When I was a kid, my siblings and I listened to Steve Green’s “Hide ‘Em In Your Heart” albums over and over again. These albums are a collection of dozens of kids’ songs that are basically just Bible verses put to catchy tunes. To this day, when I notice fear rise in me in a particular moment, I instinctively start singing, “When I am afraid I will trust in You, I will trust in You, I will trust in You,” from Psalm 56:3-4 thanks to one of those catchy tunes. The title of the albums is a nod to another Psalm—Psalm 119:11, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” Because of the truths embedded in them, these albums were instrumental in my spiritual formation in my earliest years. Learning truths from God’s Word and committing them to my memory helped to shape me into the person I am today, now with children of my own.

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, commonly referred to as ADHD, is the most studied condition in childhood. Statistics show that nearly ten percent of children ages two to 17 in the United States have been diagnosed with ADHD. While this condition is widely studied and diagnosed, it seems to remain clouded by misunderstanding and misconceptions by the general population and is, in fact, under diagnosed.

In the 40 years that I have been teaching, I have seen a lot of changes in the world of education. In my earliest years in the classroom, rote learning was the primary way that knowledge was transferred from teacher to student. Rote learning relies heavily on the repetition of material for the purpose of memorizing it. This teaching technique was widely used across all disciplines. Students memorized important dates and events in history class, entire music pieces in music class, famous poems in language arts class, and math facts and equations in math class.