Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / Playing Before Eating

Transcript

Playing Before Eating · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hello, Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast. What if there
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: was a way that you could actually make sure that
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: your kids ate their lunch. What if there was a
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: way that the calories that our children need so their
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: brains and bodies work well could actually get inside them
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: rather than sitting in the lunch box, uneaten and being
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: brought home at the end of the day so that
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: you can get cranky about it the next day. Because
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: food costs a lot and the kids need energy and
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: they're not getting it. What is going on with kids
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: and school lunch is today is not your usual Let's
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: talk to a dietitian about how to get kids to
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: eat instead. Today's a conversation about structural changes that could
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: and should very easily happen in a school context to
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: help kids to grow and thrive, get the calories they need, play, eat, survive, learn, grow,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: and so much more. All of that coming up next
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: on the Happy Families podcast. Stay with us. Hello and
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: welcome to the Happy Families podcast, where you get real
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: parenting solutions every single day. This is Australia's most downloaded
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: parenting podcast. We ad Justin and Kylie Course and the
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: parents of six kids who let's face it, Kylie brought
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: home way too much food in their lunch boxes. How
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: many thousands of dollars worth of food do you think
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: went to school and came back uneaten and ended up
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: in the bin over the last however many years we've
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: been sending kids to school.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: I actually don't think most of it came home.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: I think it ended up just a school rubbish fits
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: because they don't want to get in trouble and they
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: bring it home. Yeah, boy, if we want to give
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: you some real parenting solutions here, Although this one is
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: probably a little bit more structural, nevertheless, it's something to
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: bring up at your school, PNC.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: It's something to bring up with your school principle. I
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: love you for it. School principles love it when you
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: approach them unsolicited and give them advice. Let's step into
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: this one. This caught my attention a couple of weeks
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: ago on an ABC news page from early March. The
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: ABC report the following When the bell rings for lunch
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: at the Entrance Public School on the New South Wales
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Central Coast, students leave their lunch boxes behind and head outside.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Thirty minutes of structured playtime comes before eating. Teachers engage
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: with the students in activities like soccer, dance, handballt and climbing.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: As a result, students are able to get their energy
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: out before they're expected to sit still and eat Kylie,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: just before I bring you in on this. Principal Dave
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Stitt says, this, coming off the playground, you had all
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: this angst and it was coming into the classroom. Things
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: are significantly calmer now. It's changed the culture of what
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: happens in the playground.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: I love this. Where was this when all our kids
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: were in primary school.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: This is not a hard structural change, It.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Really isn't, but it makes so much sense.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Oh, I am going to stand, I am going to highlight.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: We did talk to teachers about the possibility of this happening,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: and it was always just too hard. It was always
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: too hard.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: When we understand transitions, it makes complete sense that our
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: kids have gone from this unruly space of the playground
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: and then we're asking them to come back into class, hot,
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: sweaty and agitated and probably still don't have a lot
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: of their wiggles out because it's never long enough.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: And then they're going to have to learn again right
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: and they usually haven't eaten enough food, which means that
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: their brains and bodies are depleted from a calorie point
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: of view, which just makes the job so much harder.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Well, there's three things. There's the wasted food that so
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: many families are navigating. But there's also the child that
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: goes hungry because they just want to play. They're not
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: motivated to eat, they just want to hang out with
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: their friends. But then there's the other child who actually
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: does want to eat their lunch, and then they get
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: left out because they're not part of it because they're
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: actually more invested in eating.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: So there's a variety of different ways that this can
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: be approached. We never came up with this exact idea,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: but we had multiple conversations with school teachers through the
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: years where we said, is there any way, any way
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: at all that the school can implement something where the
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: school bell rings and the first five minutes, so the
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: first ten minutes is allocated to eating, and once the
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: eating time is done, then the kids go and had
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: their lunch. And it was always it was always too hard.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: We would beg teachers to please just check that our
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: daughter had eating their lunch, and fair enough to teach
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: as well. They're kind of going, well, we've got some
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: other stuff to go and do, and we would like
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: to have our own lunch. And how much do we
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: have to police in terms of kids developmentally young kids
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: just don't really do it though, And what they've done
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: here at the Entrance Public School on the New Southwest
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Central Coast is just a gentle tweak on that. Let's
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: let the bell go and let the kids get outside,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: let them go crazy, let them have fun. But then
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: there's going to be another bell. So we've got ten minutes.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Everyone can sit down, eat, you've had your wiggles, you've
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: had your fun. We can de escalate, we can regulate.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: I just it's fair fantastic.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: That's I think you're missing a key point to the
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: structure that they've got. They're not letting the kids just
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: go off and play because so often unstructured activity is
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: where kids really struggle to navigate things. But having adults,
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: it's not even a supervision thing. The adults are getting
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: involved in the activities that the kids are participating in,
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: which helps them navigate their world. Like it it's kind
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: of feels like school for dummies, Like this is not hard.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: It's really not hard.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: They've got qualifiable results from this. Let me share a
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: couple of the results. So the change was introduced in
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. By twenty twenty four, there was a seventy
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: one percent reduction in behavioral incidents in the playground. It's
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: a big drop. Additionally, the entrance public school is below
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: average on the index of community socio educational advantage, which
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: means basically, there's some socio economic challenges in the community
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: and therefore the expectations around school and education are different
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: to higher socioeconomic communities. And what the school principal reported
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: was that Naplan scores from last year show year three
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: and year five students performing either above or well above
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: when compared to students with a similar background. And there's
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: a whole lot of parents in the article who are saying,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: we really like it because the kids are eating the
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: food that we prepare for them, and in the cost
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: of living crisis, it makes a difference. So we will
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: link to that article in the show notes after the
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: break though, Kylie, we need to talk about what this
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: means in practical terms of parents and what we can
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: do to help our kids to get what they need
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: while they're at school. If your school isn't doing this
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: kind of thing, especially with your primary school age children.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Stay with us, We're back. This is the Happy Families Podcast.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for choosing to spend your time
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: with us. Kylie, A couple of things we need to
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: talk about here with this really simple initiative at the
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Entrance Public.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: School, I don't think we can ever underestimate the power
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: of nutrition with our kids, the way that impacts their learning,
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: their behavior, their emotion, regulate their emotion, re It's just
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: it affects everything.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: How often do we say to our kids, have you eaten?
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Because they're losing it? We get some calories into you,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: maybe a bit of protein, get something into you, and
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, they're nice again. They become nice
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: people once they've got some food in their systems. They
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: can regulate so much better.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: And so when I think about what this school is
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: doing and how they're just with a simple tweak, have
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: seen such a massive improvement in their kids, you kind
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: of become a believer that food makes all the difference.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: There's actually a bit of data around here. Schools that
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: have adopted play first models report that students eat more
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: fruits and vegetables drink more milk, waste less food, and
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: a better behaved on the playground and in the classroom.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: This is not the first school on the planet to
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: wherever do something like this, and when there have been
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: interventions along these lines, here's what's really going on here.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: We feed kids by the clock, not by their appetite,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: and by shifting things around the way they've done on
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: the entrance public school. What they've basically said is you're
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: you as a child, are much more likely to have
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: an appetite once, yes, you've done some learning, but once
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: you've also moved your body. Once you moved your body,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: you're going to want to sit down and actually get
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: some food into you.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: But not only that. The brilliance of this is they
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: are utilizing eating time, which is generally a much more
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: sedate activity than playing in the parayground, as a transition
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: point to going back into the calmer learning space of
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: a classroom. Again, it's better, regularly a simple tweak, and
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: yet it makes all the sense.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So the second I think big take home for
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: me is this the last ten minutes of playtime is
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: when things usually go wrong. The kids are tired, they're
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: wound up, they haven't eaten properly.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: They also know that their playtime is playtimes.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: That's right, and the anxiety goes up and they're like, oh,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: we've only got three more minutes, and that's when things start.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: See another goal, that's right.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: I just want one more to eurn. I can't believe
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: I got out. The line's too long. And so when
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: kids can play first and eat second, they're going to
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: come back inside. They're going to be naturally calmer. And
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: the eating period, as you said just before, Kylie functions,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: is like this de escalation period for them. I just
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: like it. So if my kids were in school, If
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: our kids were in school and I heard about this,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: I'd actually jump online and shoot an email through the
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: P and C and say, hey, guys, read this. Definitely
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: dealing with some challenges at school with our kids, wondering
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: whether or not this is something to float and bring
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: up in an executive or leadership meeting as an idea
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: that could be trialed. We are not the only parents,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: you and I to have gone through what we've been
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: through over the last twenty years, with kids not eating lunch,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: being completely depleted and exhausted by the end of the day,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: and while our meager efforts were completely unsuccessful. My sense
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: is that something like this wouldn't be too hard to
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: implement in any school, wouldn't require an enormous restructure, and idea,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: fingers crossed, hopefully, wouldn't add too much burden, if any
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: burden at all, on teachers who are already going to
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: be on playground duty anyway. So maybe it's something for
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: you to bring up with the P and C or
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: the P and F at your local school. If you do,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: we'd love to hear about it. Let us know. I
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: might also add that the school principle at the Entrance
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Public School in the article at ABC dot net dot
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: au did indicate that a lot of schools had been
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: in touch saying howd you do it, what worked, what didn't,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: how can we implement it in our school. It seems
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: like a lot of people are suddenly going, as you've
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: just said earlier, Kylie, calories matter, calvaries matters, so that
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: our children can learn and regulate well. Anyway, we thought
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: we would bring that to you because it just feels
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: like it's a smart idea that we can't live. We
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: didn't think of before, and hopefully it'll spark something in
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: your school community to help your kids to do better.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: The Happy Family's podcast is produced by Justin roll On
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: from Bridge Media, Manhattan provides our additional support. If you
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: would like more info to make your family happier, visit
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: happy families dot com.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: Tre