.
One interesting study was published in Frontiers in Microbiology. It revealed that a medium sized apple supplies about 100 million bacteria. These are found in the flesh of the apple, not the skin and represent a huge number of different types of bacteria – mostly those we need for health.
Significantly, most of the microbes seem to be centred in the core of an apple – perhaps because this is the most fibrous part of the fruit, and the bacteria feed off fibre. The seeds had the most bacteria of all.
So if you peel and core the apples you feed to your children (and yourself), you are throwing away 90% of the bacteria. This should stop and make you think. Why throw something away only to turn around and try and replace it with some or other pill?
Plenty of people eat an apple in its entirety. Try to cultivate this habit yourself. Munch the core and seeds along with the flesh and eat the well-washed skin too. Fibre is good for our guts.
The moral of this story is that fresh produce probably supplies us with probiotics. Those of us who really strive to eat a balanced diet full of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds probably don’t need to spend money on bottled microbes.
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Mar 25, 2026 | I'm a Parent, I'm a Teacher, ILT Blog
Are you one of those parents who dread an oncoming birthday party, with tables overflowing with sugary goods? Does your child show hyperactive behaviour or even symptoms of ADHD after eating a lot of sugar?
While your child certainly may show an increase in energy or excitability after a party, it seems that sugar doesn’t cause long-term problems. Paulo Graziano, a researcher at the Centre for Children and Families at Florida International University (FIU), says that there is no evidence to show that sugar causes ADHD.
However, nutrition does play an important role in children’s feelings and behaviour. A balanced diet does support skills like paying attention and resisting impulses. Good nutrition is simply essential for children’s physical, emotional and cognitive health, says Madeline Curzon, who studies how nutrition relates to children’s thinking and behaviour at FIU. She points out that glucose, a form of sugar, is a brain fuel but fruits, vegetables and whole grains are better sources than sugared treats or drinks.
The answer: teach your children to occasionally enjoy a sugar treat but to understand why healthy foods are important. Bear with the excitable behaviour that may follow a ‘sugar overload’ but know that it won’t last forever.
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Nov 5, 2025 | I'm a Parent, I'm a Teacher, ILT Blog
We all know the ruse of bribing children with the promise of a sweet dessert or other treat if they eat their vegetables. But this can possibly do more harm than good. Nick Fuller, writing for The Conversation, discusses this.
Why bribing may backfire
Offering children treats as a reward for eating healthy food can:
Create unhealthy preferences
Studies show using discretionary foods such as sweets as rewards increases children’s preference for those foods.
Over time, children start to see dessert as the “prize” and vegetables as the “chore.” This skews their perception of food value and can lead to an unhealthy relationship with eating.
Bribes also link food with achievement or behaviour, which may foster emotional eating patterns later in life.
Disrupt appetite regulation
Children are born with the ability to self-regulate how much they eat, based on internal signals between the gut, brain, and hormones. It’s common for appetite to fluctuate—ravenous one day, disinterested the next—depending on activity, growth and development.
However, food rewards can override these natural cues. When children learn to eat to earn a reward rather than to satisfy hunger, research suggests it can increase the risk of overeating.
Increase fussy eating
Fussy eating is a normal phase in early childhood and typically improves once children start school.
But pressuring children to eat, especially with the promise of a reward, can make them even more resistant to trying new foods. Several studies show food rewards are linked to greater food fussiness over time.
What to do instead: evidence-backed strategies
Instead of resorting to bribes, here are research-informed ways to support healthy eating habits in children:
- Focus on effort, not outcomes
It can take eight to 10 exposures before a child accepts a new food. So keep offering it without pressure.
Praise your child for trying something new, rather than for finishing their plate.
Let them decide whether to eat it—and how much. The goal is to build positive experiences around food.
- Pair new foods with familiar favourites
Children are more likely to try unfamiliar foods when served alongside ones they already enjoy. So if your child loves potato chips, try introducing roast carrot “orange chippies” as a variation.
Offering the same food in different formats (such as avocado in sushi one day, on crackers another) also increases acceptance.
- Make healthy food visually appealing
Studies show kids respond better to food presented in fun and colourful ways. Use different shapes, textures, and colours to make meals more inviting—think fruit skewers, rainbow veggie plates, or “build-your-own” meals.
- Involve children in the kitchen
Children are more likely to eat food they’ve helped prepare. Even young children can assist with age-appropriate tasks like mixing, measuring, or choosing recipes.
- Model the behaviours you want to see
Children learn by watching. Research shows that when parents regularly eat and enjoy healthy foods in front of their kids, these children have better diets than their peers who don’t see their parents enjoy healthy foods.
Try to share meals as a family when possible and model the enjoyment of nutritious foods.
Provided by The Conversation
Image supplied by Freepik
