18: Why Kids Feel Sick Of or From Studying

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Ever watch a kid wake up queasy on school days but bounce back on weekends? We dig into a counterintuitive truth: sometimes the “sick” feeling isn’t a virus or avoidance—it’s the body’s response to information overload when lessons stack up without any hands-on anchor. Mike and I share why even high-performing students can feel dizzy, nauseous, or headachy while genuinely understanding the material, and how a small shift toward doing can bring quick relief.

You’ll hear a memorable geometry story where a student who could define a great circle still arrived with a brutal headache—until a few minutes with clay turned theory into something he could slice, compare, and grasp physically. No pills, no lectures, just a model that linked words to the real world. We map out how this “too much significance, not enough mass” pattern shows up in reading-heavy classes, cram sessions, and well-intentioned homework that forgets movement and manipulation. Then we break down how to spot the difference between confusion and overload so you don’t apply the wrong fix.

Expect a practical playbook you can use tonight: targeted questions that reveal whether study is the trigger, quick ways to bring in real objects or stand-ins, simple activities to convert abstract ideas into action, and a mindset that prioritizes “show me” over “explain it again.” From kickball to life skills to math, anchoring concepts in objects, models, and short demos helps the body settle and the learning stick. The result is fewer mystery illnesses, calmer study sessions, and a student who trusts their own understanding because they can see, touch, and do.

We connect a surprising dot between school-induced headaches and the imbalance of too much theory with too little hands-on learning. Practical steps show how simple physical activities can dissolve stress, nausea, and resistance while making study stick.

• why information overload without action triggers real physical symptoms
• how a geometry concept and clay modeling erased a splitting headache
• the difference between confusion and overload and why it matters
• simple home remedies that anchor ideas in objects and movement
• when to use dictionaries versus when to use hands-on fixes
• a parent’s playbook for spotting study-related illness and responding fast
• the mindset shift from explaining more to doing first

If this resonates, share the episode with a parent who needs a gentler, smarter path through school stress. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Parenting Solutions for Teen and Pre-Teen Education and Behavior podcast. Today, Mike and I are going to be going over why your kid gets sick and how to address it as it relates to study, to education. And this is a very interesting topic that we've been wanting to talk about for a while because it's not something that's generally known out there and how the two relate or even that they do relate. So we'll give you some information about it and then at the end, of course, practical ways to apply this with your child. So why don't you kick us off, Mike, and tell us about why kids get sick, how this relates to study and education.

Why School Triggers Illness

Too Much Info, Not Enough Doing

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Sure. Let's just clear the air on this point of like the kids can be malnourished or otherwise, you know, being fed a bunch of garbage and they're going to get sick that way. Okay. But most of our listeners already have, you know, jumped through that hurdle, jumped over that hurdle, or learned on that subject. Most of our listeners are the type of parents who are doing the best for their kids. They've already researched what the best stuff is to feed their kids and so forth. And but we got to take it a step further, and the parents want to take it a step further and do everything that they can to ensure their child's success. Which brings us to the field of education. So why, when you send your kid to school, do they come back sick? Or why do they wake up in the morning and that's when you find out they're sick and they don't want to go to school? They could be fibbing, but if they're fibbing about being sick, it's probably because they they succeeded in staying home from school some earlier time and it worked, right? But in actual fact, there was an earlier time when they were sick and they stayed home from school. Now this becomes useful. That's a whole mechanism there, but we're backing it up to like the root cause. Why would go going to school and studying stuff cause the child to feel sick, to have um headaches, you know, upset stomach, like physically feel ill? Well, it's really as simple as this. You can produce the same phenomenon by putting your kid on a merry-go-round, right? And and having them get dizzy. Okay. Um getting dizzy physically can cause you to get ill. You could make somebody throw up even, vomit as it is getting get get them dizzy enough, and they're so disoriented, and the body just sort of goes, hey, why? Well, in school, unfortunately, most schools, unfortunately, in America, are giving the kids too much information and not enough to do. Okay? And when you overbalance too much information, even if the child understands it, this is not the same territory as we coven cover often on the subject of being confused. No, they could be right in there batting, rolling up their sleeves, really studying this material, but it's just too much information, and they're not being allowed to actually interact with the physical universe and do things. Okay, and that imbalance causes them to feel dizzy or spinny, causes them to feel ill at the stomach. Headaches get produced this way. Okay, people sometimes will say they get headaches from reading too much. Well, okay. You could, even if you're looking up all your words, making sure you understand everything well, so forth and so on. At some point, reading about how to play kickball does not replace going out at recess or in a structured educational program and being taught how to play kickball out there in the parking lot or the field or whatever, right? So when they're studying and being lectured at or made to read at length about things that they should be learning and practicing, you're gonna get this phenomenon. They feel ill, they get headaches, sick to their stomach, etc. And then they they they bow out. I mean, they they don't want to feel that way, so I have an aversion to study.

Headaches From Cramming

The Great Circle Story

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Makes sense. Makes a lot of sense. I know that um I've seen this phenomena myself. I actually thought of this as you were talking. It's one of my first experiences with really uh experiencing how using some of the tools that you know I've I've learned over the years and you've helped me learn uh much more about um was getting a splitting headache when cramming for something and trying to really study and just get it all down so I could get through that test that was coming up, right? And uh and somebody who knew about what you just talked about, the the how to balance the doing with the information helped me get through that, and I felt so much better afterwards. So I can totally I can uh attest to that one personally. Yeah. Yeah. So tell us about your experience with um seeing this phenomena and students that you've helped and and how it worked and get an example that people can relate to.

Clay, Spheres, And Relief

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Well, sure. Uh I remember a particular young man that I was working with. Um he was taking a life skills class with me on the weekend, but he was still in school, and I forget whether he was like a senior in high school or maybe it was first year of college or something like this. And he came in on a Saturday morning into this uh life skills classroom, and he had a splitting headache. He just looked terrible. He's but he showed up, right? He he showed up for class, um, and uh, but he had this splitting headache, so I just started asking him, Well, what are you studying about? And he's just telling me about different subjects he studied, and he landed on geometry. I go, well, what were you going over uh you know yesterday in in geometry class? He goes, Well, I I learned about a great circle, right? Which is a technical thing, it's a specific uh it's a specific thing in the physical universe and something that that they you learn about in geometry. And um as we've covered in another episode, I I think we covered the fact that geometry means literally the metri part is measuring, and and geo is of course earth stands for earth, from which we get geography and all those other words, right? So um measuring the earth. Well, a great a great circle is uh the largest circle that you can get at when you and let's let's you know I I could use uh more uh technical terms, but uh if you if you cut an orange in half, okay, you can cut a little slice off the side or you can go straight through the center. Okay? And any any uh plane or flat surface that goes straight through the center of a sphere is gonna produce that the largest circle that you can get if you're cutting that sphere. Okay. And so they call that they have a special name for it, you know, for whatever reason. And they call it a great circle. It's the great circle. Okay? So the equator would be a great circle on the Earth's, you know, it's it's obviously an imaginary line, right? But but it's it's it's a line and it goes it goes around and it it's it's it's not just uh intersecting with the north pole or the south pole, right? Which would which would produce a very much smaller circle. Okay. Um so okay, so he he tells me about this. We land on this thing. I sort of fished around, and you know, because I know this study technology, I was able to kind of land on this one thing, and I was like, oh, okay, so come on over here. And um I I I took him over here uh into a little adjoining room where we had some clay. And uh he was my only student that particular morning, Saturday morning. Um so I I took him over here and I had him make a nice big four or five-inch ball of clay. And then I had him cutting it and chopping it in half and chopping other circles and comparing and stuff. And it didn't take very long before he's he's like, he's a whoa. He was, my headache is completely gone. He was like, what did you do to me? It's just all I had to do was just get him to look at a physical object and connect this information that he was being given that he understood well. He spit it out, he told me exactly what a great circle was, but he just he didn't have enough interaction with a physical object to really assign that information that's in his head to something in front of him. And when we balanced that out, the headache just completely blew away.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

Awesome, awesome. Yeah, that's what I was saying. I can totally relate to that. When that occurred for me, something very similar, I was like, what the what did you just do to me? Like, how does it feel better? I haven't taken anything that's supposed to make me feel better. And I had some nausea going on with it at the time with the headache, you know, like okay, I just need to go home and lie down in a dark room, and then you do this remedy, and it's it's like it's a bit magical when you first experience it, but then it becomes more normal over the years.

Spotting The Real Cause At Home

SPEAKER_00 10:50

That's right. If it's if it's if it's coming from the area of study, it's curable from the from with the subject of study. Because you do not have to resort to other unusual solutions. You don't need painkillers, you don't need to change the kid's diet, you know, that might be its own subject, right? But if it's coming from study, we can solve it with study.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Exactly. Yeah, and of course, that's important to note, not everyone who has a headache or sick to their stomach is going to respond to this because there are other sources for these things, of course. Um But speaking of that and how someone can like spot this phenomena, you mentioned that because of your knowledge of an ability to apply the technology of study, you were able to narrow this down for that young man you were talking about. How would somebody, you know, maybe their child comes home and is feeling this way, how would they narrow that down? What are some approaches to that?

Practical Remedies Parents Can Use

SPEAKER_00 11:52

Sure. So obviously um being aware of the potential problem is one thing because you could start questioning the child about like, well, I mean, there could be these other things involved. Maybe, maybe, maybe they um, you know, borrowed or stole some Twinkies in the lunch in the lunchroom or something and they made themselves sick that way. I mean, you know, anything, anything could happen. It's great, it's grade school, right? Or maybe junior high school, even more can happen, even much worse, right? Okay, if they're hung over, okay, slicing a ball of clay in half is not gonna cure their their headache and nausea. That's not gonna happen. Okay, but that's a but hopefully that's like junior high high school, not elementary school, right? Right? Um, but no, if just knowing that there could be a connection and you start you start tracing it down. Well, what are you studying? What's going on? What um often the kids if they're if they're confused, they don't even know what they're studying in school. Um but this particular problem of having physical reactions to study is not one of being confused or blank or forgetting things. They should be able to spot it pretty easily, like, well, we were talking we were going over this, that, and the other thing. And it's that attempt, it's that attempt to really get it pictured in their mind and the and the the the sort of effort that they're putting into it that sort of ends up causing those internal problems, the headache, the the the stomach ache, the nausea. If you're just blank because you didn't understand something, you're just okay, you're just blank. There's no there's no real adverse physical reaction other than just staring at the wall or something. Right? But these these you know deep down physical reactions are always because of too much information, not enough doing. And it just takes a little uh careful questioning about what's going on, what what's being studied. And then of course the remedy is to supply either the thing that's being studied about, okay, the bicycle, the the automobile. Okay, what what are they studying about? Baseball, kickball. They're studying about something. If it's dance or theater well, let's start you know, let's get up on stage, let's create a stage, let's put let's get the kitchen table out, make that a stage or whatever, you know, let's let's do so let's do something effective in the direction of of putting into the physical universe what they're being taught taught in school. And y sometimes that's getting the uh actual physical object that's being studied about. Sometimes it's supplying some type of reasonable substitute, okay? And and and and getting things that represent that thing or making small miniatures of that thing, which then if they're doing manipulating various things in front of them, they're they're bigger than it, they can kind of be in control of it, and enough of that is going to blow the headache, get rid of the nausea, get them settled down and stable and and not feeling dizzy anymore, if that's what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I think it's so significant, um, at least it was for me to notice, like you said at the beginning, it's not something that they are necessarily confused about, that they're missing this balance of doing to the theory of it, right? Because I used to have this misconception, and um, it was you know, somebody helped me figure it out, maybe it was you, I don't remember, um that it had to be something you were confused about that you didn't have balance with significance versus doing, you know, like the the words and whatnot about it versus experiencing it or whatever. So I think that is important to uh make a note of that the the child may appear to totally get his studies, be getting good grades, and still have this imbalance going on. Has that been your experience?

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Absolutely. Um you have to you have to differentiate between various um problems that come up with with study. And uh we have this we have this book um for those that are interested, and we'll make this this available. Uh the the learning book is your your your most elementary uh approach to learning the language that we're talking about. And it identifies three very specific barriers to study, and this overbalance of information and not enough contact with physical objects or things with mass. Um that's its own specific thing. It has its own remedies. Okay, you cannot fix somebody's headache if it came from the subject of study by looking things up in the dictionary and clarifying words. You're just gonna kill the kid or the adult for that matter, anybody who tries to take this approach. The dictionary is not gonna solve this problem. And I I'm I'm the big proponent of dictionaries and derivation books and all that stuff, but that's that's not the problem. Okay, you do we don't need more information, we don't need more clarification. What we need is something to look at, something to handle in the physical universe, okay? Let's not endlessly teach the kid the theory of good manners, okay. Let's let's have him practice introducing his friend to another friend. Let's have him do things out in the out in the world, okay? Let him help set the table, him or her, right? It's like um any concept that's trying to be taught to the to the child or any student of any age needs to be related to the physical world. And and all these physical manifestations, most of them when it comes from studying, is this imbalance of information to physical mass. So they are basic.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Excellent. Okay, great. And uh what advice would you give, just to kind of use this to wrap things up, to a parent who's trying to do this with a child, and you know, maybe there's some resistance because the kid doesn't feel good and it's not really real to them that their headache might be or their stomach ache might be from this what we're talking about right now. What's your approach to that?

Distinguishing Study Barriers

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Well, nobody wants to be made to feel like they did something wrong. In fact, they did not do anything wrong, okay. So it's the same type of approach that you would expect um when when uh a child is confused or ill, okay. Um not to be sympathetic particularly, not overly you know, overly sympathetic and and and approaching it like you know, oh careful and all that, but just um you know that if your child needs to be fed and put to bed because they're they're getting hostile, they're getting this and that or whatever. And a lot of parents they know this intuitively, just goes, you know, let's feed the kid, put them to bed. Okay, boom, that's it. That's if if it works, if that's a remedy, that's something that's you know, that's that's parents' intuition or probably maybe they were taught that by their own parents, okay? But feeding the kid, putting them to bed, okay, for certain situations, that works. And you don't do it by sympathizing, you don't do it by explaining, you just feed the kid, put them to bed. They wake up, they're they're doing better. Okay. If it's if it's coming up that they're getting headaches, they've got headaches, you've already checked marked mentally, or possibly you have a a checklist. The parent has a checklist of things that it could be. They're not eating a bunch of Twinkies or other sugar products, they're not drinking, you know, um hops all day long, type of thing. All right, they've they've got good nutrition, good food, okay, sensible. eating is going on. Um it if you've isolated the fact that it does come from school, then it's just like roll up your sleeves. Let's find out what are they studying about. Okay. It has to just be done in an interested fashion and and curiosity, your own curiosity about like, well, I mean you have to try it. You you really have to just be willing to try this. You have to be willing to you don't have to believe that this is true. Okay. And you won't necessarily believe it's true until you see it with your own eyes. Until you observe it for yourself. You have to be willing to learn that this possibly could work. Okay. That's probably a a real important step is for the parent to just be willing to find out could this possibly work? It's better than drugging your kid.

unknown 21:23

Right?

Hands-On First, Theory Second

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Well they don't feel good so let's give them let's give them like 14 spoons of that stuff up from that we got from the store, you know, or or whatever. It's like now let's just see if maybe we could do something effective by finding out what they're studying and then supplying some stuff for them to look at and physically handle. And maybe by physically handle it could be stuff that they could stomp on all over the floor right in the kitchen. I mean use your imagination. But but um kicking some books around the kitchen the pile of books around the kitchen kitchen floor. Great yay kick it kick them some more kick him some more I mean they could you could you could literally like blow the kid the kid's headache like in 10 minutes or half an hour of just having click kick you know they hate school it's uh it makes them feel bad and stuff bring all your books down here. Let's kick them around the kitchen for a while right okay now that we've done that your headache's gone and you're feeling better okay now let me let's get in there and find out if there was something you didn't understand. That would be kill two birds with one stone, you know but no you've got to be willing to find out could this possibly work? Can we get some physical some interaction with the physical universe and um make these physical manifestations disappear.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Love it. So simple very workable I can attest to as well so uh another great topic. Thank you Mike for sharing your wisdom and experience on that and for everybody listening thank you for listening stay tuned for another episode coming up next