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Exercise and Outdoors: A Key to Helping Our Kids Build Emotional Resiliency and Optimizing Their Learning Capacity

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Speaker: John J. Ratey, MD, Reebok's Ambassador for Active Kids and Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School
Location:
Oak Meadow School 2 Old Pickard Lane Littleton, MA
Cost: Free; $5 suggested donation at the door

With our digital worlds so enticing and, yes, addicting, we need all the help we can get to show our kids the wonders of play and exploration—especially outside. Play and nature have important effects on all of us, but especially on children’s healthy development. Human beings are genetically programmed to learn through play, and when we don’t our brains are smaller, learning is harder, we are more aggressive, we don’t learn the social emotional rules, and we get less enjoyment out of life. John Ratey will speak to us about the importance of physical activity and play, its effects on the brain, and how places like The Discovery Museums have taken a huge step in providing a program to reverse the negative trends.

John J. Ratey, MD, is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and an internationally recognized expert in Neuropsychiatry. He has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles, and 11 books published in 14 languages, including the groundbreaking “Driven to Distraction”, “Answers to Distraction” and “Delivered from Distraction” series with Ned Hallowell, MD. With the publication of "Spark-The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain," Dr. Ratey established himself as one of the world's foremost authorities on the brain-fitness connection. His latest book, “Go Wild” explores how we can achieve optimal physical and mental health by getting in touch with our caveman roots, and how we can “re-wild” our lives.

Dr. Ratey has been recognized by his peers as one of the Best Doctors in America since 1997, and was recently named “Outstanding Psychiatrist of 2016”by the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society. He serves as an Adjunct Professor of Sport Science at the National Taiwan Sport University, Consultant to the Governor’s Council on Fitness and Sport for the State of California, Reebok-BOKS ambassador for Active Kids, and sits on the Board of Directors for Sparking Life, who’s mission is to transform America’s sedentary lifestyle and to improve children’s learning capacity.

Throughout his career he has lectured to teachers, legislators, business leaders, parents, and children world-wide on learning, academic achievement, attention, autism, aggression, play, exercise, and how we might understand and change our brains to improve the condition of our life.