The Quiet Part

Your Kids Are Watching You. And That Might Be the Problem.

• Second Comma • Episode 13

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TL;DR

Your kid’s behavior might be the mirror—and you’re the model.


If you’ve ever handed your kid a screen and immediately regretted it… you’re not alone.
This conversation hits where it hurts—and shows what’s actually in your control.


Episode Summary

Most parents want to raise thriving kids—but don't realize the day-to-day habits at home are either helping or hurting that dream.
 Mark sits down with Jeff, a chiropractor and co-founder of Raising Healthy Families, to unpack what really drives childhood health—from screen time to sugar crashes to the lie of "outsourcing" parenting. Jeff’s background, combined with his wife’s work in children’s mental health, gives them a raw, real-world perspective on what’s messing with our kids—and what to do about it.
They cover everything from screen addiction to school stress, food marketing to parental modeling. If you’re tired of feeling powerless (or just tired, period), this episode offers clarity, accountability, and a path forward. It's not preachy. It's not perfect. It's a parenting gut-check you’ll thank yourself for listening to.
Also: what this has to do with your money—and why ignoring it could cost more than you think.

Guest Resources

Second Comma Resources


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Mark (00:01.253)
All right. Welcome to the quiet part. today we're going to talk about something I think affects a lot of people that I work with, people that listen to this show. We're talking about how we create thriving family units and the things that stand in the way of that. Things that made me feel all too common. think most parents don't realize they're the single most important factor in their child's well being. And we don't, when we don't know that we don't accept it we don't accept it. We don't take enough action. And so

I wanted to bring in somebody who I feel like is an expert on this topic. want to introduce my friend, Jeff. Jeff, tell us a little bit about what you do, who you do it for and why you do it.

Jeff (00:37.912)
Hi, Mark. Appreciate you having me on. Yeah, you know, quick background. I am a chiropractor by trade, but I do a lot of lifestyle interventions with patients. And my focus was always youth. I liked working with youth athletes, but that sort of just kind of rolled more into overall family health because many of the problems that I was working with these youth on just stemmed from more of the family habits, Nutrition, sleep, stress in the household, stuff like that, right?

And then my wife, who we've been together for almost two decades now, she works in kids' mental health for quite some time. So we found that over the years, we would just pick each other's brains a little bit to help with patients we were working with. And we saw a lot of overlap, how nutrition would affect mental health and sleep and all these lifestyle things were just affecting each other. So we started to almost combine our knowledge and

into our online account. just started tweeting about patients we were working with and observations we were making about overall family health and how that impacted kids. And that started turning into something that was pretty well received. People were reaching out with questions, inquiring if we could help them with their specific family problem. And so, we do still have our day jobs where we work in brick and mortar with patients on a daily basis. Our online

presence, I guess, has grown and we really enjoy working in that arena as well because we get to go a lot deeper with families. They're invested in solving whether it's kids mental health or picky eating or screen time, stuff like that. And we really, like I said, get to go deep with families and feel like we really make an impact with them. So yeah, that's sort of the Cole's notes of kind of our background and how we got to doing what we do now.

Yeah, we really enjoy it.

Mark (02:33.381)
Awesome. Yeah. So I think I found you guys originally on LinkedIn. That's where I spend most of my time, but then I did also jump over, find you guys on Twitter and it is interesting. We won't get into the details, but some people have really hot takes about what you guys bring up and what you guys suggest. And I don't think these are controversial topics, but I guess online you can find anybody who thinks something's controversial at a certain point.

Jeff (02:52.184)
For sure, for sure. you know, and I guess if you aren't kind of stirring up a little bit of controversy, then you might just be sitting on the fence a little too much with some of these. But, you know, we post about stuff we see, you know, we're very active, especially myself in, you know, the research realm of things. So it's a pretty cool time for that because there is a lot more research coming out on how screens impact kids and, you know, how our food system is snowballed into this, you know, fake factory made foods.

Mark (03:15.163)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff (03:20.706)
that we're feeding our kids and we're just starting to see the ramifications of that and the impact that has on their health, right? So as more information comes out, we're sharing it, we're sharing, you know, how that might relate to what we're seeing in the trenches as we work with our patients. And yeah, often it gets, you know, we get supportive messages, we get people reaching out appreciative of that and we get the other end of the spectrum too, where people might get their hackles up a little bit over it. you know, at no point do we claim to know everything.

But again, we're just sharing our experiences and sharing what we know. And, you know, we're also parents ourselves. We have two awesome kids. So we're doing our best to practice what we preach. Again, we're not perfect parents by any means, but again, it's more sharing information in the hopes that it can inspire other parents and provide some information that helps them on their parenting journey. So if we take a little bit of heat along the way, that's part of the online game, I guess.

Mark (03:51.002)
Mm-hmm.

Mark (04:12.369)
Yes.

Yes. Yeah. I, so we have three kids. We're about six years into the parenting journey and I have come to call it, and this is a very endearing term, but parenting is perpetual unpreparedness. You are always moving into a phase or a stage that you've never been in before. And I even thought, Oh, when we have our second child, we'll be repeating some stuff. And that is correct. You were repeating the first nine months or whatever, and you're much better at changing diapers, but you've never had two children before.

So there, even the repeated pieces, you're still in perpetual unpreparedness. And it's underneath that framework where I want us to have just an open mind of receptive thought process around, okay, what is, is talking about? Cause when I came across some of this, if you guys are saying part of it is obvious, right? I don't want my children looking at screens, but then you get into the dietary part. And I've really become aware of that in the past couple of years. And my wife and I try to make intentional choices. I think a lot of people listening to this podcast would say, I try to make intentional choices.

But they might not understand what all fits underneath that umbrella of intentional choices. starting into our discussion here, what do you, what would you say is maybe the biggest mistake that parents make? why do so many families struggle with their children's health? And we, you can start wherever you want. move through it.

Jeff (05:29.71)
Yeah, no, that's a great question. And, you know, we could definitely take it a few ways, but I think if there's one sort of overarching theme with that is along the way parents have started to feel like they have no power, right? We're not empowered to do this. It's, I got to see my doctor for this health related thing, or, you know, I just buy the food that I saw in the commercial or there's a healthy label on it. Like people, parents just aren't accountable anymore for.

you know, their, kids health, same with education, right? Well, the teachers will handle their education and we need to start viewing these things as a resource, right? Nobody is going to know your kid like you do and that four minute doctor's appointment, they're not going to learn the, the uniqueness of your kid and, and, and anything like that. Right? So you're going to know the foods that your kid kind of gravitates towards and maybe the ones that don't sit well with them. You're going to know if your kid does better with, you know, 10 hours of sleep or 11 hours of sleep, you're going to know.

If your kid is more of a visual learner, a tactile learner, you spend more time with your child than anyone else, right? So understanding that there's a big responsibility that comes with that. Our kids depend on us for all these things and we are the ones that have power to make these positive changes, right? When it comes, you know, circling back to what you talked about with health.

We need to understand that the most impactful thing in our child's life for their health is their actual lifestyle, is the habits. And that falls solely onto the lap of the parents, right? You don't need a doctor to make sure your kid goes to bed on time. You don't need a doctor to feed your kids the healthier foods and reduce the unhealthy foods. You don't need a doctor to create healthy screen time boundaries. This is up to parents and our kids depend on it, depend on us for these sort of things. So.

I guess if there's one answer to give, it's that parents need to understand that with parenting comes responsibility and we need to use that responsibility to make these positive changes in our kids' lives. And if they do have a health problem or if they do struggle with learning or their education or something like that, teachers, doctors, these are resources for us to use to get our kids on the right track. But third, we don't want to be outsourcing that to these kind of external

Jeff (07:48.55)
people in our child's lives.

Mark (07:50.415)
Yes. The outsourcing is, is, is really strange in our, in today's world. I'll just leave it there. I know somebody who was pretty high up in public education and he had some amazing statistics when he came to talk about, when people try to outsource things to the school, right? So let me take the calendar year. Okay. Well, maybe you're asleep from we'll call it eight to six. So you got to back out all those hours. So then you've got your breaks, your holidays, your summer vacation. You got to back out all that.

Then you've got the traveling to and from school. You've got the in-between periods. And I think it was something like if you talked about how many, how much time percentage of time the student actually spent to the w with the people that it was quote unquote being outsourced to, was, it was less than 20%. I believe it was less than 15 % of total time. And so conceptually to think I have outsourced something to somebody who was spending 14, 15 % of their time in connection with my child.

We've got to look at the non 15, non 14%. I mean, that is an overwhelming number there, which is super interesting. I've remembered something you guys shared recently on your Twitter X, whatever it's called now, but it was, I think, I think it was two women and two children sitting on a bench and the one woman and one child were both reading books. And the woman next to them was looking at the other one and saying, how did you get your children to read books? And then if you look at the full picture, that woman has her phone in her hand.

And her child has a phone in his hand or her hand or whatever. And it's, was thinking, what a straight, like does that, that right there, that paradigm I think describes so much where it's, get caught in our normalization of what we see around us. Our children do the same. And so we, sometimes we start to wonder, why do our kids have these strange quirks or why do they do these things? But they see it being modeled to them. Do you feel like that's true?

Jeff (09:37.326)
100%. You know, people reach out to us and ask for help with, you know, my child's picky eating and all they want is processed foods or all they want is a screen or whatever it might be. And the vast majority of the time, if you know, potentially all the time, it's at least influenced or, you know, directly caused by the parents habits. And it's interesting when we get to that point, when we talk to parents, you start talking to them, we, know,

just to learn a little bit about what's going on. And inevitably it ends to, you know, what are your habits? How do you eat in front of your child? What are the habits you are modeling for them, right? And then, you know, parents either go one or two ways with that. They're not interested anymore once they see that there's a little bit of accountability involved with that.

Mark (10:18.299)
Yeah.

Jeff (10:27.572)
or it kind of the light bulb goes off and then they start to see that, wow, know, the little things throughout my day, you know, me checking my phone all the time in front of my child or the TV being on in the background while we eat, that's what's, you know, creating this constant desire for screens or my eating habits are obviously directly impacting my kid, right? The kids aren't gonna want to eat healthy if mom and dad are eating junk food all the time in front of them. So the way the parent goes is the way the kid will go.

Mark (10:47.803)
Yeah.

Mark (10:55.899)
Yes. And I think sometimes I'm, I'm, I'm privy to this. I won't believe something because it sounds too simple, but I think at the end of the day, getting back to simplicity, the basics are simple. That's why they're called the basics, right? And our, children are sponges. think we would all call their children sponges. They absorb so many things. say a bad word, say a naughty word around your children and watch how quickly that is repeated versus how quickly they, conceptualize and understand picking up toys, putting our shoes away, things like that.

Jeff (11:16.846)
Yeah.

Mark (11:25.573)
So they definitely are sponges. And I think it's, it's important that we remember they are watching us all the time. 20 years ago, 20, that's not far enough, like 30 years ago, we didn't have to worry about our children watching us be on phones because the phone didn't really exist in the mobile version that it does today. This is a really new problem. And I, I want people to understand that this is now part of the basics, right?

So just because when you were growing up or your parents were growing up or whatever, it wasn't an issue and you didn't, you didn't absorb it. Our children now born in the internet age, they're born in the mobile phone age. And we have to remember that the screen is beautiful. That's why we bought that phone. That's why we were willing to pay $1,200 to get that phone or whatever, because it's beautiful. We think it's beautiful. Our children have the same eyes, the same retinas and everything. They also think is beautiful. They just have no self control when it comes to it. And so that's just.

I'm rambling, but that's important for us to remember that we're trying to teach our children that, any final thoughts before we start talking about me, what, people can do or what you see that our best practices in this realm.

Jeff (12:29.964)
Yeah, again, I think it's the it's the work on ourselves, right? Because, you know, you hit the nail on the head, you know, the screen, it's very cool. It's it's if used properly, it is giving us access to amazing things. Right. And we live in a digital age. We're not advocating, hey, we got to go completely screen free, because that's also going to hinder your child as they grow up into adults and to this, you know, world of screens. Right. So

You know, we're just, it's a very unique time. Like you said, when we grew up, it wasn't screens. When we grew up, we didn't have to worry about our food being poisoned. When we grew up, you know, these conveniences that are here now where you can hit a button on your phone and food shows up, they weren't there. Kids had to grow up doing stuff for themselves. And that's just not the case anymore, right? So we're having to adapt with the times and that's, you know, as well as for ourselves, if you want your kid to...

you know, do more for themselves. Well, you need to show them how to do it. You can't be the parent who's always looking for the easy way and it's food delivery and it's sitting on the screen all the time. If you want your kid to be fit, model some fitness. If you want your kid to eat healthier, let's work on eating healthy, going to the grocery store, picking out some healthy foods.

Let's get in the kitchen. Let's do some time in the kitchen together. Show them how to do some basic meal prep for themselves and putting together a somewhat healthier meal than a frozen dinner out of the freezer type thing. So again, it just comes back to us. The parents model the behavior and the kids will follow suit, right?

Mark (14:01.157)
Yeah. It's funny when you watch your kids and really pay attention to them. Our kids eat unflavored Greek yogurt and people ask us all the time. How do you get your kids to eat unflavored Greek yogurt? And we say, the secret is they've never had anything else. Right. It's it's now I used to eat the, maybe the Yoplait or something. And yeah, it tasted delicious, but I, and I thought that was a healthy food for a long time. I was like, this is yogurt. I used to not eat yogurt. Look at me being so healthy eating yogurt.

And then you start doing a little more research and you realize, this tastes good because they put a bunch of sugar in it. I like sugar. I don't like yogurt. like sugar. And so we decided, we decided with our kids, well, let's, let's just introduce them to healthy foods only. Let's just try to stay away from unhealthy things. And that comes from one of my previous roles. I was in the consumer package, good space. And I was, I was in the meetings. I was leading the meetings of, we're going to, we're designing children's products. We're going to change the color red.

Jeff (14:31.406)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mark (14:53.413)
Because we think it'll be more vibrant on the shelf and it will attract new customers. Not we're going to make the product better or healthier or better value for the consumer. I was in the meetings, listening to people, literally designing products to try to get them off of the shelf and into your cart. And that really shook my paradigm around what is food and why is it in our carts and how is it getting into our houses? And then you think you maybe you are eating something that's quote unquote healthy, but it's really not good for you. You trace that all the way through. Now you're taking your children to the doctor.

to work on some health issues, but the doctor is going to give you a medicine. That's their job is to get you a medicine. And that's so different from a dietician or a nutritionist or something like that, where we really would have to take multiple steps backwards to say, how are we starting this problem? Am I following along with what you guys teach? I've been trying to learn more about what you guys talk about.

Jeff (15:41.774)
100 % it's the vast majority of root causes behind these kids being, you know, they're not healthy, health's faltering and it's lifestyle, right? So there's a really good interview. We posted the clip a week or so ago and it was, you know, someone kind of talking about little Johnny wakes up in the morning a little bit earlier than he'd like, but he has to get up early to kind of fit in the schedule of getting to school on time.

He's fed a high sugar breakfast, a frosted flakes and sunny delight and put in front of a TV so mom and dad can get ready for work. The house is a little stressed as everyone's rushing around to get out the door on time. And then he gets dropped off at school where he's expected to sit quietly and pay attention while he's hopped up on sugar, coming down from the overstimulation of screens. He's under slept and you know, he's feeling the stress that of the energy that was in the household, right? So.

What happens? Well, the teacher's got an overcrowded classroom. She sees little Johnny struggling to sit still or whatever it might be and recommends he goes to the doctor. You know, in that four minute visit, the doctor kind of hears the symptoms. He's struggling to sit still, blah, blah. Well, they're going to put him on a medication, right? And we see this cycle just perpetuate on and on and on, right? And we have to understand that kids have become quite profitable for the mainstream machine. You know,

overweight child shows up to the doctor. They don't talk about exercise and healthier foods. They talk about a Zempik now, right? It's in every aspect. It's the, the Ritalin's, it's the ADHD meds. And the tragic part is this is all lifestyle. This is all based in lifestyle. It's the screens, it's the food, it's all these sorts of things, right? So that's where we kind of circle back to the, the parents are the ones with this responsibility. The parents are the ones.

that have the power to change the diet, to make sure the kid's going to bed on time, to not only limit screens, but to replace them with more fulfilling things in life, right? If a child's been on screens three, four hours a day and they're used to that, we can't just take it away. It's not gonna go well. But if we can kind of reintroduce the normal childhood things, play dates with friends, getting outside in nature.

Jeff (17:58.654)
You know, you take a kid to skip rocks in the river or whatever, they're not going to be asking for an iPad, they're just outside having fun. They naturally want to be out there, right? Running around playing, get them involved in sports, that sort of thing. I'm sure you're seeing the similar things with your kids, right? You get them running around outside with friends, screens are the furthest thing from their minds, right? You take a kid to a YouPic farm picking berries off the bush. They're going to love that. They're not thinking about the, you know, the...

Mark (18:07.185)
Yeah.

Jeff (18:26.196)
sugar yogurt back at home. They're enjoying those real foods, right? But they need they need to be sometimes retaught what those things are and that falls again squarely on the parent's shoulders.

Mark (18:28.923)
Yeah

Mark (18:36.313)
Yeah, I don't, from when I was growing up, there was a movie called a bugs, a bugs life and the scene with the, I think it's the mosquito or the fly or whatever. And he's caught in the entrance of the, the bug, the bug light, the bug zapper. And they're like, no, Harry, don't go, don't go. And he's like, I can't help it. I can't help it. And he flies and it, my son is not a fly or a mosquito, but when he finds my phone on the counter or when he,

Jeff (18:40.44)
Yes.

Jeff (18:52.44)
Yeah

Mark (19:04.123)
climbs up on the bed and gets to the thing that I didn't want him to touch. And he's like, Hey buddy, we're not going to touch a screen. That's daddy's phone. That's mommy's phone or something like that. He's like, yeah, I know, but I'm just gonna, and his finger is just like always moving towards the ski. just wants, he loves that it is interactive. Again, it was designed that way. He loves that it's beautiful. Again, it was designed that way and we should know these things about our kids and then redirect. I was at a conference recently and my buddy showed me this thing that he'd built in his backyard and I'd never heard of it, but I'm.

Hopefully going to build one in the next couple of weeks. It was just a mud kitchen. And so like, what is a mud kitchen is just some two by fours that were put together to look kind of like a kitchen counter with a bin that you can play with mud. And that's all you do. All you do is play with mud. And he said his girls and his boy are just out there all the time, hours, hours, hours. And then I compared that to when our kids, you know, we're in the Dallas area. So we get sometimes days of storms and we're stuck inside and we can't go outside because it's either 18 degrees or because it's a.

raining for, you know, 72 hours straight. And it's like the draw of the screen starts to come even for our kids. We do very little screen time, but they know, and they start to want it. And as it's in front of them, they start to want it even more. So what are ways that parents can really start to refine this? how do we, how do we dial things back? What happens when parents take an active role in their child's health? We can talk about screens. We can talk about diet. What are maybe the quick wins and how do we start to take control of this?

Jeff (20:30.094)
Yeah, mean, screens is a great one. And I think, you know, the easy way is, know, when your kids are young and haven't kind of been introduced to that, the goal is to just keep it out of their environment as much as possible. Right. Because like you said, they've been made to be addictive as adults. We've all gone to check the time and you see a notification. And the next thing you know, like 20, 30 minutes are just gone like that. Right. They're designed for that. And understanding the kids brains are they're underdeveloped. They're not they're not.

Mark (20:52.112)
Yeah.

Jeff (20:59.544)
prepared to handle the addictive nature of screens. So keeping them away from their environment, I think the latest recommendation is just zero screens up until age two, right? Video chatting with grandparents is one thing, but the shows, they're designed to be the catchy jingles and the flashing lights. They're designed to draw kids in. So keeping them away from that as long as possible. A little bit older in age when kids have already been exposed to screens and they know what, they want that show, they want that game.

Mark (21:09.201)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff (21:29.034)
It's, you you almost want to think about it like a drug. You don't, can't just take it away cold turkey because there will be some, some amount of kind of pushback from kids. And you, you want to again, replace the, replace that void in their life. If you have a child who's four or five hours a day, which is what the, the average kid over three, four years old is watching these days is, you know, four plus hours a day on a screen. You need to start replacing it with other things in their life. Right. So,

Mark (21:57.093)
Yeah.

Jeff (21:58.286)
This is where you get them outside. You need to be with them. You need to play with them. Introduce some arts and crafts, some puzzles, go play catch outside, go for a bike ride. You can't take it away and then see you on a phone. know, circling back to what we're talking about, it starts with your own habits and your own behaviours. But I think a big thing too is, you know, as parents, we tend to view our kids as kids, but they're a lot smarter than we give them credit for. So if you say, you know what, I've noticed my five-year-old, it's on a screen too much, they're not.

It's not serving them well, right? I can see them zone out when I take it away, they have meltdowns. So we're gonna talk to them. This is what we're gonna do as a family. We're gonna reduce all our screen times. We're gonna put some healthy boundaries around there. Maybe it's a certain amount of time a day, having a no screen day. Certain pieces of content we're no longer gonna watch, but this is why we're doing this. This is why we're all doing this as a family. And you talk about the harms. We don't want to take away from...

you playing with friends or you being able to play soccer or whatever it is that the child's into and we want to make sure that we're all growing up with healthy balance in our life, right? If we get too much screens and not enough of the other good stuff, our life gets all bad. So if you talk to kids this way, they do a lot better when they're included in the decision, when they feel like they have a say rather than just like, no, give me that iPad, you don't get it anymore. They'll butt heads over that.

My wife refers to it as the power struggle and we see it a lot with the families we work with if you're processed foods after they've become accustomed to it, if it's screens, whatever it might be, right? So communicating with your kid is a big one and it will increase the likelihood of them sort of buying into this and going along with these changes.

Mark (23:45.967)
Yeah. So, okay. So good point as we're, as we're looking at things like sleep or nutrition or movement or whatever it, if, and you see this all the time, you can't just take out a bad habit. You should replace with a good habit also. So we're going to be going to bed earlier or we're going to be sleeping in a darker room or something like that. We should be explaining that to them, because we're introducing change and our kids like the question and fit their question because they don't know. nutrition also the same thing. Hey,

Turns out, Frosted Flakes, not that great for you, right? I'm not a nutritionist. I'm just repeating what you said earlier, but it's, Hey, this food, mommy and daddy have actually realized not a great food for mommy and daddy or for the kids. And so we're going to stop eating that. We're going to stop having it, but what we are going to do, we're going to get these beautiful apples or we're going to eat some, some, something, right? We're going to take the juice and put it back in the orange when we eat the orange juice. Right. So it's things like that, just explaining it to them and then movement, right? It's our bodies are made to move when they sit still. I

Jeff (24:37.006)
Yeah.

Mark (24:43.479)
Unfortunately, when you're in your forties or something like that, it's easy to know that a stagnant body hurts. Right. But it's difficult to explain that to a four year old or something like that. But if, and a lot of what we do is we're to pass our wisdom down to our kids. And this is just another way. I mean, when I hear you talking about it, we're just trying to impart wisdom down to their down to our children. But that can be hard when we don't contain wisdom. Ourself. And so we need to be surrounding ourselves as parents, as the leaders, people trying to take control, we need to be surrounding ourselves with healthy.

helpful resources. And so I wanted to give you a quick opportunity to tell people about the platform that you guys have that you and your wife run. Tell us about where people can go to get resources today if they want to make a change, if they're ready to do something different.

Jeff (25:27.394)
Yeah, I mean, really we're in the age of information, right? So there is, you know, there's great accounts on social media and YouTube and books and all sorts of things. And it can vary a little bit, you know, if you're struggling with screens in your family, struggling with food, you know, but you know, an account like ours, that's what we're trying to do is just share information. We're on, I think you mentioned Twitter, we're on LinkedIn, it's raising healthy families. And again, we're just trying to, we're trying to spread the word out there.

What I like when I kind of go down a rabbit hole and I find an account, wow, I'm really liking the message you're trying to put out. I find out who they're following. you know, usually if you kind of go down these, these rabbit holes, it's read this book or check out this YouTube video or whatnot. And, you know, that's, that's kind of how you go down. mean, we've been, you know, I haven't always been healthy. I've, gone through my share of health struggles and, you know, I've been on this journey personally for about 15 years and it's never ending.

Mark (26:09.585)
Mmm.

Jeff (26:24.986)
It's really never ending, you what we do with families is sort of get them on the right path. But you're never going to get to this end goal where like, okay, we're healthy now or okay, we've achieved this pinnacle of, you know, healthy, happy kids because the reality is out there, as your kids socialize, as they interact with other people, they're going to meet kids who do watch a lot of screens and maybe not the content that you want your kids to approve of them watching.

They're going to be offered unhealthy foods and you know, it's all about balance in life. They're not going to, know, nothing terrible is going to happen if they have that cookie or that one bowl of Frosted Flakes, but it's, you know, you want to make sure that that's not getting away from them and they're having too much of that and not enough of the good stuff. So yeah, just encourage parents. It's part of the journey, right? Is as you, as you learn what your

what's not working for your family and you know what, if I can lead the way with better dietary habits, let's say, what can I do to get myself eating healthier? Well, I've found this account, I didn't really like their message, but I found this other one, they like it and oh, they talk about this book, well, I'm gonna read this book. That to me is a big part of parenthood is trying to be, I wanna be a better parent. I have not come across any manual that helps me, here's the instruction manual of how to raise healthy kids. You're on this journey, you're figuring out as you go.

And in my experience, the parents who are concerned if they're doing enough, the parents who are trying to do more for their kids, they're the ones that are doing enough for their kids. They're the ones that are doing the good job because they're trying, right? And that's all we can do as parents is keep trying. along the journey of learning, you're going to come across this tip in that book and that account and that sort of thing. So I wish I could tell someone, just follow this one and this will solve all your problems.

Mark (27:56.977)
Hmm.

Mark (28:00.913)
you

Jeff (28:15.218)
It just takes little effort because there is a ton of misinformation out there as well too that you got to kind of weed through and what works for your family and your three kids might not be exactly what works for my family and my two kids up here. that's, you know, circling back to the beginning. That's where the responsibility just falls on us as parents to kind of be on this journey and figure out what works for our family, what works for my kids and just keep trying to do our best.

Mark (28:41.935)
Yeah, I think that's such a good, that you made so many good points there. It's a journey. It's a, it's never ending thing, right? It will end when we stop having the ability to change it, which is going to be when we die. Like this is the rest of our lives. We will be raising our children. The rest of our lives will be taking care of our bodies. The rest of our lives will be worried about nutrition in different ways. The rest of our lives. What is interesting to me as a, as I sit here, financial planner, having a non-money conversation, I think about how this does affect our money. And I've come up with.

Two ways as I've been listening. One, if you just take this episode, go back to the beginning and listen to it and assume, just assume that Jeff is not talking about children and assume that Jeff is talking about your personal finance. Almost everything is a perfect overlay. As in nobody really teaches you how to do it. You don't really know what to do. You have to find a thing that works for you. What I've come to realize is that people that I work with, they want a, a logical sequence of intentional action.

And when you can give that to somebody, that doesn't mean that there's one solution, but you do need a solution that you're willing to agree with. And so, I mean, that's what you just said, but you've got to find dietary stuff. You've got to find activity levels. You've got to find a sleep pattern that works for you. And it is so interesting to think about that. But the other piece is if you don't do this, if you stay stagnant, if you don't take action,

I believe that this could start affecting your finances because it is expensive to go to the doctor. It is expensive to be obese. It is expensive to have diabetes or the things that might happen if we don't take care of ourselves. You know, wheelchairs aren't free. all of those things would start to weigh on your finances if you don't take care of your body. And those are things that we always need to remember, right? We are looking backwards and we're helping the younger generation, but we're also looking forward. What kind of life do we want them to have in the future? How do we help them?

These are non-money conversations that do affect our money because that's how we, that's how we transact in this world. so people come to me sometimes and they're so focused on their money and it's there's other things that we need to work on. You know, might have a diet or something like that, that just isn't yielding you to making good decisions or having the energy to play with your children. And so when we say go outside and kick a soccer ball with your kids, you're like, I don't want to do that. I'm exhausted, you know, but

Mark (30:46.233)
Yeah, so Jeff, really appreciate it. Say the website one more time for everybody so that we can make sure we get it out there for everybody.

Jeff (30:53.55)
Sure, our website is healthyfamiliesthrive.com and then we're on LinkedIn and Twitter X, whatever it's called these days at thriving double underscore kids. So you can probably just type in raising healthy families and yeah, we just enjoy engaging with parents. We've got a newsletter, we've got a community, we get questions all the time about all this stuff and we're just happy to help.

Mark (31:17.241)
Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. I'm excited for this conversation to get in front of more people. As you're listening, if you're thinking of another mom, another dad, your son, your daughter, something, somebody you want to share this message with, please feel free to share it to them. We're creating these resources so you guys can share with other people, jump down to the website and learn more. If you want to learn more about personal finance items, that's second hyphen comma.com. And until next time, we'll see you on the next episode. Bye.


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Mark Hansen

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