Episodes

Dec. 30, 2021

Episode 30: Building Trust

Trust is built by having a firm belief in someone or something. In episode 30 (!) of Family in Focus: find out how to build that belief in your body, its messages (like hunger), and then model that self-trust with your childr...
Dec. 24, 2021

Eating While Feeling is Not a Crime

We continue on our series on Hunger, Eating & Family -- with recognition of emotional eating. Is it a problem? Is it THE problem? Only if we let it be. Let's chat about why emotional eating is not a problem. Come over to my b...
Dec. 16, 2021

Episode 28: 4 Reasons Kids (and Adults!) Seek and Eat Food Without Being Hungry

Episode 28! Last time we talked about Hunger & Kids... but you may have noticed, there's a lot of food-searching going on. Is it possible the kids aren't actually hungry all the time? Why else could they be asking for food, a...
Dec. 9, 2021

Episode 27: Hunger & Kids

"My kids are always hungry!" Sound familiar to you? So many parents note it with concern, and question, "What does this mean?" This is the first episode in a series on hunger. We are starting with the why, the biology, and th...
Dec. 2, 2021

Episode 26: Three Things That We Were Never Taught

Welcome to Family in Focus with Wendy Schofer, MD. As a physician and parent, I've learned a lot about kids, nutrition, and growth. But these are three things that I wasn't taught in school about weight - and are now oh so im...
Nov. 23, 2021

Episode 25: Teaching Gratitude for the Pain

Welcome to Family in Focus with Wendy Schofer, MD, Episode #25! It's Thanksgiving week! It's that time of year where we renew our gratitude practices - and yet, how do we reconcile having gratitude amidst so much pain? Today'...
Nov. 23, 2021

4 Rules to Keep (Food) Peace on Thanksgiving

Welcome to Family in Focus with Wendy Schofer, MD -- Thanksgiving special post. You know who wasn't invited to Thanksgiving - anywhere? The Food Police! In this super-quickie episode, I go over four things to consider before ...
Nov. 18, 2021

Three Tools to Help Us Help Our Kids

Welcome to Family in Focus with Wendy Schofer, MD - Episode #24! You know what's different in helping parents who are worried about their kids' weight? Having conversations like these: not about cutting calories and increasin...
Nov. 11, 2021

Episode 23: The Many Faces of Responsibility

Welcome to Family in Focus with Wendy Schofer, MD. Today we dive into Responsibility when it comes to helping kids navigate weight concerns. What are we controlling? Where is the finger-pointing? Where are the opportunities t...
Nov. 4, 2021

What Do You Choose to Focus Upon?

Welcome to Episode #22! My son's at it again: giving me material for the podcast! And that's not a bad thing. I appreciate the opportunity to choose to focus on our conversations. You see, the brain is hard-wired to find prob...
Oct. 25, 2021

Making Peace with Halloween

Welcome to Family in Focus with Wendy Schofer, MD Episode #21! My love-hate relationship with Halloween has a lot to do with my experience as a pediatrician and the "sugar-gorge-fest," as I saw it. In this episode, I talk abo...
Oct. 21, 2021

Mac & Cheese Dinners!

Welcome to Family in Focus with Wendy Schofer, MD Episode #20 (woo-hoo!) A mom used her example of making mac and cheese dinner as evidence that she isn't the one to lead her family to healthy habits. Hold.the.phone. Today we...
Oct. 14, 2021

Ask Better Questions to Focus On What's Important

Welcome to Family in Focus with Wendy Schofer, MD, Episode #19. Did you realize you have a say in the questions that you ask yourself? We have trained our brains to keep looking for something else, the next notification, all ...
Oct. 7, 2021

Why Aren't Parents Playing?

Welcome to Family in Focus with Wendy Schofer, MD. Episode #18 A gymnastics-tricks session with my niece this weekend left her amazed: her mom and I jumped right in. She hadn't seen adults jump in to play like that at the gym...
Sept. 30, 2021

"Water is Essential for Life"

Welcome to Family in Focus with Dr Wendy Schofer. Episode #17: The final step in my Go S.L.O.W. process for creating healthy family habits: Water. So powerful, essential (as per my father-in-law... and biology!) and yet so ea...
Sept. 23, 2021

Observe Your Body - Are you really listening to it?

Welcome to Family in Focus with Wendy Schofer, MD. Today we continue on the Go S.L.O.W. framework: Observe your body. Get all busy asking it two really important questions: Am I hungry? Have I had enough? We go through a whol...
Sept. 16, 2021

Lose the Distractions!

Welcome to Family in Focus with Wendy Schofer, MD. Today we continue on the steps of Going SLOW to instill healthy habits for the whole family around meals: Lose the Distractions. Yeah, I don't like having steps that speak in...
Sept. 9, 2021

The Structure You Need

Welcome to Family in Focus with Wendy Schofer, MD! Episode 14: The Structure You Need Our children thrive with structure - being able to anticipate, trust and have certainty. Today we talk about creating the structure your fa...
Sept. 2, 2021

One Purposeful Breath

Episode 13: One Breath - it's the start of everything: Life A new habit Taking one purposeful breath has power to shift to the calm that is now. Listen to find out more. My Go SLOW process for creating healthy habits for the ...
Aug. 26, 2021

Sleep.Comes.First

Any plan for healthy habits needs to include scheduling regular sleep, no matter your current or goal weight. Not as an after-thought, or something to catch whenever we can. But an active carving out of time to prioritize sle...
Aug. 19, 2021

Finding the Fun

If we can choose our feelings (by the way, we can!), I choose fun. I value FUN so much in my life that I'm actively looking for it: at work (go figure a pediatrician values fun!), as well as at home in my relationships and li...
Aug. 12, 2021

What I Learned From the Okinawans - and Had to Unlearn to Use It

What I learned from the Okinawans - and had to unlearn to use it Hara Hachi Bu - "Eat until you're 80% full." Great to practice and understand when have I had enough. As parents, we first need to see what's getting in the way...
Aug. 5, 2021

The Coaching Model

The Coaching Model, as conceptualized by Brooke Castillo of The Life Coach School, is a universal tool to understand how we create the results in our lives (the ones we don't want, and the ones we actually want). In this epis...
July 29, 2021

The Gifts of Imperfection

I'm practicing -- "I am not perfect, I do not need to be perfect, I am amazing BECAUSE of my mistakes and imperfections." Yeah, it's an ongoing practice. Like today, not editing. Just taking my unedited podcast and going real...