#68: Raising Resilient Kids with Jess Sherman

Jess Sherman helps kids experiencing moodiness, irritability, and anxiety feel better so life can settle down. Along with being a certified teacher, Jess is a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, and Board Certified in Practical Holistic Nutrition. 
In this episode, Jess talks about what it means to help kids handle stress from the outside-in and the inside-out. We talk about some common triggers and manifestations of stress in children and how to help your child overcome them. We also dive into sugar! Jess gives tips for managing the desire for sweets and how to break the "after-dinner dessert" cycle. Jess is focused on a holistic, whole-body approach to wellness for children and she shares a lot of applicable information in this episode. Enjoy!

Connect with Jess:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/askJessSherman
Website: https://www.jesssherman.com/
Find her book, Raising Resilience: https://www.jesssherman.com/RaisingResilience

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Transcript

[00:00:00] to the Plan to Eat podcast. Where I interview industry experts about meal planning, food and wellness. To help you answer the question. What's for dinner. 

Roni: Hello, and thank you for joining me for another episode of the Planteet podcast. Today, I have an interview with Jess Sherman. Jess helps kids experiencing moodiness, irritability, and anxiety feel better so life can settle down. Along with being a certified teacher, Jess is a functional diagnostic nutrition practicer And she's board certified in practical holistic nutrition.

I had a great conversation today with Jess about stress from both the outside and the inside, about sugar consumption in kids, about creating positive relationships with food in your kids. And I just really love Jess's approach, which is basically whole. Child whole [00:01:00] body, it's nutrition and lifestyle focused and for ideas that, um, you know, you can help kids, you can help kids manage some of their challenges by thinking about what's happening inside of their body, as well as managing the outside stressors that they're going through.

So I think you're going to get a lot from this episode if you are a parent and I hope you enjoy.

Jess, thanks so much for joining me today.

Jess: I'm excited to talk with you. We've got lots to talk about.

Roni: Yeah. Why don't we get started by you just giving a little overview of who you are and what you do?

Jess: So I, I, um, am a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner. I'm a holistic nutritionist and I am a former teacher. So I got into all this just because I love working with kids and I love understanding kids and helping them grow. And so there was a natural shift. In myself, uh, just working with kids in the classroom to working with kids with nutrition now.

[00:02:00] So what I do now is I, I coach parents and families into a better state of wellness. And I work with a lot of kids who are struggling with mood and behavior issues, struggling with, with learning problems, memory problems. Um, and that extends into sleep issues and, and, and struggles at home. A lot of them are very picky eaters and, uh, we, we follow what I, what I call the roadmap to resilient health to try to help them feel more calm, feel more connected, feel more grounded so that everyone can relax and connect and, and feel better and feel healthier.

Roni: Oh, that sounds wonderful. I think that there's a lot of people who probably feel like they. They need some of that in their lives,

Jess: Yeah, well, we're all quite stressed, right? You know, when you become a parent, and then you get on this treadmill, and then you're like, how did we get here? All of a sudden, you know, kids are throwing temper tantrums, and the food's getting thrown on the floor, and they're picky, and they're not sleeping, and they're constipated, and they have eczema, and you're just like, um, [00:03:00] so yeah, it's a It's not an easy time to be a parent.

It's, it's, it's complicated time to be a parent.

Roni: Yeah. And it seems like when there'd be so many, when there's so many issues that build on top of each other, it's hard to try and eliminate them one by one or all together. Um, because not only are there these stressors with your kids, but then there's stressors with work and outside life and all of this stuff.

Um, and so. I also think that there's a potentially just like a cultural norm of like, kids are grumpy kids are picky eaters. Kids are moody. You know, they're going through changes. Yeah, like they're going through changes and that's just a part of the process. And like, that's kind of the quote unquote normal, without, I think that that maybe it's not actually the normal.

Hmm.

Jess: Well, it is normal, but it doesn't have, it is typical, let's say, it doesn't have to be the case, you know, the teenage years don't have to be. Full of conflict and tension. Kids don't [00:04:00] have to go through these, you know, these stressful time. Well, every, every kid goes through stress. I mean, stress is a part of life.

Stress is actually critical to growth, but what we're seeing now is for more and more people, stressors are crushing them, stressors are exploding into secondary things and problems. Um, and they're not able to grow through stress. So that's the and that kind of stress. I'm talking about emotional stress, stress of daily life, but I'm also talking about physical stress and you eat something and it, you know, have this explosive reaction to it or, um, you know, get a virus and get secondary infections and end up like really, really sick and your body can't, doesn't have that immune resilience to kick it.

So, um, that's, that's the trend is as, as our stress load gets so high, it is, it is, yeah. People are feeling crushed under the weight of it rather than being able to grow through it.

Roni: Yeah, I'm [00:05:00] sure the adults listening feel that. As well.

Jess: Ah, yeah, oh yeah, it's not just kids for sure.

Roni: So I know a core principle of the work that you do is what you call parenting from the inside out. And can you talk a little bit about what that means?

Jess: Yeah, well, it has to do with this idea that the stress are stressed. The stress loads that we're carrying have just gotten so high. And, um, when I started to learn about the body, I started to understand that stress is not just coming from the outside. Stress is not just emotional. It's not just, you know, our relationships.

It's, you know, It can be internally driven as well, that our bodies will create a lot of stress. We can have a high stress load inside our bodies that fills our stress capacity. We only have a certain capacity. We have a stress bucket. You could think of it as and all this, all the stressors of [00:06:00] life fill our stress bucket.

Until we get to the top and then it starts overflowing and that's when we start to it's just too much. It's just too much and um, and what I was finding as a teacher and even in my early years of parenting is that there was, there was conversation around the stressors, the outside stressors, how can we help kids feel more comfortable in the classroom and, you know, shift the environment a little bit.

So yeah. So it's more conducive to learning and those sorts of things. Even yoga was making its way into the classroom of helping, you know, kids be more mindful, but then, but then there's these internal stressors that if they're not, if they're filling up so much room in the stress bucket and they're not addressed, then, then all of the other strategies you're doing from the top are.

Kind of like putting a bandaid on and you're in and that's where I was frustrating as a frustrating as a teacher because I was like we're doing all these things and the [00:07:00] kids are still struggling like why aren't we getting anywhere and and because we were working at the brim of the of the bucket so when I understood things like like The impact of gut health, the impact of nutrients on our stress response, the impact of parasites, the impact of sugar and additives and chemicals and detoxification capacity, all of these things, the mechanisms by which our bodies manage.

Our stress load in our, in these hidden stressors inside our body. I started to understand that there were, there were these hidden invisible stressors that were filling up kids stress buckets and we needed to, we needed to relieve them. So that's now what I'm calling parenting from the inside out. It's understanding your child's biology, understanding what's going on inside their body, understanding what hidden stressors are filling their stress buckets so that you can.

You can pull them out, you can pull, pull them down, make more room in their stress bucket, and then they can [00:08:00] tolerate the tag on their shirt. They can tolerate, you know, having to take out the garbage, but they really don't want to. They can tolerate, you know, failing an exam and not like exploding all of these, you know, these external stressors that are really a part of life.

Roni: Hmm. Is, are there other ways which these internal stressors manifest? Is it just in stress or are there other ways that you see it manifest in kids as well?

Jess: Oh, yeah, it'll it'll show up, it can show up as eczema, it can show up as allergies, it can show up as sleep disturbance, nightmares, it can show up as constipation, you know, all of all of the things because the thing is, is that stress Stress begets stress begets stress begets stress like I'm thinking of kids they're stuck in a cyclone stuck in this like cycle of stress and stress and and and the the way the body manages stress.

is always the same, regardless of this [00:09:00] type of stressor. Our stress response, the hormones that regulate our stress response, will be activated regardless of whether that stressor, the trigger, is someone yelled at you, or you ate something that your body's immune system is responding to.

Roni: Hmm.

Jess: It will activate the same stress response.

Roni: So how In general, do you go about, I guess, deciding what some of these things are that are these internal stressors for kids? Do you have them do like blood work and things like that? Or is it just a trial and error process of eating something and seeing what happens?

Jess: Yeah, it can be. It can be both. It depends on the resources of the family. There are really cool, very helpful functional tests that you can run that help accelerate your progress because they they zoom you in on the most impactful leverage points. And, but if, but not everybody can afford those. And so there are some educated guesses you can make around.[00:10:00] 

I mean, gluten is a great example of this, right? I don't want to take gluten out of anyone's diet if we don't need to, but it causes a lot of stress for a lot of people. So if you're shooting in the dark and you're like, man, we need to get a hold. We need to get a handle on whatever it is. The body is under a lot of stress.

We're work. We're living at the brim of the stress bucket. Gluten is probably going to be a good educated guess just because we know quite a bit about how gluten activates the body's stress response or can potentially do we know that's particularly happening for your child? No, we don't know unless we can look in the blood

so, so that's a good example of like, yeah, you can, you can make some good educated guesses, Or you can do some testing and get it on paper and see what's actually happening.

Roni: Right. And so in your work, you tend to err on the side of. More like holistic, like a whole, taking a holistic view of like a child's health and what the things are that are stressing them out.[00:11:00] I think that most parents probably don't want to like immediately resort to like medicating their children, right?

And like, there's nothing wrong with that if it happens to be the case, but are there some downsides to just like immediately going to a medication to resolve some of these issues versus taking a holistic approach?

Jess: Well, certainly. I mean, I think, especially when it comes to mood medications, which is really what I, what I work with is the kids who are, you know, put on, on stimulants or on mood altering meds or antidepressants and things like that, which is happening as young as, you know, five, six years old. I think that my, my world is not around medication.

Like, I can't, I can't say one way or another, whether a child should be on medication. And I would never tell a parent to not medicate their child if they, if they found, if they felt like that was the thing they needed to do. What I do caution parents around and what I do suggest. Is that if you go to your doctor and they suggest a medication for one of [00:12:00] these, you know, uh, behavior challenges that the conversation you have with them is around what's the plan, like, what's the plan for getting them off of this?

Because they can be great pressure valves. If you're in, if you're. Maxed out and you're just like, we just need a pressure valve medications can do that. So can certain nutrients. So, you know, I have a whole course on how to use amino acids as pressure valves, which is another option if people really don't want to use the meds, um, then this, and then the other conversation to have, or the thing to watch for is that some of these medications interfere with what I call the trifecta for resilient health.

And that's eating. So appetite. Sleeping and pooping. Those are the first three things that I that I do with the clients that I work with is we need to our whole first phase of working together is stabilizing the most pressing issues. And if your child's [00:13:00] not eating well, sleeping well and pooping well.

The downstream spiral effect of that in terms of the stress of the body is huge. So that's where we try to work. And if, if you're put, if your child's put on a medication that interferes with one of those three things, then that I would say, go back to your doctor and ask for alternatives. Um, because they're now you're actually interf you're, you're, you're, you're calming the stress.

So you do have your pressure valve if it's working, but you're also interfering with the body's capacity to self regulate. So you're going to be stuck in this sort of zone of like things are kind of okay, but the body's resilience is being eroded. So chances are very high that you're going to end up on another medication and another medication and another medication.

So it's just a conversation to have with the prescribing doctor to say, Hey, this is making them really constipated, or this is interfering

with their

Roni: [00:14:00] Mm hmm.

Jess: be another alternative.

Roni: Mm hmm. In your work, do you have some, I guess like maybe simple or common sense ways to help with this self regulation if, regardless of medication, but, to help kids kind of reset one of these cycles if they're not eating well, sleeping well, or pooping well.

Jess: Well, yeah, I mean, that's a huge conversation because they're all different. They're all different issues. They can all be a manifestation of too much stress in the body, but in terms of what you're going to do about them, you sort of have to figure out what's causing the stress and the pressure.

Roni: Mm.

Jess: One of the things, though, I would, I would say is that we have to remember that the body is an interconnected ecosystem.

So the things that are going on in their mind absolutely affect the rest of their body. And that's not to say that it's, it's psychosomatic or it's some kind of, you know, it's all in your head. It [00:15:00] is very much a biochemical. Relationship between what's going on in your mind and what's going on. Let's just talk about constipation for a second constipation can come from excessive worry and nervous system that is so stressed out that you just can't let go.

Right? So in that case. Um, you know, some nutrients that support the nervous system, help it relax and calm down, can have a trickle down effect and affect the gut.

Same thing with pickiness around food, it could be, it could be. It's one, one avenue to pursue. So the first thing that, that, that I, that I like to, to help parents understand is like, how do you construct an environment for a child in which they feel safe and comfortable?

Right? So yelling at them to eat their broccoli is not going to do that, obviously, right? How can we find some compassion around where they are in their relationship to that broccoli that you want them to eat? So that it doesn't [00:16:00] spiral into, into stress. Um, so this isn't really answering your question.

Cause you asked for like simple solutions. There isn't really simple solutions, but I would say, you know, the first thing is to get curious and just calm down and remember that what's going on with them is a stress response. It's it's a, their, their stress bucket is too full and. The top, the, if there was like a simple strategy that I have in my toolbox of nutrients, it would be the amino acids and these are things like GABA and tryptophan and 5 these, these nutrients feed our, our neurochemicals, they're the building blocks for our neurochemicals.

And so, that is the quickest way to shift a message of threat into a message of safety in the brain is to feed those calming neurotransmitters. So I've written a lot about it on my blog. Maybe we can just sort of link to some of those blog articles on how to, how to use [00:17:00] these. But they would be like the, my toolbox version of, I need a pressure valve.

Things are, things are too, too, too much and I can't, I can't think, I can't breathe because my kid is, is, uh, bouncing off the walls.

Roni: I like that advice because... I'm guessing there's a tendency with a lot of people to say like my kids bouncing off the walls, they need to be involved in another activity or they need to be, you know, doing something else to release all of this energy or get tired enough that they're going to sleep at night.

And maybe the problem is actually the opposite, where they have maybe too many things going on or too many things that are stressing them out. And the solution is more like how do we relieve. The, the pressure, the pressure and the tension and everything that's there, rather than piling more things on to the child.

Jess: Yeah, I mean, that's a good point. It could be both. And, and that's another, another piece of this is there really isn't one size fits all when you take this approach. You got to look, you got your child has to be in the center. And so [00:18:00] when you're looking for parenting advice and you're in all the mommy groups and just trying to figure out, like, Both can be true , right?

A child needs a punching bag or needs a, I had a client to say to me the other day, like, she wishes she had a padded room in her house so that her kids could just like do it all and just like get it out. Um, and, but then the other, the other, we shouldn't assume that that's what they need. Sometimes they need a pairing down.

They need simplicity. They need just a, a, a minimalist kind of, there's too much stuff that they're too overwhelmed. So we have to just watch them.

Roni: Well, I want to pivot a little bit because, I think something that's a very hot topic for all parents, it revolves around sugar consumption with their kids. And, I know that one of the things that you talk about is helping like moody and anxious children. I was even talking about, and sugar plays into that quite a bit.

So, um, can you talk about the relationship between sugar and [00:19:00] mood a little bit with children?

Jess: Yeah, so it's, you know, hotly debated, right?

Roni: Mm hmm.

Jess: I think bottom line is we would, we would be so much better off if we stopped trying to extract the sweetness taste and put it into everything.

Roni: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Jess: You know, like that's, that's been the, that's been the goal. Like, Oh, look, we can extract sugar from sugar cane. We can extract it from sugar beets.

We can extract it from. You know, monk fruit or, or, or we can synthesize it in a lab and call it, you know, something. So if we would stop doing that, it would be, it would be so much better. Um, because sugar is quite addictive and it's stimulating to the nervous system. Just is like it is. And, and some people don't feel it.

Some people have more wiggle room. Some people have more tolerance, but it's, it is activating. It is filling the stress bucket. For all of us. So with our [00:20:00] kids. It's just not. I mean, I don't like to vilify anything. I don't want to tell you to stop giving your kids sugar. It's just not going to happen.

But we also, we need to go into it with our eyes wide open. Understanding that sugar is addictive. Understanding that sugar leaches nutrients. from our body. It requires a lot of nutrients in order to metabolize it. So it takes up precious resources. Um, it, it, it affects our blood sugar. We all understand that from diabetes.

So we get the ups and the downs of blood sugar. Um, And it, and it's, and it, like I said, it's very addictive because it actually helps us feel good for a time being, right? You can think of comfort foods and stress eating. It's all carbohydrate, sugary, rich foods because it actually stimulates insulin, which then helps serotonin get into the brain and helps us feel good until we crash and then we don't feel so good anymore.

So, So I do [00:21:00] wish we would stop doing that. I do wish we would stop putting sugar on such a pedestal, um, and that we could bring it back into sort of the realm of what is reasonable, that we need all of our tastes, we need to expand our palate so that we We can, um, identify and enjoy all of the different tastes.

But sugar tends to, tends to be at the top of the, top of the totem pole, so to speak, you know? Yeah.

Roni: Yeah. So without eliminating sugar from a kid's diet, because like you said, that's pretty much impossible. Um, how do you manage, how would you suggest that parents manage sugar with their children?

Jess: Um, one thing that I, I would caution people around, or just get curious, I always tell people, like, get curious around your habits first, before you start, you know, saying, Oh, I should have done this, I should have done that. Just get curious. Just go in with an open mind. How often do you. Reserve sugar for a treat or a reward or [00:22:00] something special when we do that, we are elevating its status significantly, you know, um, and because of its addictive nature that just snowballs.

So get curious around how, how much of a place in your family's life that has taken hold and just try to shift that if you're going to have, you know, rewards or special things. Thank See if they can be either non food related or non sugary food related. And start to bring sweet into the meals. So one of the things I do with my family is that dessert is just part of the meal.

Everyone gets it. But it's not excessively sweet. it might be something like a rice pudding or a custard or something that is, it's nutrient dense, it's super tasty, maybe it's a little bit sweeter than the rest of the things, but it's not, [00:23:00] you know, it's, it's not a, it's not a super, super sweet treat that is only a treat after we eat our dinner.

So that's, that's, that's when. One, one way to go about it. So that makes sense.

Roni: Yeah. Yeah. And I like that approach too, because I feel like that would reduce the like sweet craving overall, you know, like the, because I think all of us understand that feeling of like, I'm totally full, but you know, I know that there's ice cream in the freezer and my palate really wants that. But if you already consumed something that was a little sweeter with your meal, potentially you don't crave it in those situations.

Jess: Yeah, it could be when, when, when we fall into those things, I usually, if we do have ice cream in the freezer or something like that, I make sure that there is a break. So like, we're going to finish our meal and we're going to like digest our food, clean up, you know, get into our evening and then we're going to have the ice cream.

So it's not, [00:24:00] it's not a reward for having finished our meal also so that our bodies can just. Digest and we can actually figure out whether we're hungry or that we want that in our, you know, and I and I have experimented this with my kids and I have noticed like sometimes truly and honestly, we get to be like maybe an hour later and they're like, Oh, I'm just no, I'm too full.

I can't have it. I don't want it. So, so, like, trust in the process. Not every kid's going to do that, particularly at first. I mean, we've been doing this for a long time, but, um, helping your kids tune into that, like, is it your, does your body want it or is it just your tongue that wants it? And how is your body going to feel if you give in to the tongue?

Sometimes they're, they're quite astute. And they know that it's not going to make them feel so good. And maybe they'll just put it off and maybe have it tomorrow.

Roni: Right. That to me makes me think of, things that I've read around establishing habits [00:25:00] and there's like a cue routine and reward that are related to establishing habits and giving that break in between to me feels like it really shuts down that habit system of like, there's not the cue of we just finished dinner and it's not the routine of we just finished dinner and now we're immediately going to the freezer to get ice cream.

And then the reward isn't. We ate our regular food and now we get to eat the sweet things. It just really pushes all of that out. So it doesn't become a potentially a lifelong habit of we get done eating dinner and we have to have a sweet dessert after the fact.

Jess: Yeah. Yeah. And if you, if you have fallen into this, because some families listening probably have fallen into that sort of routine and those habits. I would just... Say, you know, you've got two ways to go about shifting things. One is cold turkey and one is gently and it depends. It's going to depend on the resilience of your kids, quite honestly.

I mean, I define resilience is like emotional flexibility, right? Not just emotional [00:26:00] flexibility, but flexibility in the face of stress, but you telling them that we are no longer going to have ice cream at the end of the dinner like we have for the last five years is you. It's inherently a stressful thing to say it is a shift that you know is ultimately for everybody's benefit, but a child may not perceive it that way, a child may perceive it that way, if they understand where you're coming from, and they're like yeah you know that's probably not.

It depends on how much, how much. knowledge they have and how much you've educated your own kids around this. Um, or it might throw them into a tailspin, but it might totally activate their stress response because this was unpredictable. They were blindsided. This is, this is how it's been forever. I love my ice cream.

Maybe there's a little bit of an addiction there and they might explode. So just be cautious that, you know, when you introduce this to your family, um, you need to, you need to tune into, to where your kids are at, where your family's at, and either, uh, and sometimes it makes sense to just do it in [00:27:00] increments and say, you know, we're going to do this every other night instead of every night, or we're going to switch up our desserts and try something different that is equally as yummy, and we're just going to kind of wean ourselves away From this habit and into a new habit.

Roni: If a parent finds that they have a child who generally only wants sugary foods, and not just like sugary foods like candy and ice cream and things, because like you said, the yummy carby foods, like a lot of the brown kid foods are also very sugar laden, um, and they kind of refuse to eat things that are more nutritious, they're That's kind of a typical picky eater in that regard.

Would you recommend the same methods for, trying to, I guess, transition a child's diet in that way? Or is there a different method that they would use?

Jess: Yeah, well, the first thing is to notice. So understand what a carbohydrate rich food is and what it looks like. And just notice that your, that your child is gravitating to these foods. And most [00:28:00] parents have a sense of their, their carboholics. Um, and then I, I think it's best to figure out where it's coming from.

Again, we always want to keep our children feeling safe and secure. Like we've got them no matter what. And so. They're not doing something wrong. They are responding to a need. So what is it that they're responding to? And when it comes to sugar, often it is issues stemming from the gut. So, you know, I think a lot of people have started to learn about the microbiome and all of the opportunistic microbes that are in their guts that crave sugar and And you don't stand, willpower does not stand a chance against these little buggers, like they are, they are intelligent and they will make you do things, to, to promote their survival.

So, if you know that your child has been on a lot of antibiotics or this has gone for, gone on for a long [00:29:00] time, or they also have constipation or IBS like symptoms, their sugar cravings are probably stemming from. from an imbalance in the gut ecosystem. So that's an, that's an avenue to pursue. Um, also understanding that it is giving them a boost of dopamine and serotonin.

So they are trying to regulate themselves or trying to self regulate self medicate almost right with food. Uh, and that's when you could look into something like amino acids, which also help to boost levels of serotonin and dopamine so that, uh, the sugar cravings can subside a little bit. And the other piece is blood sugar is, it's often, it's often a, you know, carbohydrates are the quickest way for a body to get energy.

And so if you're on a bit of a blood sugar rollercoaster and your energy dips, your blood sugar dips, your energy dips, the body's instinct is going to be to reach for something [00:30:00] sweet. To bring that energy back up. So it's a it's a self protective mechanism and thank goodness we have those built into our bodies.

But. The downside is that it doesn't last, it's just going to perpetuate the blood sugar roller coaster. So when, when your kids get angry and they just, you know, they're very, intolerant to missing a meal or they have sleep problems, sleep problems is a really good, uh, good clue that blood sugar irregularities are part of the carb cravings.

The, the, the best case scenario or what I, what I coach parents into is trying to train, not, not reducing the carbs right away, because that's probably going to backfire, but starting to nourish more with fat, healthy fats and healthy proteins. And fiber is going to be really important, um, to just try to.

Bring in more of that good stuff while you reduce the [00:31:00] carbs. So an example might be, um, if your kids love pizza, if you're going to make pizza dough at home, start to put a little bit more fiber and fat into the crust. You know, that's sort of a So keep it, keep it familiar to them. So it looks the same, but you've just added some flax seed, you've added some hemp seed, you've drizzled a little olive oil on it.

And it just, just you're starting to, to bring in some more nourishment and that's going to help stabilize their blood sugar so that they don't have these, these ups and downs as much. And it should curb, curb the cravings of it. 

Roni: So I feel like this is a good transition, into one of the other things that we really wanted to talk about, which is, um, creating positive relationships with food in your children. And I'm curious how you define a positive relationship with food.

Jess: Yeah, that's a really good question. It's really important to consider as well. I [00:32:00] think of it as, you know, you, you eat when you're hungry and you stop when you're full and you make educated choices. And conscious choices around what goes into your body. So I, I, I think this is so important to think about anytime you're tinkering with a child's diet, or you're trying to help them understand how to use food, understand their nourishment needs.

I really avoid good foods, bad foods. And I like to think of them as this is nourishing for me right now. This is not nourishing for me right now. And sometimes those foods that you are going to call nourishing for you right now, it really is right now. It's like right now, this is nourishing for me.

This bowl of ice cream could be nourishing for me right now because I had a really hard day and I know that it's not the best for me. And I know that it's maybe going to give me diarrhea, but right now it's really what I want and what I need. Even though it wasn't like the [00:33:00] best choice. That, that she's showing a positive relationship with food.

I'm not binging on the ice cream and then just, you know, wondering why I'm a mess the next day. It's like, no, we went into this with my eyes wide open. I know the ice cream is not great for me and I know what it does to my body, but I'm going to choose to do it anyway. So that's a positive relationship in my mind.

Roni: Yeah. So that train of thought that you just went through feels like a, an older kid train of thought. Do you have different, not, obviously I feel like you would still define a positive relationship with food similarly for younger children, but do you have different ways of going about educating them on, on how they should be thinking about food?

I'm just thinking that like a toddler doesn't, maybe doesn't have that same train of thought to get to the same conclusion.

Jess: Yeah, for sure. No, but, but a toddler also doesn't have that many choices. As a toddler, I, in my, in my, in my. opinion, a [00:34:00] toddler isn't going to be allowed to go into the freezer, open the freezer and pull out the ice cream. That's just, that's my opinion on, on parenting, I suppose, because they don't know anything about food, know anything about what their body needs.

All they know is their instinct. And so, you know, Our job is to make those decisions for our kids until they can make those decisions for themselves. And if we're going to expect them to make those decisions as they grow, we have to give them some, some tools, some education around how to make those decisions. So, and it might not be a toddler. I mean, you might be, we might be talking about a 10 year old who has no idea what their, what their body needs. I don't think they should be allowed to go into the freezer and get whatever they want either, even though they're older, because it's not really about age.

It's about their capacity to make good choices and good decisions, right? So I, [00:35:00] so I would love for a parent. I mean, I was blindsided by this when I became a parent and I was a nutritionist. I already knew a little bit about nutrition, but I was still like, how do I teach my kid this? Like, Oh my goodness, this is a whole nother, nother piece of the puzzle.

And so we, we work a lot with parents to, to communicate this with their kids. Like, yes, we teach the parents because there's knowledge gap there, but then how do you then transmit that information to the kids is a whole nother. Cuddle wax. So yes, you're right. It does depend on age, but it also more than age, it depends on their capacity to understand how to nourish their body.

And until they can nourish their body, that's our job.

Roni: Yeah, I like that. I think that that, I think when we had Katie Kimball on the podcast, who's a mutual acquaintance of ours, um, she said something like that related to toddlers of like, the parent gets to decide what goes on their plate and the kid gets to decide if they are feeling like eating it in that moment or, you know, something along those lines.

Um, but [00:36:00] ultimately like the parent is the one with the choice over here is what you're served.

Jess: Yeah. And that, that cut that stems way back to, um, Ellen Satter, who is

Roni: Mm hmm.

Jess: dietitian who really talks about that division of labor. Um, and developing eating competence. I think she may be even coined the term. Um, and, and it works to a certain extent. I, I love, I love it to a certain extent until we get into these biological stressors, right?

Because, because, you know, a child who has gut dysbiosis, for example, is super yeasty and has a lot of clostridia and has a lot of opportunistic microbes. They, they will not change.

Roni: Mm

Jess: give them all the wonderful foods. They will still choose the carbs

Roni: hmm. Mm hmm.

Jess: and they will eat them all. You know what I mean?

So when, when, when you've hit a wall with that division of labor piece and you're like, I'm giving them all the foods, they're just not putting them into their mouths or they're, they're choosing not to eat for days on end. And, you know, there is some research suggesting that. The [00:37:00] kids will come around, but I have, I have also seen the opposite that, that they, they're, they're stuck.

They're really stuck because their stress load is so high. I've had some clients whose kids literally say to them, I want to eat that, but my mind won't let me.

Roni: Wow.

Jess: They're, you know, they're conscious enough to know that. And it's really frustrating for them.

And especially so, so for a kid who, who can't communicate that, but is exhibiting that, imagine how frustrating it would be.

If their parents like, no, no, you are going to eat it, but you need to go against every instinct you have in your body. You need to put this in your mouth. It's extremely stressful. So it's a, there's a very fine line. So I love the, I love the division of labor piece. Like my job is to give you the food.

Your job is to eat it. I love that as a starting point. And for most people, that will yield amazing results. If you hit a wall with it, though, know that it [00:38:00] could be because there's so much biological stress.

Um, if you're going to be at a standstill.

Roni: Yeah. So then for older kids developing that train of thought of, I'm making this conscious decision to eat this thing because it's nourishing to me right now. How do we, how do you go about at least beginning that process and fostering that in children? Because I'm even thinking that I know adults who don't have that like train of thought to go through and, you you know eat kind of blindly

right.

Jess: Yeah, well, the first, the first thing is to be conscious of it yourself,

Roni: Mm hmm.

Jess: I think you're right. There's a lot, a lot of parents don't understand their bodies. Don't understand the difference between their mind, their, their emotions craving something and what their body needs physically. So, so that's the first thing is to just understand it in yourself.

If you're going to model it for your kids. Um, but that is, that is one way I have talked about it with [00:39:00] kids sometimes is that, like I think, I think with that, with that example that I, I said with the little kid who was, who said, I want to eat it, but my mind won't let me. One of the strategies we talked about was actually, I mean, this was a very astute little, little boy and to be able to say things like that, right.

We, we thought, well, he needs to understand that there's a difference between. The mind and the body are talking to each other, but sometimes we're feeding our mind and sometimes we're feeding our body and between she and I, the mom, the mom and me, we know it's actually the same thing. When you feed the body, you feed the mind.

When you feed the mind, you feed the body. But in this child's brain, it was different. It was distinct. So, so the conversation she was planning with him was to have a conversation around, well, this is what your body needs and your mind won't let you. So we need to find ways. To get it into your body that your mind doesn't know about

[00:40:00] and, and we're, we're playing with it because we don't want to be super sneaky about it.

It's not that it's not that we want to trick him. We want him to go into this consciously, but you know, if he found out that there was a, you know, zucchini and the cheese sauce, he would have a freak out because his, his mind would flip out. Right. So she, she, and she didn't want to do that to him. She didn't want to trick him like that.

So she wanted to go into it with eyes wide open saying. So I'm going to do some things where we're going to put things in your food that your body needs. And we're not going to tell your mind about it. Is that okay with you to see how that goes? So there, you know, there's, there is, there, there is, there are nuances with all of this.

We have to get the nourishment into our kids. We're also using some amino acids to help, you know, ease his stress response and reduce his anxiety and, you know, calm his nervous system at the same time. So we're trying to achieve that flexibility.

Roni: Yeah. Multifaceted approach there.[00:41:00] 

Jess: Yeah, we have to be, we have to be gently gentle with kids. Like here's the other thing about the nervous system is that it won't let you blow up status quo. The nervous system won't let you, your nervous system's job is to keep you safe and on course. So if you're asking it to shift and accept, you know, zucchini and the cheese sauce for some kids, that's just too much.

It's too much. So we have to go gently. Like, we're going to start with it on the side. We're going to start by peeling it, you know, it is ever so gently.

Roni: Well, before we end, I know that you are an author of a book. I see it right behind you raising resilience. Um, why don't you talk a little bit about what's in that book and, who it's for essentially.

Jess: Yeah. So this book is written for parents. Specifically, and I wrote it, uh, a few years ago now, because I was really blindsided by how hard it was to keep my family healthy. I wrote it after my second child.[00:42:00] And when I was just like, I think I was like, this doesn't need to be feel so complicated.

I need, I need the manual. I need the textbook. So I decided to write it. And it goes through, uh, nourishment strategies, just how to, how to get more nourishment into your kids. And then it goes through some of the, uh, some of the main stressors, some of the main things that fill kids stress buckets and really erode their resilience, erode their adaptability.

Um, and since then I've kind of expanded my thinking and now I have a much more concrete model of like five core ways to nourish and five main stressors that I'm talking about more on social media. And I have, outlined on my website and things, but in the book, and actually, if people do get the book now, I did do an update.

Um, so if they go onto my website, they'll see book bonuses. And I did a little video about some of the updates, some of the new ways that I'm thinking about it, some of the newer research. To, um, and actually wrote a whole new chapter on, on supplements,[00:43:00] how to fill the gaps, some of the key gaps, uh, with supplements.

So make sure you grab that as well. Um, so yeah, that's what it's for. It's for parents who are feeling a little, a little overwhelmed by the, the job of keeping their kids healthy and feeding their families and want a bit of a framework.

Roni: That's great. Uh, was there anything else that we didn't touch on here that you wanted to mention?

Jess: We talked about a lot of things.

Roni: We did.

Jess: We talked about a lot of things. Just to have compassion for yourself. I mean, it really is, uh, it really is a hard time to parent. Kids are stressed. Parents are stressed. The, the whole world is, you know, living kind of stressed. And so, you know, we do have to remember that deactivating stress is a, an active force. process. We have to take conscious steps to bringing our stress load down. And for some people, that means learning [00:44:00] information. For some people, that means doing less. For all people, that means getting enough sleep and getting enough good food into them and connecting with the people that they love. So, you know, nourish yourselves well as, as a parent, connect with people who are also raising kids. Who are not necessarily as stressed out as you. Maybe try to find some people who are a little bit like, you know, grounded that to that can help you feel more grounded.

And, and know that, you know, there, there's a huge learning gap. We are not well equipped, uh, to become parents in terms of how do you, how do you achieve health in your family? So yeah, have some compassion for that process. It's a beautiful journey. Once you lean into that, it is a journey. You can't possibly know how to do it at the start.

Roni: Thanks for sharing that. [00:45:00] Um, so why don't you tell everybody where they can connect with you and find you online in case anybody's interested in learning more.

Jess: yeah, I'm at JessSherman. com. So three S's in a row. That's my home base. And, um, I've got online courses there. I've got coaching programs there. I've got lots of free resources as well. And that's, that's how you can connect with me. Or Instagram is another great way. Ask Jess Sherman is on Instagram.

Yes.

Roni: Yeah, I'll make sure that those are linked in the show notes as well as a link to find your book as well, because I think that sounds like a great resource.

Jess: Yes. My book is on Amazon and it's also on my website.

Roni: Perfect. Well, thanks so much for joining me today, Jess. It's been so informative and wonderful.

Jess: So thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. 

Roni: Thank you for listening to this episode of the plan to eat podcast, I will have links in the show notes to Jess's book and her website, and just all of the places that you can find her and connect with her. And if you'd like to support the plan to eat podcast, please subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen to your [00:46:00] podcasts. Share this episode with a friend who you think might enjoy it. And I will see you again in two weeks. Thanks so much for listening.