Let me tell you the five most helpful to-do’s I have seen parents use for their children’s health, as we start a new year. 

These come from my twenty years’ experience working with families in my pediatric nutrition practice – with mostly complex, difficult cases who couldn’t find improvement elsewhere. In other words, even if your child is really challenged with feeding, growth, chronic illness or disability, developmental trials, allergy or more, I can tell you that these five tips are still my top picks, for setting up the healthiest foundation possible for your kids.

You might think I am going to talk about stuff like picky eating, junk food versus organic, gluten, food allergies, eating more vegetables, probiotics, vitamins, the latest autism protocol, whether or not you should do GAPS, gut biome… Nope. I definitely do cover all that and more in my clinical practice and in my blog, so have a look around.

These tips are about you – and how subtle shifts in your approach to health and what your family eats can cause unexpected benefits to unfold in everyone’s health.

1 – Get fierce about this: Adopt the mantra that health – not illness, disability, endless doctors’ appointments, or dependence on prescription or over-the-counter drugs that bring unwanted side effects – is your child’s birthright. It’s the baseline they are entitled to. Picture them at their healthiest and happiest. Imagine the unimaginable, if that is what it takes. Start with that picture of the joy good health brings.

If they’re not there, if your children are saddled with chronic illness, don’t lament, and definitely don’t feel sorry for them – they have you as their advocate and model, and they need positivity and possibility. Hold that image of total health that they need and deserve. Assume they have it already, and lead the way toward it, quietly and persistently. Expect a good outcome. Their bodies are built to grow, heal, and restore. There is always potential for healing.

2 – Chill out about food. Robyn Obrien’s 80/20 rule is a comfortable sweet spot. Her suggestion is to work for “progress not perfection”. Unless you know your child will sustain severe injury or consequences from eating certain verboten foods which must be avoided, don’t pathologize food. Don’t judge. Don’t chatter about how horrible this or that food is.

I encourage parents to use empowering language, even with small children. I discourage labeling food as “bad” or something that will “make you sick”. This can burden children – even teens – with unnecessary anxiety.

Instead, use words that show the power to choose. If your child eats something that backfires into discomfort or behavioral disintegration, ask which food might feel better next time, if they’re old enough to consider that question for themselves. If not, tell them what you will do next time: “Next time I’ll have xyz ready to eat instead, and you can see if that feels good”. Or “I’ll give your teacher a new snack for you at school. Maybe that will feel good instead.” Don’t harp on what a mistake a transgression was, especially if your child made the choice or if the choice was beyond their control. That is too easily internalized into feelings of powerlessness or failure by a child.

Notice your phrasing, demeanor, and tone when talking about food and health. Leave out the dark, judgmental stuff and emphasize food feeling good, tasting good, or being fun to share or experiment with.

3 – Read food labels? Now try this. If you’re like most parents I work with, you read food labels ad nauseam. You scrutinize every ingredient that passes your child’s lips – especially if you faithfully eat only organic food, avoid corn syrup or dyes, or if your kids ever needed an Epi Pen for eating the wrong thing!

Great. Now try this: Read a vaccine package insert. Read the whole thing, including the ingredients (often listed under the word “Description”). If you care about what’s in your child’s food, you will definitely want to know what is injected into them.

This is a great resource to see the full insert for each vaccine in the schedule. To see ingredients, search for the word “description” (which – as you may wonder – does not necessarily disclose all the ingredients, some of which are allowed to be proprietary, per the FDA).

I’ve met many a mom worried about letting their kids eat, say, corn chips or dairy (because they heard either was “bad” for everyone) – but never knew that Prevnar 13 – just one of dozens of shots on the schedule – has GMO soy fragments in it. Or that Recombivax has yeast, soy, formaldehyde, dextrose, and aluminum in it.

Recombivax is given to newborn babies. If you wouldn’t let even traces of GMO soy, formaldehyde, or aluminum touch your newborn baby’s tongue, why would you let these be injected? Note that eating any protein – or toxin for that matter – is far safer than injecting it, especially if your child is prone to any sort of reaction.

No need to dwell on what a contentious conversation anything with the V-word is, or indulge the drama and emotional reactions to this topic (I’ll delete comments that do). I get it. My graduate training in public health was full-on pro vaccine. I don’t need any instruction here, thank you very much.

It’s just that it’s high time for common sense. We talk a lot about food ingredients, including traces of glyphosate in GMO foods. Nobody talks much about ingredients in your kids’ shots. The “trace amount” argument loses traction once you see that kids receive anywhere from 70 to 100 doses in their first five years, when they are the most vulnerable to the burden of toxic exposures.

It would be fabulous if there was a pharmaceutical or biological product that actually was reliably, equally safe and equally effective for every kid or baby, every single day. But that is just magical thinking. There is no such thing, anywhere. Not a food, not a medicine, not even a fragrance. Can you imagine if it were mandated that all public school children eat Adderall every day, because some kids are too hard to manage in the classroom due to ADHD?

So this is why my Number 3 is for you to learn exactly what’s in your kids’ shots (or yours, if you’re planning on getting pregnant). They are potent. Don’t take them lightly. They may be helpful, or like anything else, they can be harmful. Too many may overstimulate the immune system to cause problems later on. Learn what is in vaccines, when they’re given and how often, and scrutinize if your child really needs them all.

For example: Your child won’t need boosters if they retain immunity from a prior dose – more may not be better.

If you’re upset because someone gave your kid a bag of Skittles at school, then wig out about the kid next door who skipped chickenpox vaccine, I think you’ve got it backwards. Just my opinion.

Besides, don’t you believe your own kid’s chickenpox shot worked – ?

In this scenario, the candy may be the lesser of two evils. Chickenpox vaccine is made with human fetal DNA, guinea pig embryonic tissue, sucrose, glutamate and MSG, and fetal bovine serum. Check out page 6 under “Description”.

4 – Heed your intuition. It’s a powerful healer, guide, and protector for your kids. And at the same time, remember that intuition is not a mandate for you alone to know everything!

In all my years as a clinician, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a mom say “I just had a feeling” …and how often that feeling was right. I’ve certainly had that moment many times myself as a mom.

It can be tough to go against the advice of the expert specialist at the Mayo Clinic, but you can do it if you simply feel you must, even if you don’t know quite why just yet. You know your child best.

Don’t confuse intuition with fear, or with the egocentric idea that only you can help your child. While I’ve often seen a mom’s intuition impressively steer a child to a good outcome, I have also seen families withhold good care options or block alliances with good providers, out of fear that they shouldn’t trust anything, or a belief that only mom can know what to do. Neither approach is very successful.

Look for your allies and resources, know your own strengths as well as spots where you could use help, allow the help in, and remember – you do know your child best.

5 – Drop the drama. When we have kids with struggles, it’s so easy to be seduced by the drama of what it takes to be their parent.

It’s easy to over-identify with the tasks of caring for kids with learning disabilities, developmental concerns, feeding and growth delays, allergies, and more.

Don’t do that. It messes up your kids. They’re not here to fulfill you in some way, or address your needs. They’re just here. Pretty much, to be themselves.

I meet traumatized families. Families who have had too many trips to the ER for severe allergy reactions from an accidental walnut, for seizures because a medication keeps failing, for passing out because of FPIES reactions and non-stop vomiting. For these families, a plain old broken arm sounds pretty good. Families isolated by too many dietary restrictions, by developmental disabilities including autism, anxiety disorders, or processing disorders.

I meet families who have been verbally battered or treated with great insensitivity by doctors, teachers, neighbors, or even friends or family members. Trusting becomes hard. As a parent, it’s hard at times not to feel victimized, to feel like the hardship with your kids may never end, and to lapse into the trap of believing that this whirlwind of medical/developmental/educational crises is… your whole and sole self.

But this isn’t about you.

Underneath and in between all that, there is your child, endeavoring to just be. Like any other kid.

The kids who come out of these tempests with the best outcomes, in my experience, are the ones whose parents can remain aware of this. These parents do not attach their own pain, ego, fears, sadness, disappointment, frustration, or feelings of inadequacy to the child, or to the outcomes. They don’t focus on diagnostic labels, whether it’s eosinophilic esophagitis, PANDAS, autism, Crohns, FPIES, or whatever. They rarely if ever use the labels around their kids, because they know their kids are not the labels. They obtain the labels as a path to health and wellbeing as is useful – that’s it. They don’t spend too much time on Facebook groups devoted to their kids’ labels. They focus on actionable solutions. They trust the fact that as parent, they are doing the best they can.

You’re in charge. You set the tone. Your kids will follow suit, even if they have seemingly insurmountable challenges on their plates. I used to hate it when my mother advised, “don’t complain, don’t explain” …but, she was right.