Inspiring A Lifetime Of Wellness: Introducing Our First Children’s Book

If your home was smoldering with smoke billowing from the windows. Who would you run into to save without thinking? Over broken glass, barefoot?

For most of my patients, the answer is our children. Our grandchildren.

What would you do to save your children and your grandchildren? A lot I am sure. Let me give a suggestion.

It is time to begin giving our children and grandchildren a better path forward. Change the story in your head and in theirs.

I have just the thing to help change the story in our children’s heads. But more about that later in this blog.

There is a better path for our children and for ourselves. As parents and grandparents, we must help show them the path. But too many are not doing enough. Too many of our children and grandchildren are in trouble. They deal with terrible things that are gnawing at them and their sense of self. Things like worsening anxiety, depression, social anxiety, loneliness, rage, suicidality. Too many children are now obese. Have high blood pressure. Autoimmune disease. Even type 2 diabetes. All these things were once very rare in children. Now they are commonplace. I see them in the playgrounds, in the schools, and in the news.

Do you see it in the children in your life? Are your children or grandchildren healthy, and taking no medication? Or are they being evaluated for symptoms and issues? Now literally a majority of the children are taking medication for some symptoms—shocking isn’t it?

So many of us watch our children struggle not knowing what to do. We don’t want to deprive our children of treats. We don’t want the pushback. The tears. The fights. With our children or our spouse. We are paralyzed. We are allowing them to continue to eat breakfast cereals that are mostly sugar. Too much candy. Too much white flour, pastries, and too few vegetables. We don’t know how to change it.

But our children need our help. They need us to teach them why it matters. What should we eat? What we should do to be healthy. But it feels too hard. So we don’t. Hoping it won’t matter. That our kids won’t become chronically ill. The problem is that the majority of our children have symptoms that are deeply troubling. Either mental symptoms or physical symptoms.

Our children need our help. We must begin talking to them about the connections between food and health. We need stories to help us know what to say to our children. We need books. We need parents and grandparents to lead the way.

That is why I asked Zeb to create a children’s book.

I worked with her to create a children’s book about the connection between the foods we eat and the health we have. Growing Strong Healthy Eating For The Whole Family is a children’s book that can help you explain why healthy eating matters. It is a colorful, fun children’s story about healthy eating. It is a perfect book for parents and grandparents! Our children receive continuous marketing from television to eat sugary foods and beverages daily. It is time for us to do our own messaging.

We need to read books like Growing Strong to our children. Starting when they are toddlers. Babies even. And we need to keep reading to them and talking about food. Why we need to eat vegetables. Why have we stopped eating sugary breakfast cereals? Why have we stopped having sugar-sweetened beverages? Why have we chosen to reduce or eliminate some foods even though they are super tasty and are in all those commercials on television? Why in our home everyone helps with making meals and cleaning up after the meal is finished.

Growing Strong is a beautiful children’s book. Nearly every page has an Easter Egg or several. An Easter Egg is an element in the illustration that links back to someone or something that Zeb loves. See how many you can find as you read and talk to the children in your life.

Our children are our future. The big corporations are marketing products that drive overconsumption of foods that are associated with worsened mental health (anxiety, depression, social anxiety, learning disability, suicidality, and rage) and worse physical health (obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and autoimmunity).

I am very pleased to offer Growing Strong as a first step in taking back our children’s lives. We need to teach them why what they eat matters.

Click here to get your own copy to share with your family.