Latest / Motherhood Alliance Podcast / Are Our Kids Too Busy? What Overscheduling Does to the Developing Brain | Prime Family Chiropractic
Transcript
- Britney: Hey everyone, this is Britt from motherhoodalliance.com and I'm excited to bring you a special four episode series with husband and wife team, doctors, Julie and Skip Weiss from prime family chiropractic centers. Both are doctors of chiropractic who specialize in pregnancy, pediatric, and family care. Interestingly, when they were in chiropractic school, they originally planned to do work with athletes, especially being so close to Green Bay, but life took them in a different direction. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in episode one. Welcome back everybody. We are in episode three with Dr. Julie and Dr. Skip and holy moly our first two episodes have been incredible. Thank you so much for jumping on with us for all of these episodes and sharing your knowledge. For those of you listening, if you haven't listened to our first two episodes, I just want to make sure you understand what you've missed so you can go back and listen to them. Our first one was why is my kid always sick? We talked a lot about immune health, things that have changed over the years, and tips like real applicable tips for helping your kiddo stay healthier going forward. They got married during grad school, found out they were expecting shortly after, and were mentored by a coach who ran one of the largest pediatric chiropractic offices in Canada, which I understand helped shape the focus of your practice today. Today, they're passionate about helping families take a more proactive approach to health by giving parents a supportive, judgment-free space to ask questions and make informed decisions for their kids. And then our last episode, talked a lot about constipation and just how we can help our kids that. Dr. Skip and Dr. Julie are so knowledgeable in these areas. I love that we've gotten a little sciencey, so I'm excited to continue that trend in this episode. Today we're talking about ⁓ busyness life, ⁓ especially kids. I think about... Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: Thank Britney: They're also raising two kids of their own, along with two French bulldog puppies. So they definitely understand the real life chaos and joy of family life. Julie and Skip, we're so glad you're here. school-aged kids specifically in this topic of over scheduling when you have sports and church things and like so many things that are good like they're teaching our good kids good skills it just starts to be too much but even I think nowadays especially since COVID even the moms of littles are just they don't feel content being home which I felt that way honestly you just need that socialization and so you're still constantly busy when you have little kids so ⁓ Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us. Britney: I would love to just start by talking a little bit about our childhood, like 30 years ago versus today, and kind of the expectations society has put on us and how it's changed. Can you guys share a little bit about what you've seen for yourselves, but also in your office? Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: Yeah, it's definitely, society has definitely changed. People don't want to be bored anymore or they don't know how to be bored. I think with the advent of cell phones, people have lost creativity, right? So like when was the last time that if you're a stay at home mom that you got down on the floor and you built a fort with your kids? Chances are no, no judgment whatsoever. but it's very real when you actually realize that you sometimes would rather be scrolling on your phone than to be in active play with your child. Now, when we have a baby, like that's different, right? Like the baby's usually strapped to us, but even in those instances, like I've seen the struggles that many families have of like, yeah, all it does is it just wants to cling to me and all it does is eat all day. That is the one thing that it's host to do. And I think that society has romanticized of what it's like to now build a family in that it's very hands off and that if you don't show up and look perfectly made up and to do all these things or have your child with all these different activities and doing all these clubs, then you're failing as a parent. ⁓ it is okay, for you to sit at home and play with Legos or make a fort or have a nap time and read books. Britney: Yeah, I think you hit it on the head when you just talked about the kids, especially when it comes to something like sports or activities where they're like, well, if I don't start them early these days, they're never going to have a chance to even be part of the high school basketball team. Like not even, not even looking at making it to the pros, but like even just making it to play high school sports and enjoy those aspects because they really are amazing, enjoyable seasons full of learning about different teamwork and skills and stuff like that. But if you don't start early, if you wait until your kid is 10, they're never gonna make it. So like there's so much pressure there. So what is, do you feel like kids, especially the ones coming in your office, Are these busy schedules stressful to them or is it really enjoyable and because they never have to be bored? Where do you feel like they're feeling? Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: It's it's not in the number one key for that is when the parent hears I don't want to go anymore. and that's, that's hard to hear, right? It's you want, ⁓ what happens is you, want your children to be in sports. We want them to, we understand being athletes, Julie and I both, I, I put athletes in quotation for me, definitely athlete for you. but we both played sports in high school and in grade school and ⁓ One of the biggest things that we found valuable with that is the team building camaraderie, learning to win what it's like to actually lose in life because there are winners and losers. And like what it's like to build personal character around that. It gets shied away from due to the hyper competitiveness of society. So what happens in that that comes back to the competitiveness of mom staying home versus moms being out constantly doing things with their kids. because most moms feel like they're a failure if they don't have their child in two or three play groups a week. And the reason why is because they feel that their children won't be socialized. And now we're getting into social norms, which is really sad, but most parents will say, you'll hear this, like, ⁓ you homeschooled? Yeah, they homeschooled. Well, are their kids socialized? And I mean, that has been on children and parents since I was born in the 80s. I remember growing up in the 90s and being in high school in late 90s, early 2000s, and our neighbors were farmers and they were homeschoolers. And my parents would even say crap things like, they're homeschooled. Well, now, seeing these amazing homeschool groups and what these children turned out, and I have interactions with these neighbors that are now adults that were homeschooled, ⁓ my god, are they smart. And yes, they are very social and they are very integrated into society. This isn't ⁓ Night Shyamalan's The Village. ⁓ like this, that's not how it works. But what happens is this, this nature, right? And you hit this on the head. As parents, we worry about our kids getting fulfillment and fun on a sports. Well, some kids just like being in the sport, they don't care if they play, they just like practice, they love the process. They have a lot of fun, they make friends. That's typically the kid in the outfield looking at the Dan Alliance, you know, and but they're having fun. It's the hyper competitiveness that we placed on our children to be good that has actually changed their love for the sport. So when they start telling you they don't like it, they don't want to go, they're not enjoying it, they need a break and their body needs a break. That's their nervous system literally telling you, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm exhausted. I'm war elk. Case in point, I will tell you this, last year, our son, phenomenal golfer, very good. Very good. I want him to have fun. I don't want him worried about two strokes that could keep him from winning a tournament. I want him to have fun. came to me last year, and this happens every summer, in around August, and he'll say, I don't want to go to practice today. And I'll ask him, say, you don't want to go to practice because you're not having fun anymore, or you don't want to go to practice because you just don't want to go. I don't care his answer actually, I wanna hear what he has to say, but I'm gonna tell him it's okay not to go. And the reason why is because he's exhausted. He's wore out, he doesn't wanna do it anymore, he needs a mental break. He doesn't wanna be a part of it anymore. And when we grew up as kids, we were told like you don't quit. Once you make your commitment, you don't quit. We've all heard that. It's okay to quit sometimes. It's okay to stop. And as a parent, you have to give yourself the freedom. to say no, you have to give yourself the freedom to say it's okay if my kid doesn't complete the sport out. And I think as a parent, you have just as much pressure on yourself for your child to be there as you have on your child to be there as well. And that's not fair to any of us as parents. It's really hard. And where I see it as a resultant is complete physiological failure out of the child. So I'll see kids at 10 years old tearing an ACL. I'll see a kid at 13 with chronic hamstring problems. At 13, I'll see a kid need Tommy John surgery on his elbow at 15 because he's been pitching since he was four. Did you give your child's body a chance to actually rehab? Did you give your child's body an actual off season? Like this is a hard thing and I say this because I see it every day and it's really hard. Like I'm not trying to cry because I see it on parents and I see it on kids. And it's the societal norms that we constantly have to compete and we don't. You know, and I think that's what's really hard. And I don't mean to be long winded on this, but that's what I see as a person that takes care of children every day. And I see these societal things or the child goes from. They go from a fall sport to a winter sport to a spring sport to a summer sport. And if you're a parent that has your kids in sports, you know this is the truth. Pick one or two and that's it. Give them an off season. And if they don't like it, tell them, well then if you want to play basketball, we have to figure out what we want to do in the fall then. I don't want you playing sports year round. I think the concern is what has changed is, and you kind of alluded to it when you started, Brittany, is that like, Britney: Yeah, and I Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: I grew up and I played all of the sports around, but I played just the sport. I wasn't in the weekend tournaments. wasn't then at the gym doing all of these other, you know, strength and agility things. Like it was the sport and we did the practice that was associated with the sport and that was it. And then he moved on. But now it's the additional strength and weight training. It's the gym time. It's the agility. It's the private coaches that the child never gets away from it. And I think that's when it's the gut check of who wants this more? Is it the parent or is it the child? Britney: Hmm. Yeah, that's a really good question. And I can appreciate that your son was able to verbalize that he didn't want to go. But I think there's probably a lot of kids that either feel like they can't say that to their parents. Because like to your point, Julie, who's who who is really why is this kid in these sports? Is it for the parent or is it for the kid? But what are you know, there's probably some other signs that a kid could show that saying that they're really just over scheduled and that they need more downtime, like something even just irritability. Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: And it's hard. Yeah. Britney: Maybe that's just a way that they're... Yeah, so what are some other signs or like almost symptoms that kids might be letting off that they just... it's too much. Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: ⁓ my God. Yes. Extreme irritability is one. If they're fast to cry, like think about it as an adult. If I'm really overwhelmed, if I'm not okay, I'm gonna be, even as a male, I'm gonna be emotional. I'm a crier. There's wet people and dry people. I'm a wet person, okay? And Julie's dry. ⁓ crier. But like when I'm exhausted, overwhelmed, I'll feel like I need to cry. Which there's a lot of neurology behind that and it's really cool. But they're exhausted, so are they fast to cry? Are they to anger? Are they constantly wanting, and it's not them wanting to go to sleep. They could be ramped up and not be able to sleep at all. Sleep patterns are huge. not able to sleep. Disruptions massive. If you have a child that's exhausted, they're not sleeping through the night. They're up all the time. you might think they're sleeping through the night because they don't come out of their bedroom. But if you ask them, hey, do you get up a lot during the night? Yeah, I wake up four or five times. That's a disrupted nervous system. Their cortisol is gonna go up because they're stressed. You're gonna notice if they're really hitting fatigue, if maybe they're not queuing into it, ⁓ that like all of a sudden like they're walking and they like sprint an ankle or they just become like really you're prone to injury right when you when you overuse your body is going to just start to break down and like I was like the body doesn't do anything more than it needs to it's going to run the program just like it's supposed to and if all of a sudden it's like making you trip and like do these things like cue into like okay maybe I shouldn't be doing this maybe I need to take a break We're so quick to write it off of like, let's take a Tylenol and ibuprofen and just muscle through it, right? Just run it out. Let's do a good stretch. And those are usually the first indicators that an injury is going to be coming soon. ⁓ Britney: Right. Yeah, And as you were talking about cortisol coming up, I think about a huge percentage, 95 % I'm making that up, but like 95 % of adults have a problem with stress. They are overstressed, they are overworked, they have anxiety. Like this is so prevalent in today's society. And so to think that we are literally starting our kids with this high cortisol issue and just like adrenal fatigue, starting at such a young age. Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: you Britney: That's so difficult to think about. Okay, so do we find balance in this? What are some things that parents can really chew on and think about for finding balance? How do you choose different sports and activities? Because like we said, so many of them are good. How do you decipher which ones are best? Especially if your kid is like, I want to do that and that and that and that and that. How do we as parents kind of protect them from hitting this burnout in the first place? Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: I make them choose. Yeah, I would have them choose and I would keep them in the sport that they're good at. Because I can guarantee you they're not all good at all four sports. And I think that's where instead of a why go on and do it all, starting those boundaries for our kids, it helps them to then also with the brain process, with the development for them, they get to choose and they can like help them ⁓ with those choices, the pros and cons of ⁓ what sport it is or what club it is and. Like these are the things that are coming up. Now let's make a plan for what do you want to choose and have them be, you know, the, the adult or, know, acting more mature in that moment of, okay, I think I want to try this. I bring it back to some of the professional athletes that I've taken care of and I'm taking care of some pretty high profile running backs in Green Bay. And I remember talking to these guys about their children I'm like, would you, are you going to let them play football? And both of them said, I'm going to, I want to play soccer. And if they're going to play football, I want them to learn how to kick. And the reason why is because of the injury rate in males, women's head injuries are high in soccer, not as much as males in soccer. I would be looking at a sport where the injury rates low, like what catastrophically can happen to my son when he plays golf. Like I'm a little selfish with that. love golf, but I also know his chance of injury is extremely low. Same thing with a child that runs cross country. chance of injury is extremely low. Now you will tell me that cross country is violent. Can be dangerous. can be dangerous. I know. Same thing with track athletes. but also like if they're in heavy duty contact sports, what do we have to understand? And my biggest one is it's not so much extremity injuries as it is head injury. And what what is going to make your child. one or two head injuries away from actually having serious difficulty and problem. Case in point, my nephew got a concussion in football two years ago. His concussion lasted a month, like him recovering. This year, he had a chance to go out for football and he sat down with my brother and sister and said, mom and dad, I don't wanna go out for football this year. And my brother is a diehard football person. Like he loves it and he's he's smart. He's educated football wise. He's one of those guys that can watch anything happen and tell you what's going to happen. Like he's very intelligent. He's football intelligent. So for him to hear that out of his son was a little bit heartbreaking, but also when he told him, he's like, dad, I don't want another concussion. Britney: How do you argue that? Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: You can't, you can't help but understand that that that kid's worried about his mental health. My best friend in high school got a concussion so bad in our senior year of high school football in our playoff game. He doesn't remember scoring the touchdown that won the game. He got hit so hard. He walked the other sideline. He had no idea where he was. So like these are the things you really have to understand with your kids. Because kids are getting faster, they're stronger, and they're bigger. Every one of them. You talk to NFL athletes, they're faster, they're stronger, and they're bigger. So your bodies aren't designed to be that way. So when kids are getting hit at a very, very young age, when they're getting impacts, kids in baseball are throwing harder than they ever have. because we've started training earlier and their bodies aren't meant to be that. Your kids are meant to be kids. You know, like it's a big thing. Britney: Yeah, yeah, this is, this has a couple of thoughts going through my head of like this year, my kids, so my kids are eight and 10. And so my husband used to play ice hockey for fun with his friends when he was in high school. So he's very good on skates. I am not great. But I've been really thinking about things that we can do lifelong. Like you were talking about with golf and I'm like, you know, this is where as an adult now, ⁓ Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: you Yeah. Thank Britney: I would have loved if my parents would have got me some ice skating lessons when I was a kid, even just short term, but something I can use my whole life. Golf is great. Running is great. Hiking is great. Swimming is great. Like these other things that you can do lifelong. And that's kind of even downhill skiing. Obviously there's risk. There is risk to some of these, but as long as you're learning them and wearing proper safety equipment, I think Dr. Julie, you like to downhill ski, right? You got my back on this one. Okay. Yeah. So, ⁓ but just Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: Sure. Yeah. I do. Yep. Britney: That's something that's been rattling around in my head is like, yes, my son does a couple of sports through school. He's only in fourth grade, so it's very low key right now, but really protecting this. then family time. The other thing that was crossing my mind is when we're picking sports for our kids, what of our family values do we want to protect? So for example, if church on Sunday morning is a priority for you, sorry, things that have Sunday tournament tournaments, that one's out. If you want to make sure that you're having ⁓ family dinners at least. Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: Yes. Britney: let's just say two nights a week in those really busy seasons, what sports can you pick that's gonna allow that to happen? I feel so many family values are being lost nowadays where we don't have the time to actually even know our kids anymore. And that's where having time at home where we can talk about challenges they're having at school or in sports or with friends or anything else. Talk about you're a faith-based person, things that we can be doing to uplift others, or even just reading the Bible together, doing devotionals together as a family. All of this is getting lost because we're all so busy. So I guess this is bringing me, let's get a little bit sciency here to end this episode and bringing it into your chiropractic expertise. It comes back to this title of what does this overscheduling actually do to the developing brain? Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: ⁓ man, No, it's a huge stressor, right? Like if you think about like a fuse box, right? And if you've got janky wires coming through it, right? And like, you're like, ⁓ I think I can add like three or four more things. And now you've overloaded that circuit. What's eventually going to happen? It's going to short circuit something like fuses are going to get blown. Britney: Yeah. Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: And that's what happens in our kids. Like we talked about the things like we see the irritability, we see the poor sleep, we see the things that show up, but ultimately in the inside, that is where the real destruction happens. And why we see so many kids is because we want to deal with these things as a child so they don't grow into bigger things as an adult, right? So if we have the anxiety, if we have the... the cramping in the legs, if we're having all of these issues and they're not dealt with as a child and we continue these things, they're gonna turn into larger things as an adult. And the whole thing that we wanted to do with all these sports, ultimately that's gonna be sidelined as well. Yeah, I mean, that was perfect. I mean, you go into brain development, but I'm not gonna do that. It hinders brain development. does, 100%. The stressor, if far... just super quick, right? The only time that our body can heal is when we sleep. And we already addressed that if our body is overworked and it's to the point of fatigue, we're not getting that restful sleep, right? So that decreases our healing time, that increases our propensity to get sick because it decreases the immune system, and then that slows down our development. And then all of sudden, the next thing we know, we're falling behind in class, right? Now all of a sudden we have some learning challenges that are popping up. And it was all attributed to because I just wanted to play basketball. Britney: Yeah. You know, and it's hard. This is such a, this is such a battle, like it's so many things in life where society is telling us one thing, our gut instinct is telling us another thing. And we really have to figure out this balance that works for our family. doesn't matter what any other families are doing. So you can't look at like your siblings and what they're doing with their kids and feel like, I need to do that too. Or the other kids at school that are in multiple sports. It's like, we all have to just take any breath, think about our priorities, maybe list those out first. And then how do these extracurriculars fit into that? Right. So I love, I love again, all the knowledge and expertise you guys have brought to this episode. Thank you again for joining us for episode number three. Before we close this one out, I do want to just give you an opportunity though, cause I know you guys do host some workshops through your office. What are some of the workshops and gatherings that you guys offer so that families can understand what is available to them? Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: ⁓ every month we always host kind of an open house workshop of how to raise your child, how to raise a family in this ⁓ chaotic world. ⁓ we talk a little bit about chiropractic, but more so how to be successful, really living within that model. and so we, we host that once a month. I also host, it's called She's Social, Social Oak, it's a ladies night. It's always a third Thursday of the month. But that's just really a time for a mom, for women, ladies, you don't need to be married, you don't need to have kids. But it's kind of a reason for you just to maybe step into a different environment, meet some new friends. We do some activities. Sometimes people just need like an adult timeout. And so if you need to come sit in the corner, you know, have some snacks, have some drinks with us, we host that as well. Britney: Thank Perfect. And I do want to mention to listeners, if you are feeling overstimulated yourself lately, Julie and Skip are offering a complimentary sound lounge session for anyone listening. We about that in our prior episodes. If you want to hear a little bit more about that, you can jump on their website or listen to a prior episode to understand what that is. But that sounds like a great way to just kind of take some time for yourself as well. So we do have one more episode coming up with you guys. We're going be talking about migraines and headaches in our next episode. I think this will apply for kids and for adults, honestly. So we are excited for one more episode with you guys. That one's coming up next.