Often when I see a child in my clinic, they are dealing with health concerns that are directly related to lifestyle (nutrition and stress). As we all know, having a child change their diet can amount to the energy that is needed to move a mountain. The same is true when I assess the impact of stress and emotional burden that is contributing to their health concerns and the process of working to help them change their belief systems. I am writing this post because as I have tried many times both successfully and unsuccessfully to just treat the child. It has become very apparent that the parents are a primary factor in the health of their children.
So, how do we correlate the health of a child to the health of a parent. Well to start with they pretty much have your genetic code. I like to joke that we are stuck with our genes as we did not have the ability to choose our parents. There are of course subtleties to each persons genetics but as research continues to point out, the role of epigenetics is the primary driver of how our genetic code expresses itself. This means that the environment that an individual is living in will dictate how it functions and what types of diseases it will express. This is pretty exciting because if we change the environment then the genetic code will cease to express the adversity. This is where you, the parent comes in.
We are all aware that children are like sponges, they are observing and soaking in all that is around them. What parents do in their lives and the choices they make will have direct influence on their children. This means if parents are stressing, the kids are stressing. If the parents make poor nutrition choices, their children will make poor nutrition choices. It is unfair to have a child who is dealing with a health concern carry the full burden of change that is needed within their lifestyle to begin healing. I have found clinically that if the family embraces the necessary lifestyle changes along with the child, there is increased success in healing the child.