The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition.

Hello, I'm Kimberly King, and welcome to the mother's Market radio show, a show dedicated to the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of the human condition. On today's show, it's time to get back to school, and we're gonna give you some tips on how to help your kids study, and perhaps even more important, retain the information they're studying, plus we'll tell you what's happening around town and give you a chance to win a 100 gift card, but first up, it's time to put on our thinking caps and we're extremely pleased to welcome a true pioneer when it comes to alternative thinking and education and increasing brain function in everyday life. Dr. Sherry sweeten of is a nationally syndicated columnist, corporate trainer, author and radio host, that combined 15 years of passion into her brain power program that is raise test scores dramatically for thousands of students, and we're very fortunate to be welcoming her to the mother's market radio show. Dr. sweetened, how are you?

The wonderful. Thank you for having me.

Absolutely, we're talking today about making a difference where it matters, and we can't wait to hear more, but before we get to today's topic, can you fill our audience in on your work and its mission? My mission is to bring learning and memory skills on the understanding of brain power to students, and so what I do is I teach students not only what to learn, but how my work is with schools, and my mission is to bring learning and memory understanding into schools and so students really understanding, stand the true capacity of their own brilliance and understand that they are not in a ranking system behind somebody else in front of the other guy, that they have a unique way of learning. That's different from anybody else in the world. It's not one of three styles or one of seven styles, it's one of a billion styles, and so they can be empowered to when they study and when they learn, that they can put information into their brains in a powerful way.

I love that so much that just that word empower, and especially with that ranking... Absolutely.

Good for you. So you're already a favorite of mine, why don't you think you... That was easy.

Yeah, right, especially as a parent too, and we all wanna look out for the best for our kids, today we're talking about what parents can do at home to help their kids get the most out of their education, and every parent is looking for an edge and not everyone has those resources.

So what can be done about it? And I know you're filled with resources... Well, thank you.

There's so much that can be done at home. And one of the problems is that we separate school and learning and the academics from home life, and some parents do that more than others, and they're many very dedicated parents that wanna help their child study and wanna be a part of their education, but don't really know how other than to maybe stand behind them and point at the textbook and or help them with... Hold the piece of paper while they're studying their vocabulary, and that's all really great stuff, but there's a lot more that we can do when we start to implement memory tools, then especially in that first piece of understanding of if I can teach my child that using a tool can help them so much rather than, we're just gonna study, but how are we gonna study if we can have that conversation of, How are we gonna study for this test, not just Let's study, but how are we gonna do it what... You leave the way. What's best for you?

Now, of course, in my book, I have a lot of different tools, but you know of a lot of different tools, you've heard of acronyms, I happen to call them top words for tip off power because it is an acronym, you know of different techniques that you can use... And so think about that, how does your child prefer to get information into their mind, if you use the tools yourself, if you'll take your child to a grocery store and memorize the list together, if you will make a point of memorizing names every day when you meet people, if you will, read an article find it fascinating and discuss it with your child, and how can we really remember that statistic? It's just so interesting. And so I think when apparently is the way and the passion for learning, it affects the child drastically, and so the memory skills and learning just in general in every day life teaches a child how to do them, but now we're talking about opening that textbook or studying for that test, and what kind of tools can you actually teach your child and use with your child, and one of my favorites that is very easy to learn or not a radio show very quickly is the mind explosion, which we've discussed in the other show, is that having a child take a piece of paper and write down absolutely everything that they can remember, but allow them to draw pictures and use colors when a child is allowed to do something creative and do it their way, and maybe it's their own characters or their own way of... I've had students that... One student had a piece of paper and she decided to take notes in a circle all the way around... I can't describe this without using my hands, but all the way around the piece of paper and kept circulating that piece of paper till it was this big spiral and looking at that I could never... Oh, oh my gosh, how would you even get the words, but she loved doing that, and her teacher said it works for her, she does so well on tests and when she started doing things her own way, that's when things changed for her, so we can't... Also, we can't judge, we can't say, Oh, no, sweat hard drawing pictures. That's not studying, studying is taking notes and reading over and over, and that's not studying, we need to change the definition of studying, we need to make it fun and exciting and colorful, and even for those high schoolers who don't use cranes anymore, and they don't use markers anymore, get the markers out. Get the cranes out. Get the stickers out, whatever. And so now their notes look different, and maybe some of them are more corporate and serious, and that's okay too, but some people, like I was as a freshman in college, I would do these crazy poster sized notes and I would get a lot of attention positive and negative for that, but I would have people coming into my dorm, I'm going on Earth, but I had groups of kids studying together that I would say, Hey, let's all do it, let's do it my way. Let's study, let's get a big piece of better paper and we'll all write down what we remember and we'll talk about it and study, and it actually works because its attention on the information, so it could be any topic that we could all sit down and draw pictures and we can discuss it, we would be studying for the thing that we're talking about, and so that's what's so powerful is understanding that study isn't just putting your nose behind the book and reading something over and over and over, so you can say she's run circles around the competition, right?

So to speak, can you tell us an example of how we can continue to do this at that home?

I think the best thing that when a child sees a parent get creative, and that's the biggest challenge for parents is that we're not creative anymore. I'm sorry to say it, I tattooing.

We always run out of time for creatives, and we don't see the value in growing up means getting more serious, means putting the crayons away, it means... But I had a math teacher, we're doing this pilot program that we're doing for math, I had a Math, an algebra teacher, high school algebra teacher, colleton say, I never am creative at school now. This is a phenomenal teacher. She's wonderful. She is beloved, she is so engaging and so fun, I adore her classes and just... It's a hoot. And it's math, but she's saying, I am not creative ever, and so this program helps me be creative, and it was just such a statement to me that even... We are just not used to being creative, but our creativity is crucial to our memory, and so if a parent can impart that to a child and also let the child be the leader, and so if a child is a child, they're always the ones learning, except with this new computer generation, we're all idiots, and the computer... The kids are teaching us. Which is great, by the way. But when kids realize, Wow, I am so much more creative than Mom or Dad, and I am so much more capable of coming up with a memory tool or a skill to... Letting them take the lead in that.

So for example, we've got a biology test and actually I had a student that I was working with a number of years ago, she was in ninth grade biology, and she was so angry and her mom hired me to work with her, I say rather, what's ends and we met at Starbucks 'cause that was very cool for high school or to be when she's stuck sitting with somebody to learn that. Anyway, she walked in with a huge thick book and she slammed it down on the table, she was not happy in a statement, not happy that her mother was making her with somebody like me that she had to do biology, she threw and her mother actually snuck out which was really nice. Was actually a good thing.

But this young lady said, I have been studying for the last month, and I can't get this information into my brain, This is so painful, and it was a huge test and a huge book, and I said, Oh my God, I was cellular respiration. That was one of the topics, and I remember going, Wow, I'm paging through the book going, Oh, my brain hurts, the things don't come to me naturally, I don't pick up a book and memorize it immediately, it takes work. And so I really felt her pain in that moment and remembered being there and I said, Okay, let's try this, we ended up taking all of the information that was necessary for her test, and she just liked to draw stick figures, this is... Here we did everything, noli on three note cards and stick figures and stories, and they were... We were laughing till we were crying, they were hysterical, and what I would do is I'm working with her, she would do her note cards and I would do my own, so he would take the same information and to answer the question about parents, I would take the same information, and I would draw my stick figure story about what was happening in cellular whatever, and use examples of metaphors and crazy, and if it's somebody's expelling gas and this is happy, that's all fine because it's all about, you know, It's funny and memorable. And so we would compare notes and we would laugh hysterically, now she was a better artist, hers were cooler than mine, so she got to take a lead, got to be the expert, but every time when I would explain my pictures, we were studying... When we were discussing her pictures, we were studying, mom walks back in and she had three note cards and says, You don't have to believe this, my entire thesis on these three note cards, and it was just such an amazing... For both of us, and that's I guess what she's in college and studies that... Oh gosh. She graduated from college.

Wow. But continued that process, and it wasn't necessarily drastic figures to study, that was the answer, as much as it was Be yourself and find your own thing, the way that you felt as parents, if we can help Ichiro... Discover that, let them take the lead. Let them be a little crazy, show them being crazy ourselves, we're gonna do a world benefit for our kids, so you tapped into that learning her learning, that was her thing.

So I just got behind her and tried to do it her way, and I wasn't anywhere near his skill was great.

That's amazing.

And so she did well on her test, obviously... Yeah. Well, that's why it stuck.

That she wouldn't have had... You still be... It was just a house. Really, we would, Okay, well, maybe that's not the way, but that happened to work for the...

I love that story. Great information as usable, Dr. Sherry, we have to take a break right now. We will be right back with more of the mother's market radio show. Stay with us, we'll get back.

Welcome back to the mother's market radio show, and we wanna take time to remind you that if you missed any portion of today's show, you can find us on iTunes by searching mother's market, or you can download the podcast from our website, mothers market dot com, click on the link for radio and listen to our past shows, unless you can always download our Healthy Recipes and money savings coupons, all available at mother's market dot com, and now back to our interview with Dr. Sherry sweetener and we're discussing ways you can help our kids enhance their education while we have them at home. So Dr. Sherry, I read one of your articles that claims that everyone can benefit from the tools in the learning tool box, one of your great books... Elementary school students all the way up to grandparents. So how can one of your books be applicable to all ages... That was the design of the book really is, I really believe in terms of creating the conversation and the culture, so in schools, if everybody's speaking the same language, they all know the memory tools and they can use in seram thing in families that if we can all do this together. And this is that thing that we do. This is the game that we play. There's so many great car trip games that can... That enhance your memory, but you think about aging adults and how we're all afraid losing our capacity as we get older, and it's a fact of life in nature that that happens, and there's so much we can do about it to help avoid and prevent that from nutrition and exercise certainly, but also using memory tools and enhancing our brain on a daily basis, and so showing children that this is... We care about our brain. I don't know how often that conversation comes up and family meetings are over at in here, like we take care of our brain, we take care of our bodies, we take care of our muscles, we watch our weight and our food intake in our heart, even that's becoming more common, but we take care of our brain, and so eating or fish and raw walnuts and understanding and look at the Wallet, it looks like a brain and let's eat that because it's gonna help our brain, but actually being in the habit of learning and taking a moment to remember people's names, and to see something that we've... That we see on TV or that we've seen an article and share that and learn it and remember it, but as the aging adult uses their brain passed or brain capacity by using memory tools and by making a point to remember things and struggle with their brain a little bit that's gonna be powerful for them, for Mom and Dad, maybe they're at work and they use memory tools to help them at work, and that's what my corporate seminars are all about, is using these tools in your various jobs for students, it's in school, but the design of it, and the beauty of it is with the learning tool box that it pertains to that student in elementary school, because it's memory tools that I can use in school to memorize all the information from my test, or that I can use that in taking notes.

That very same book goes with mom or dad to work that you know, I'm sharing at the office that I can... Again, remembering names is always the biggest one for adults, but so many other pieces of... I worked with a police department for memorizing codes, memorizing license plates, things like that, and then the grandparents who just wanna stay fresh and wanna go to the grocery store to remember the stuff they have to get, they wanna remember something that they have seen or read and they wanna share it with their friends, that is the reason I wanted to be the same book for... And I originally considered, Well, I wanna do something for the aging adult, but I also wanna do something for students because that's really where my passion is, but if the teacher has the same book that the student has, that the college student has, that big brother has that little brother has a Rama has. We're all speaking the same language, we're all on the same page, we can use the same stuff, we can challenge each other in the same way.

I think that's brilliant, actually.

Really?

And you're right though, because no matter where the student is or the young student is, you're in a car and you're on the trip or whatever, and it really is exercising the brain power for the grandparents or the parents and I... Yeah, probably.

Absolutely, thank you. Good job. Yeah, and I don't wanna take you off focus here, but I think that kinda leads to the next question really, when you're offering them, because when we end, we're all at home and again after school, can we offer that to the teacher and the volunteer in the classroom, I guess that Sam, that same vocabulary as we're talking about to the teacher, to the volunteer, and is it easy that... Is it a formal program? From your learning tool. Is it something formal?

That's a great question. It can be formal, it's certainly the Brain Power program is a program that involves teacher training, student training, the use of the textbook in many different formats, they can have a class just for study skills if they don't, they can be implemented all through the school. But as far as if you're in a school and they don't use the Brain Power program, absolutely, the tools are still a value that if a volunteer is gonna go into a classroom and say, Hey guys, I'm gonna teach you some memory skills, that's absolutely valuable. That it might be one little tool... For example, I did, this was a school that ended up using the Brain Power program, but I had 500 kids in an assembly and we were just going through memory skills left and right, just trying different things just for fun, it was just that first introduction to memory skills and we did... Everybody knows what an acronym is, and we renamed it top words, tip off power, and we just did... And I always love to use Grocery List because everybody knows what that is, everybody has to go to the grocery store, so I always use that one. And there are 500 kids and we were gonna go to the grocery store, so I said, scream out things that you need at the grocery store, and so kid Oreos and onions and green beans and put an... And so they would yell things out, and I had somebody typing it up on the big... On the big board. And so we showed them how you could make an acronym out of that, and it ended up being a free beans less if we were in range at Incubus was Go brand. So it was all those Coopers, shapur it all together, and it was a student of course, who came up with that as the acronym... Well, the really fascinating thing about it is I end up training that entire school, and they were sixth graders of the year that we did that the next year they were seventh graders, obviously, and I was doing another assembly and knew that I had that crew that I had had the year before and they knew who I was, and just out of the blue, I said, Hey, who remembers that grocery list that we did and every handle it up, and I was absolutely shocked that I didn't expect... And so whenever I wanna know if 500 kids really has something and make them say it in unison, and so I say, You're gonna all sit in at the same time and then you stop, and then you say the next one again, but then you all start and so I could really hear the voices that if there were three that remembered, and you know the rest in I wouldn't be... Anyway, but it was green banks on and they all really knew the list, and so the reason I even tell that story is it demonstrates the importance and the fact that children need to understand that they have the ability to do something very, very simple that locks information into their brain when they're not even planning on it, and so I'm literally... And of course, I'm on listing tears over this going, Oh my God, that's what I'm saying, listen to yourself. So you weren't paid to remember that information, you were gonna be tested on the information, but for some reason, your brain took that information and locked it in... Why would that be? It's because of the way you put it into your brain, so if you can do that with everything you study, you can put information in your brain in such a powerful way, every single time you study how amazing you can remember things when you're... The old age of 41 attend.

So you're gonna remember that and you know those people who can talk about their 10th grade biology class and... No, yeah. You know what, I'm gonna pretend that I even know how to give you example of that.

Right.Sowel, when students really understand that and your child really understands that, Hey, you know what, the way that I put it in really is gonna make a difference in terms of how I'm gonna remember it is so much different than staring at a book for an hour, falling asleep and not really even knowing what study means, it's funny because... And it really truly is the way that you put it in, Debra, our minds are phenomenal, but if you remember studying piano, every good boy is fine, the... And the piano keyboard, and you're learning about music, and they say that when you go back, when you're learning that... So it truly is the way we learn to study and how you make it fun and what you put in... Absolutely, it's so true. And so many people remember the colors of the fell by a real give, and so if people know that, and I say, Well, why... Why do you still hold on to that information so desperately, why do you get up every morning and study the colors, they don't... They heard it maybe once or twice, and they might be brilliant, it might be that, or it just might have stuck on and why, why? Because your brain grabbed on so that awareness I think is crucial, and you've taken it to that next level and you have really tapped into a wonderful program, and you've taken it to the elementary, middle and all beyond. So I think that's great that you making your passion and you really, truly are passionate about this. I really believe in it. Thank you. It's kind of hard not to be when you see what kids do, and when you see... I literally have kids and I always say, I wanna see if you have 100% of the test, I wanna see it. And I have boxes, literally boxes, I can't throw those things away, like a lot... And I had a teacher tell me that this was a teacher that was not happy with me when I first was introduced to the school, and I understand why again, you know teacher is very overworked, I don't have time for yet another thing. And he was very vocal about it in front of a large group, he said, I don't have time for yet another program, another thing, and I think what he meant to say it was gimme was just very upset and vocal, and he shared his true feelings before he started out anyway, but I emailed that guy later in his school, I decided to take my program on, so he was stuck with me, and I emailed them and I said, Honestly, his name's Dave, I can say that.

He's an honestly, Dave Anderson, said, I respect where we're coming from. But give me a chance because I'm only here to help you, and if I can't, I get it. Anyway, but this guy, he's a buddy now is... He actually just decided, he said, Well, if we're gonna do this, I'm gonna need some examples for my classroom, great, give me a study sheet, so you email me one and I sent five of five different memory tools... Just put this in front of your students. Don't even teach it. And just put it in front of them. Anyway, the next time I came back to at school, this guy is a huge guy, he's a big tall guy, he walked up to me and I'm like, Oh no, he's got a stack of papers. And he said, In six years, I haven't had a 100%, and I used to offer 100 to anybody who can get 100% of my class goes, but I stopped doing that 'cause nobody could do it, any stuff, the stack of papers at me, and they were like 5% or 600% at the top, and the rest like As and Bs, and of course, I got in my car and sabinus just that when kids just really go... Oh, wow.

My favorite, favorite experiment to do in a classroom is I bring a medical school test to third graders, and I have them and I train them into how to memorize and that... I mean, Physiology of the heart. Can you learn this? No huge paragraph. You don't know, I've been this with third graders, fifth graders, high schoolers, but... And you show them, Oh yeah, you can. Let me show you, and I bring the principal in after we train and then I ask, Oh, how many Chambers over the names of the chambers, what are the functions of Chambers after 15 minutes, and kids get it like this, we've done random inventions and then go home going, Oh my gosh, can you... Member is 50 words in around... And then we have them do it. And so anyway, but the point is, you can do that at home. You can do that as a volunteer in a classroom, you can even if your school isn't doing the program, bring one memory tool in there and bring one that you already know, if you don't buy the book, you know an acronym is go teach a bunch of kids. How to make an aggregate that's gonna help them.

One, it doesn't need to be a formal program, is the answer... It's a long wind to the answer, all the third grade parents, Harvard and Yale callihan right then the scholarships at all Nulth is phenomenal. Very interesting information, I love this. And this is, again, your website will be where everybody's gonna be going to... Thank you so much for your time. I Oshawa look forward to having you on again. But in the meantime, this is the website to go to, you can catch more of Dr. Sherry, it's brain power schools dot com. We learn all about her passion for learning and education, and perhaps pick up one of her books and to see her in person in the book is the tool box memory skills for everyone. It's available at mother's market. Thank you once again, we look forward to our next visit.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening to the mother's market radio show, and for shopping at mother's market