Oh, I hear you there. I have no problem avoiding things like Kool-Aid or Cheetos, but when you have to watch out for things like toothpaste and vitamins it gets a little irritating. We're thinking of looking into a food allergy elimination diet too, but it just seemed easier to take out the additives before things like wheat or dairy. Sorry if I was posting the obvious to you - it's just made such a huge difference in dd's life lately that I'm on a bit of a crusade, lol.

Just a thought - artificial food colourings and flavourings make my youngest daughter craaaaaaazy. I haven't read the ingredient list for Redbull, but I assume it would have quite a bit of each. There was an article from the Lancet posted here a while back that showed many kids with ADHD-type issues respond well when additives are removed from their diet. If that's the case for your girl, then the colours and whatnot in RedBull might negate any potentially positive effects from the caffeine. I like the dark chocolate idea, or maybe try a bit of green tea with some honey? There's just so much stuff in RedBull besides caffeine that it would be really hard to tell which ingredients are affecting her.

The Bad Kitty series is a big favourite around here, and is mostly fairly easy reading. Also, it's about dogs, not cats, but 'Ribsy' by Beverly Cleary is a great book.

This is interesting. My youngest has some very ADHD-like tendencies, and while it's not severe enough that I would consider medication at this point, I would certainly be open to a change in diet.

Education is never a waste. :)

:iagree:I agree, and I'm so very grateful! I'm still so new to all of this, and I have to say that so far I've learnt more from lurking on this forum than I have from any other online source.

I have used this with my older daughter, and plan to use it with my youngest when she's ready. I love the program, because each operation is broken down into manageable chunks. My older daughter is a very headstrong type of learner and found this program to be a bit slow, so we've gone back to our other math program. She does, however, very much appreciate that the workbooks are written in a nice simple black-and-white format, as she find many of the brightly-coloured, cartoony books to be distracting. My younger daughter has some very strong dyslexic tendencies and I think math is going to be a struggle with her. We're still in the very early stages of homeschooling with her (she's 4) but I think the step-by-step program will be a good fit when she reaches grade one. I'm not sure about the books listed on Amazon, but the books I've purchased in Canada are intended to be a stand-alone curriculum and are used in classrooms. They fulfill all provincial requirements for Ontario and almost everything for the Western provinces. One thing I did find is that their inherent simplicity could also be a weakness. A good deal of time is spent on each concept, but during that time there is no review of prior concepts. So when we were working on addition and subtraction, my daughter regressed a bit in telling time and counting money. I think if I were to use the curriculum again, I would probably supplement with something like a 'Daily Math' workbook just to keep everything fresh.