Raising Healthy, Responsible Children Through Intentional Parenting
In this episode, Haylie Pomroy is joined by Kiva Schuler, founder and CEO of the Jai Institute for Parenting and author of The Peaceful Parenting (R)evolution, to explore how intentional parenting starts with taking care of yourself first.
Kiva explains why parents need support just as much as elite athletes do, how modeling healthy habits at home builds trust with children, and the difference between teaching kids responsibility and unintentionally parentifying them.
Together, they discuss how family meals and simple daily rituals build real connection in a disconnected, screen-filled world, and how to navigate unhealthy food culture, from birthday parties to school snack lists, without controlling or restricting a child's relationship with food.
Discover why peaceful parenting is about who you are more than what you do, and how supporting yourself as a parent may be the most powerful thing you can do for your child's health, here on Fast Metabolism Matters.
If your body feels like it's running on empty, overburdened, or just not responding the way it used to, Haylie's latest book, Toxic Overload, tells you exactly what to do. Download your free digital copy today and start understanding what your body is trying to tell you.
Free Download: Get Your Copy of Toxic Overload 👉 https://hayliepomroy.com/pages/toxic-overload?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=kiva_schuler
You don't have to figure this out alone. Inside Haylie's private membership community, you get personalized guidance and support, member discounts on supplements and shakes, and the ability to ask questions directly to podcast guests like Dr. Systrom. Join free for 30 days and take the next step on your health journey.
Join the Fast Metabolism Membership — First 30 Days Free 👉 https://hayliepomroy.com/pages/fast-metabolism-membership?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=kiva_schuler
Kiva Schuler is the Founder and CEO of the Jai Institute for Parenting, an organization that has trained over 1000 parenting coaches globally. She is also the author of the groundbreaking book The Peaceful Parenting (R)evolution: Changing the World by Changing How We Parent, which turns traditional parenting “techniques” on their heads with a parent-centric approach instead of behavior modification.
Her passion for parenting stemmed from her own childhood experiences of neglect and trauma. Like many of her generation, she had a front-row seat to witnessing what she did not want for her own children. The Jai Institute is the fulfillment of a promise that she made to herself when she was 16 years old that when she had children of her own, she would learn to parent them with compassion, consistency, and communication. Allowing others to carry the torch of a transformational movement for parents has created ripples of impact around the world.
Website: https://www.jaiinstituteforparenting.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kivaschuler/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kiva_schuler/
Grab a copy of The Peaceful Parenting (R)evolution: https://www.jaiinstituteforparenting.com/peaceful-parenting-revolution
Haylie Pomroy, Founder and CEO of The Haylie Pomroy Group, is a leading health strategist specializing in metabolism, weight loss, and integrative wellness. With over 25 years of experience, she has worked with top medical institutions and high-profile clients, developing targeted programs and supplements rooted in the "Food is Medicine" philosophy. Inspired by her own autoimmune journey, she combines expertise in nutrition, biochemistry, and patient advocacy to help others reclaim their health. She is a New York Times bestselling author of The Fast Metabolism Diet.
Learn more about Haylie Pomroy's approach to wellness through her website: https://hayliepomroy.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hayliepomroy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hayliepomroy
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@hayliepomroy/videos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayliepomroy/
Edited Transcript:
Kiva Schuler: Children are so smart. They will be the first to notice where we are not in integrity with what we are asking them to do or how we are asking them to behave when we ourselves aren’t.
They’re kind of like, “Hey, wait a second here. This isn’t fair.” And over time, that can really cause quite a rift because our kids won’t trust us.
Haylie Pomroy: You guys, today I have a very special guest, and we’re going to talk about a subject that’s near and dear to my heart and so many of our community members’ hearts, and that’s parenting. Kiva Schuler is the founder and CEO of the Jai Institute. Did I say that right, Kiva?
Kiva Schuler: You did.
Haylie Pomroy: Okay, good. It is the Institute for Parenting.
And she’s also the author of a groundbreaking book, The Peaceful Parenting (R)evolution: Changing the World by Changing How We Parent. I think this is really important, guys, especially when it comes to how we parent around health and healthy habits and taking care of ourselves. Thank you so much for being here, Kiva. I’m really excited to dive into this subject.
Kiva Schuler: Thank you for having me, Haylie.
Haylie Pomroy: Let me ask you first, tell me a little bit about what the Jai Institute is.
Kiva Schuler: We are a parent coach training organization, and I would say the world’s leading parent coach training organization. We support passionate parents, pediatricians, therapists, and educators to really learn a parent-centric approach to supporting parents to become actual adults. And I say that a little tongue-in-cheek, but the reality is that children will best meet the goals and aspirations and worldview and values and decision-making that we want them to have if we embody that ourselves. And so our core belief is that changing behavior starts with adults, versus the way that it was really looked at in the past, which is that kids needed to change their behavior so that our life was easier and better. And we could feel more proud and all of that.
Haylie Pomroy: Well, I think it’s so cool that you’re doing this because, I mean, my kids are a little bit older, and they’re 22 and almost 26 now. And I will tell you, like, one, I believe parenting is not for the faint of heart, or at least if you want to try to be a good parent. But when I was parenting, there really was not a lot of support for parents. And I was lucky I had a great mom. And so there was some modeling that could happen for me, but I didn’t have a dad that was around until I was much older. And so it was hard. It was difficult. And so I love... I was online, like, looking at a lot of the things that you do. And I really loved that. And I think it mirrors, like, a lot of what I always say, which is we’re not meant to do this alone. And parenting, again, can feel really lonely and really judgy. I mean, I used to, before I had kids, see kids with, like, snotty noses. And I’d be like, “Oh, someone needs to clean up that child.” Then I had the kids that I had.
Kiva Schuler: Then you have them, and you’re like...
Haylie Pomroy: Oh my God. I was like, “There’s mud in every orifice. Let’s go, guys.” Totally different, different experience. The biggest thing that I love is that you’re supporting the parent. And so give me some ideas for parents. I want to jump into how a parent can keep a kid on a healthy routine. Now, it’s like, where I want to go is, how do we support the kid? But first I want to take a step back and go, how do we support mom and dad or auntie or grandpa or whoever is doing the parenting? How do we support that person to feel healthy and whole? Give me a couple of steps that you think, pencils and crayons, are where we can support that person.
Kiva Schuler: It’s important to acknowledge that when you are tasked with being responsible for a whole human being’s growth from infancy in and beyond, or to and beyond adulthood, that is a leadership role. To do parenting well means you are accepting responsibility in ways big and small for this person’s health, well-being, sense of self, and confidence. It’s a big responsibility. And one of the ways that I look at the world is that if I am a leader, the way that I take care of myself is essential. Like, I think of myself as an Olympic athlete. Am I an Olympic athlete? No, but I have a big company to run. I am a single mom of two children. And so part of it, again, is accepting that kind of mature, wise responsibility that how I fuel myself, how I sleep, and how I get my needs met has a direct link to my ability to meet this child’s needs in the most successful way possible.
Like, when we don’t parent well, often it’s because we’re exhausted. We’re overwhelmed. We haven’t given ourselves good food, and then we beat ourselves up relentlessly or lose our minds or take the toy away. Whereas if we prepare to meet that huge amount of energy that it takes every day first, then we’re going to have more fuel in our battery to be able to navigate. I mean, you said it yourself, like, parenting is hard, and let’s stop pretending that it’s not. Of course it is.
Haylie Pomroy: I think also about you using the term coaching an athlete. Like, I’ve never had an athlete, and I’ve never had a parent that’s hired coaches on the side. Like, when my son played baseball or my daughter was riding, we had coaches. And a lot of parents had coaches on the side that helped them to develop or excel in the right way.
But I loved when you talked about parents having coaches, because I think oftentimes when parents need help or ask for help, maybe I’m projecting, but there’s, like, a little bit of guilt that I just organically or innately can’t pull all of this off.
Kiva Schuler: I think it’s shifting. I founded Jai in 2011, and there was still very much a cultural belief that if I admit that I need help in my parenting, I’m somehow admitting that I’m not a good person. The idea is that parenting should come naturally, that I should know how to raise a child. Well, that’s kind of crazy. We didn’t know how to drive a car before we went to driver’s ed. And what people are really recognizing now, I think one of the positives of social media and these conversations being more in the open, is that for most of us, what comes naturally is directly linked to the way that we were parented. Now, that doesn’t mean if we got the belt as a child, we’re going to use the belt, but it might mean that we’re hyper, overly, like, too much parenting. Hypervigilant is the word that I was looking for. And so part of our work is to help a parent pause and take stock. What matters? What are the values? What are your goals? What are aspects of yourself that are perhaps unintentionally causing harm to your children? Do you stonewall? Do you yell? Is your love conditional based on their achievements? All these things really do cause relational harm between parent and child. We can learn our way out of them, but that’s going to take a coach. We can’t see our blind spots without somebody holding up a mirror.
Haylie Pomroy: That’s true. That’s valid. I love that. So, in our community, we have a lot of people at different phases of parenting. It’s really cute because we have a large community, but little do they know I’m in there all the time. We have someone that was just going to start the cleanse with us, and she just found out she’s pregnant. We have grandparents that are raising their kids or that spend a lot of time with their kids. We have aunties and uncles and a lot of foster parents in our community too. One of the things that we try to encourage in our community is that their lifestyle is something that they can share with their children too. In the diet space, a lot of times the things that people do are things we would never do to a kid. Like fasting, like this crazy fasting thing. Could you imagine if we sent our kindergartner off to school with no food, a little bit of coffee, no food, until two o’clock, nothing? The body, if that child is developing and all those neurotransmitters... yet we do that to mom or dad or auntie, and I’m just like, you guys, first, stop trying to perform under conditions of torture. Starvation was never meant to be this. This is crazy. Archaeological, I’m going to call it bull, you know what, that people are attesting to. We try to nourish and nourish.
And what I love about your community is you’re infusing the parent. You’re not saying, “Look, this is what you’re doing wrong.” You’re saying, “Look,” it’s acknowledging, “it’s awesome that you want to do this task well. And let’s give you the school, the tools, and the skill set for that.”
Give me, like, again, our community loves one or three bullets. Like, what can I do today? I’m a proactive practitioner. We have a proactive community. What is the best way for parents to keep their kids on a healthy routine when it comes to a busy lifestyle? Give me some things we can start tomorrow.
Kiva Schuler: Well, I mean, I think it really is about what’s happening in the home. The majority of the time... my kids still laugh at me and call me the sugar Nazi. But the food that we have available in this house is healthy food. And it’s always been that way, so that’s number one. Are we practicing what we preach? Are we walking our talk?
Children are so smart, and they will be the first to notice where we are not in integrity with what we are asking them to do or how we are asking them to behave when we ourselves aren’t. They’re kind of like, “Hey, wait a second here.
This isn’t fair.” And over time, that can really cause quite a rift because our kids won’t trust us.
Number one is, if you aspire for your children to eat healthy food, have healthy food in the house, and model those kinds of eating habits.
Haylie Pomroy: Since I have you here, I’m going to ask you a parenting question for myself because I love what you just said. Last night, yesterday, it was actually Mother’s Day, and we were watching movies and chillaxing and chilling out. I was telling my daughter, and she’s 22. She’s older in the child space. But I just said, “I’m just not feeling great. I feel, like, a little tired. I feel exhausted, a little achy.” And she said, “Mom, have you taken your vitamins today?” I traveled, and I said, “It’s so funny.” And I call her Sissy. I said, “So funny, but I actually left my case, and I haven’t dished them out today.” And I didn’t take them last night. And she walked over, and she set them next to me with a bottle of water. And I was like, “Oh my gosh,” taking my handful of items, and I don’t miss my vitamins, but it was just the weirdest week, really, for me. And I thought, I was super stoked, because she didn’t say... she acknowledged that I felt bad, that I wasn’t feeling great. And then she asked if there was something that I hadn’t been taking care of or caring for myself with. And then she provided for me. But knowing that I was going to talk to you today, I had this question. I was like, how do you teach kids responsibility without parentifying them?
I felt parentified a little. It was lovely. It was Mother’s Day. I took it all in.
I was like, “Ah, but the care... they’re taking care of me,” and it was Mother’s Day. I completely received it. But how do you help a kid learn responsibility, like for their health, for their food choices, without parentifying them?
Kiva Schuler: First things first, I think we tend to look at some of these ideas that are bandied about in the gentle parenting space, peaceful parenting, conscious parenting, whatever we want to call it, as black and white. And they are not; there’s nuance, there are gradients, there’s consistency. Parentification, through my lens, becomes harmful when a child, from an early age and consistently over time, is asked to play the role of the parent, to essentially meet the adult’s emotional needs or physical needs. That’s parentification.
What I hear in that story is a 22-year-old young woman who has empathy and intellect, who didn’t judge you about it. It was just like, “Hey, Mom, let me help.” I mean, to me it sounds like you’ve done a great job raising your daughter. Children love to feel useful. They love to... like, this is where it gets a little wobbly if we don’t understand that so much of this lives in nuance, because is asking a child to unload the dishwasher parentification? No, of course not. It’s helping them contribute to the needs of a household, and those practices, especially when started young, but really at any time, develop a very healthy sense of competence, taking responsibility, and being a part of the collective family ethos.
Our job as parents is to raise adults, which means that over time we need to give them more and more adult-like responsibilities and not coddle them or be so afraid that, “Oh my gosh, I’m asking my child to do something for me. That’s bad parenting.” Like, it’s just silly.
Haylie Pomroy: I think the fact that, obviously, I’ve raised my kids, they’re raised right. But the fact that I would lie on the couch and go, “Emma, is that... was that an okay parenting move?” shows, in my opinion, how ingrained it is that you’re going to screw it all up. I mean, the first time you get your hands on those little ones, you just go, “Oh my gosh, don’t screw it up.” And the support matters. I am so fortunate. I have an amazing group of women, friends, for everything from, “I know how to sleep, lie on your side while you’re nursing.” Like, there were people that could kind of filter in things that helped me, or, “You had a really shitty parent move, Haylie.” And they would also kind of call me out on that and help me acknowledge that.
I love what you said, that children love to feel useful. What about having kids help with preparing healthy things, like cooking? Okay. I’d love to hear experiences that you’ve had with your clients. We cook as a family. We also have the kids pick; we would do the queen for a day, king for a day, whatever they wanted, we would make them, type thing. We’d teach them how to be in service to someone else. But then also the responsibility of deciding dinner one day a week. And it was early in our family.
Hi, it’s Haylie Pomroy, your host. I’ve written six New York Times bestselling books on metabolic pathways. And my latest book, Toxic Overload, tells you exactly what to do when your body’s overburdened. If you go to hayliepomroy.com/book, for a limited time, you can download a digital copy of this book completely free. That’s hayliepomroy.com/book. Grab your free copy while supplies last. Now, back to our show.
Kiva Schuler: I mean, there are so many positive outcomes that come from time together in our homes. And one of the ways that has to happen every day, pretty much, in our homes is food preparation. We are living in complicated times where kids are... we can get into talking about screens if you’d like, but we are up against a ginormous challenge as parents, which is, how do we create connection in a world that is really tantalizingly disconnected, where people are looking at a device 80% more than they’re looking at another human being? And so this is where we get to step into leadership as parents and become the antidote to this thing, which we are now... the data is unequivocal.
Ever since smartphones came online, children’s mental health outcomes have decreased significantly. Suicidal ideation... I mean, not to get hysterical about it, but this is a real problem. And the only people who have any hope of providing at least some counterbalance to that, I think, are parents. I say that as a preamble to saying, having a family culture where everyone’s in the kitchen when it’s dinnertime and the phones are down, and the music is on, and we’re cooking, and then someone’s going to set the table, and we’re going to sit down at a kitchen table or a dining room table with no devices, gives us an opportunity to fuel not only our children’s tummies, but also their sense of identity and belonging, creating family rituals. That creates a sense of self. And children, especially getting into the preteen and teenage years, who have that strong sense of, “I know who I am. I know where I came from. I know what’s important to my people,” are far better equipped to handle, “Who liked my Snapchat today?”
Haylie Pomroy: What does a parent do, though, who wasn’t raised that way? Who didn’t have family traditions? How do they start to, I mean, establish those? There are a lot of traditional parenting and women’s wisdom books that were really helpful to me. Traditions in Native American and Irish folklore, just different things that I tried to bring in. I was also fortunate that I was able to expose my kids to things like Waldorf and Montessori and different education philosophies. It was a real hunting down of some of those tools. But what about a parent that doesn’t have those resources? Because that’s the reality for most parents and a lot of young parents too.
Kiva Schuler: It doesn’t have to be big. And what I would say is, first of all, this is why working with a parent coach is so great, because that coach is going to help you identify, “Okay, this is a gap. Like, this is a need that we have in this family for more cohesiveness and connection. How can I create accountability for you, parent, to follow through on that?” And then what I will say is children love their ideas way more than they love ours.
Haylie Pomroy: I like that.
Kiva Schuler: I mean, I used to, when the kids were little, do forced family fun Fridays where we’d go for a hike, or, like, it was like, “We’re having forced family fun, and you can roll your eyes at me the whole way there. And that’s what we’re doing today.” As they got older, just like you said with the cooking, each of them would get to plan a Friday. Like, “What’s on your family fun day this Friday?” “Ooh, I want to go hiking.” “I hate hiking.” “It’s your brother’s happy day.” But I would invite the kids into the conversation. “Hey, guys, I’m feeling like we’re not, like, having, like, that super fun time together like we used to, because we’ve just gotten busy. What ideas do you guys have that we could do once a week or every night at the dinner table? Like, that’s just for our family.” And listen to what they have to say, because then you have buy-in.
For those of you who are leaders, managers, CEOs, people are far more likely to follow through when it’s their idea, and it’s no different with kids.
Haylie Pomroy: I like that. And I like empowering the kids. We have a whole series on empowering the patient. It’s like how to advocate for yourself. And it starts at a very, very early age. We... which one is it? We have two cookbooks that have tons of pictures in them. And one of the things that I always say in our nutrition programs is it’s something that you would be so proud to feed your child. It’s something that you would be so proud to bring to a family potluck. And we always encourage people to, like, go through the pages of the book and see what looks good to the kid. See what looks good and make that. It’s teaching them healthy food advocacy and all of that stuff. I’m going to jump to mom or dad or parents, the person that’s parenting. In the nutrition space, I want my humans and my dogs and my horses and our cattle eating within 30 minutes of waking. Because everything you do is nutrient-dependent. Every thought you have, every hormone you secrete, whether it’s feel-good joy, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed butterflies, or stress, anxiety, depression, they’re all nutrient-dependent. We try to infuse the body with nutrients upon rising.
That’s always my trick.
I’m a big “don’t do coffee, don’t fast” before breaking the fast. All these little things about how you’re going to rob yourself before you become the person that you want to project for the day. Give me some tips on a daily basis, like, what can a parent do first thing in the morning that can help them feel more whole so that they can do a better job during the day?
Kiva Schuler: I mean, for most parents, that time before the kids wake up, it’s like the precious quiet. And I think that while it does take a certain amount of personal discipline and commitment, having a morning routine really is, to my mind, something that when I’m not doing it, everybody knows. Let’s just put it that way, because my temper is shorter. I don’t feel grounded. That might look like getting up 30 minutes earlier. For me, I follow... what’s the book? Oh, The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. I actually just got to meet him this week. It was super cool, but he has this very simple morning routine that I picked up probably six or seven years ago. And I still do it to this day. I try to get outside, get some fresh air. I get my feet on grass. I do live in New England, so sometimes that’s a little painful.
Haylie Pomroy: Get outside, get some fresh air, feet on the grass.
Kiva Schuler: Get some fresh air. It’s like, I’m alive. There’s sun, I hope, maybe. Feet on the grass. I just do a short meditation. And again, that’s just a way for me to kind of anchor myself into my day. Like, I am a human inside of a body, and I’m going to listen to it today. I journal. I read a minimum of 30 pages of something that is going to inspire me. I have a big community of people that I’m responsible for. And so I do feel that kind of... it’s the same with parenting. Like, we are leaders. Parents, by definition, are leaders. A little bit of reading. And then I eat my morning food with coffee, I will admit. My one cup of the day, though, Haylie.
Haylie Pomroy: I hope it’s organic. Put a scoop of dandelion root in it to support those poor adrenals that I’m crying for right now. But I’m so happy that you’re eating with it. Yes. Check, check, check. You’re doing a good job, mama. You’re doing a good job. I love it.
Kiva Schuler: Oh, I think there’s one last piece, which is really important: to review your day before it starts. Parenting is so, like... especially if you’re working, you have appointments. “Oh, the kid’s got a dentist appointment at 2 o’clock.” It’s not fun to be reacting to dings on your phone from your calendar. If you kind of sit down for five minutes: “Okay, this is what my day looks like.
Yes. I’ve got Pilates at 4 o’clock. I’m committed. I’m going, which means I need to be done with work at 3:30.” And this way, you just kind of then are more prepared and able to meet the inevitable course corrections that life will throw our way.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely. I love those. And I wrote those all down, and in our blog post with this, I will lay them out. And I like a checklist. Sometimes, you just have that populate on your phone or put it in your calendar. Because the one thing that I remember when the kids were little was, it was always so hard for me to stay organized. I mean, really hard. I was a single parent for the majority of the time, and it was just really difficult.
Tell me about your book, The Peaceful Parenting (R)evolution. When did you write that book? When did it come out?
Hi, it’s Haylie Pomroy, your host. When I was going through my health crisis, the worst part of it was feeling lost and alone, and I decided that I didn’t want anybody else to feel as desperate as I did. That’s why we set up a private membership group where you can come in, ask questions, get support, and be connected with people that can actually help you on your health journey. If you go to hayliepomroy.com/member, you can join me for 30 days for free. I’ll see you there. We can jump in, and we can start to organize the path for your wellness. That’s hayliepomroy.com/member. I will see you there. Now, back to our show.
Kiva Schuler: Oh my goodness. Now I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast yesterday. It’s been out for about a year and a half. I want to say October 2023. I wrote it... there is definitely a method to our madness at the Jai Institute for Parenting. There are so many... I love parenting Instagram. I love parenting TikTok, but there’s a simplification of the message, which I think has been a little problematic, because peaceful parenting is not as simple as “use a quiet inside voice” or “stop using timeouts.” Becoming a peaceful parent has far more to do with who you are than what you do. And so I wanted to write a book that told the truth. Like, I think parenting peacefully is far harder than parenting traditionally. Like, it’s much easier to scream at my children until they clean their room or do their homework than to get curious about their needs and to work with them in a cooperative way to set them up for success, to think that, like, if I’m having a reaction to something, it’s my daughter’s fault and she should just... It takes a lot of humility and vulnerability and commitment to look at our behavior and look at how we are out of integrity or alignment with our children. That is brave work.
And so the book... what I love about it is that I worked with seven of our parent coaches from different backgrounds, races, and ethnicities to hear their stories and to create a book that hopefully illuminates what it means to be a peaceful parent here at Jai, because it’s not three easy steps, and it’s definitely not permissive.
Haylie Pomroy: I always feel like podcasting in general is a selfish self-expression, in my opinion, because I get excited to ask questions about parenting, or ask about parenting on behalf of our community. I poll my community. We have a question for you. There are many tough times to parent, or at least that’s my belief system. Maybe it was easy for everybody else, or to parent as best as you darn can. One of the times it’s really hard is kind of combating all of this unhealthy crap that’s out there. Like the birthday parties and Halloween at school. And even when my kids were in school, we had a teacher that sent this big long list, and it said, “We only allow healthy snacks. You can only bring Diet 7 Up,” or whatever it was, diet soda, Skinny Cow popsicles, or whatever those Skinny Cow ice cream pops were on this list. And, like, the fat-free Lay’s potato chips. I was like...
Kiva Schuler: So basically, we can bring in chemicals.
Haylie Pomroy: I know. But as a parent, so I also had really severe food allergies as a kid. Like, I never had sugar cereal. It was funny, because we were just talking the other day. I’ve never tried Lucky Charms or Cocoa Puffs in my life. You know what I mean? I don’t know. My gut microbiome wouldn’t survive it. I just was born that way. I had eczema and problems, but it’s hard as a parent to be that parent that says... and I did. I spoke with that teacher, and I brought her a bunch of articles and a bunch of stuff. And I just said, like, “On the contrary, I don’t want you feeding my kid that.” But I also didn’t want to come across as this nutritionist or this expert or just that mom. A lot of my girlfriends are teachers, and they’re like, “Oh, Haylie, don’t be that mom.”
How can you navigate that? How can my community navigate those times where there’s so much detriment, and then you get the kid back and they’re wired and cranky and maybe have rashes? Like, my daughter would get big, big rashes, very red rashes. And my son would be sick to his stomach. How can we parent through that? Help us, coach us.
Kiva Schuler: This is obviously dependent on different factors. Are we talking about a food allergy, where there’s going to be drastic physical repercussions to a child having food they shouldn’t have? Are we talking about an ideal, kind of like an “in our family”? Like, we love the words “in our family.” Like, “In our family, we eat healthy food.” Here’s the thing: I’m going to go back to the idea of nuance and leadership.
Number one, you’re the leader of your family. Only you get to decide what food is or is not appropriate for your children. And the level to which you are firm in that boundary is really a very personal choice. That being said, I have a couple of words of caution. And they’re deeply personal. I grew up a dancer.
I had eating... I used to call myself a failed anorexic. I wasn’t good. I wasn’t willful enough to be as thin as I wanted. And I still have a very... I have my relationship with food. I’m very committed and passionate about nutrition and raised my children in that culture. As my daughter approached puberty and started to put on some body fat, I became... it was like, I thought she was going to die. Like, my whole fight-or-flight system was triggered, and I became more and more controlling.
And we worked with therapists. Like, it was a road we went down together. It took probably a couple of years, all told, for us to, like, really work through it, and for me to get over my stuff, and her... it was very complicated, and I don’t need to go into details. And one of the things that the eating disorder therapist said to me was, “Were you highly restrictive around treats when she was young?” And I said, “Yes, yes, I was.” And so what we have to become aware of is, if we’re highly restrictive, not because there’s a peanut allergy or celiac disease, but because we have this hyperfixation on everything being healthy, good food, it creates, as children start to individuate and want more autonomy in their... in other people’s houses, almost a hyperfixation on the things that they weren’t allowed to have.
And so I think now I might have been more flexible and created conversation around it. Like, when my son goes to a birthday party and eats ice cream, he gets a stomachache every time. And so we’ll have conversations like, “Was it worth it? How did you feel? Would you do it again?” Because at the end of the day, they’re going to choose what to put in their bodies. And so our best hope is education, curiosity, and being careful to not make food a scary thing or a restrictive thing, and then they pendulum into eating disorders or overeating because we had stuff with food.
Haylie Pomroy: It’s interesting that you say that story. My daughter was in high school rodeo, and we were all walking up to the arena, and there was a mom and her 17-year-old daughter; both of them had their cell phones in their jean pockets. And I heard this ding-a-ling-a-ling, this chiming going off. And they both whipped out their phones, and they were hitting their phones. And I said, “What’s going on?” And they said, “Oh, we both just got tokens.” And they got tokens for fasting, for not eating. And I was like, “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.” Talk about... yes. And I’m looking at this beautiful young 17-year-old and this gorgeous young 44-year-old mom. And I’m going, “Our community is praising these women for not eating.” It’s just crazy. And one of the things that I did with my kids was I would say, “You’ve got to fuel your body. You’ve got to fuel bone growth and hair growth. And think about how careful we are with what we feed our dog and how careful we are with what we feed the horses. And we make sure they get their vitamins. We always check that they have fresh water. And I’m going to make sure that we take care of all the four-legged and two-legged people and animals around us,” just with all this love and everything. And I would do a lot of exchange. Like, if you’re going to do... and curiosity, like you said, like, “Gosh, that hurt your tummy. What could we eat instead? What could we do instead?” But also exchange, like, “Don’t come up and ask me if you can have a slice of pizza until you tell me what you’ve done that’s good for yourself. Tell me, like, really brag.” And so when they were little, they would say, “So far, I’ve had a carrot and a cucumber and some raspberries, so is that okay if I have a popsicle?” I said, “Wow, what a great body, nourished to be able to handle that.”
Kiva Schuler: Balance. I mean, it’s how I want my relationship with food to be. I want to eat really healthy food most of the time. And sometimes I want to get the hot fudge sundae.
Haylie Pomroy: As long as it’s real food. I mean, that’s my whole thing. My whole thing is like, look, if you’re going to take a swig of paint... we would never, as a parent or as a teacher or as a school system, if we took the chemicals out of the food and put them in a jar, would we ever serve them in the lunch line? But because they’re sprinkled within our food, we’re allowed to serve them. That’s one thing where I just say, go, there is no bad food. It’s just when food is called food when it’s not food.
Kiva Schuler: I mean, have them read... my kids used to read labels. This is, again, like, stepping into the right relationship with parenting doesn’t mean being their drill sergeant. It doesn’t mean being their disciplinarian or the person who’s controlling every decision that they make. It does mean that we are their educator.
Haylie Pomroy: I love that.
Kiva Schuler: And their guide. And so when you’re passionate about whole food, teach it. “Let’s read these labels. Ooh, look, that ingredient has 9,000 letters. Let’s look up on the internet together what that is.” Now we’re empowering children, versus the old way of, like, “Because I said so. You can’t eat this because I said so.” Well, guess what they’re going to do as soon as they’re out of your eyesight.
Haylie Pomroy: Well, the other thing too is, if anything, with all of this shift in technology, we can all acknowledge the capacity for our children to learn different things outside of memorizing for a standardized test. And so in empowering them, again, I’m always... I feel like everything, in every foundation, it’s all nutrient-dependent. I’m always driving that education home because it’s so empowering when they have their periods, when they have pregnancy, when they have bone density issues later in life, when they start to have low testosterone as a man. I get the clients that come in that are 40, 50, 60, 70 years old that have no knowledge of autonomy over their body and their health, and of empowering their health.
Kiva, I just want to make sure that my community knows how to get a hold of you. What’s the best way, and where would they go to find out more about you?
Kiva Schuler: Well, the book, The Peaceful Parenting (R)evolution, is available on Amazon. You can find it there. There is tons of information on our website, jaiinstituteforparenting.com. And if you’re looking for just yummy, compassionate tips that don’t boil parenting down into three easy steps, our Instagram channel, Jai Institute, is awesome.
Haylie Pomroy: That’s great. I want to thank you so much for being on. It was a really cool topic to talk about with our community, because I think when you do things with intention, it really helps escalate or magnify your capacity for success in that. And we see that. I love that you brought that athlete analogy. We see that in sports. We see that in business and in mental health. We’re starting to see that. I’m so glad the conversations are happening, and definitely in supporting the parents.
Thank you so much for being on. Please say you’ll do this again. I know after this podcast, our community is going to be like, “Wait, ask this, ask this, ask this.” I love having you. Please say you’ll come back.
Kiva Schuler: A hundred percent. I would love to.
Haylie Pomroy: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. And I do have moments where I think to myself, if I could do it again, I would probably parent differently if I had a coach. And I feel fortunate that I had the resources that I had, of people to give me ideas and support, and I still definitely fell short with parenting my own kids. I wish I had you at the time. I’m glad I have you now, and I’m glad our community has you. So look out for our questions, and we will see you again soon. Thank you so much.
Kiva Schuler: Bye, everybody.
In this episode, Haylie Pomroy is joined by Kiva Schuler, founder and CEO of the Jai Institute for Parenting and author of The Peaceful Parenting (R)evolution, to explore how intentional parenting starts with taking care of yourself first.
Kiva explains why parents need support just as much as elite athletes do, how modeling healthy habits at home builds trust with children, and the difference between teaching kids responsibility and unintentionally parentifying them.
Together, they discuss how family meals and simple daily rituals build real connection in a disconnected, screen-filled world, and how to navigate unhealthy food culture, from birthday parties to school snack lists, without controlling or restricting a child's relationship with food.
Discover why peaceful parenting is about who you are more than what you do, and how supporting yourself as a parent may be the most powerful thing you can do for your child's health, here on Fast Metabolism Matters.
If your body feels like it's running on empty, overburdened, or just not responding the way it used to, Haylie's latest book, Toxic Overload, tells you exactly what to do. Download your free digital copy today and start understanding what your body is trying to tell you.
Free Download: Get Your Copy of Toxic Overload 👉 https://hayliepomroy.com/pages/toxic-overload?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=kiva_schuler
You don't have to figure this out alone. Inside Haylie's private membership community, you get personalized guidance and support, member discounts on supplements and shakes, and the ability to ask questions directly to podcast guests like Dr. Systrom. Join free for 30 days and take the next step on your health journey.
Join the Fast Metabolism Membership — First 30 Days Free 👉 https://hayliepomroy.com/pages/fast-metabolism-membership?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=kiva_schuler
Kiva Schuler is the Founder and CEO of the Jai Institute for Parenting, an organization that has trained over 1000 parenting coaches globally. She is also the author of the groundbreaking book The Peaceful Parenting (R)evolution: Changing the World by Changing How We Parent, which turns traditional parenting “techniques” on their heads with a parent-centric approach instead of behavior modification.
Her passion for parenting stemmed from her own childhood experiences of neglect and trauma. Like many of her generation, she had a front-row seat to witnessing what she did not want for her own children. The Jai Institute is the fulfillment of a promise that she made to herself when she was 16 years old that when she had children of her own, she would learn to parent them with compassion, consistency, and communication. Allowing others to carry the torch of a transformational movement for parents has created ripples of impact around the world.
Website: https://www.jaiinstituteforparenting.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kivaschuler/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kiva_schuler/
Grab a copy of The Peaceful Parenting (R)evolution: https://www.jaiinstituteforparenting.com/peaceful-parenting-revolution
Haylie Pomroy, Founder and CEO of The Haylie Pomroy Group, is a leading health strategist specializing in metabolism, weight loss, and integrative wellness. With over 25 years of experience, she has worked with top medical institutions and high-profile clients, developing targeted programs and supplements rooted in the "Food is Medicine" philosophy. Inspired by her own autoimmune journey, she combines expertise in nutrition, biochemistry, and patient advocacy to help others reclaim their health. She is a New York Times bestselling author of The Fast Metabolism Diet.
Learn more about Haylie Pomroy's approach to wellness through her website: https://hayliepomroy.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hayliepomroy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hayliepomroy
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@hayliepomroy/videos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayliepomroy/
Edited Transcript:
Kiva Schuler: Children are so smart. They will be the first to notice where we are not in integrity with what we are asking them to do or how we are asking them to behave when we ourselves aren’t.
They’re kind of like, “Hey, wait a second here. This isn’t fair.” And over time, that can really cause quite a rift because our kids won’t trust us.
Haylie Pomroy: You guys, today I have a very special guest, and we’re going to talk about a subject that’s near and dear to my heart and so many of our community members’ hearts, and that’s parenting. Kiva Schuler is the founder and CEO of the Jai Institute. Did I say that right, Kiva?
Kiva Schuler: You did.
Haylie Pomroy: Okay, good. It is the Institute for Parenting.
And she’s also the author of a groundbreaking book, The Peaceful Parenting (R)evolution: Changing the World by Changing How We Parent. I think this is really important, guys, especially when it comes to how we parent around health and healthy habits and taking care of ourselves. Thank you so much for being here, Kiva. I’m really excited to dive into this subject.
Kiva Schuler: Thank you for having me, Haylie.
Haylie Pomroy: Let me ask you first, tell me a little bit about what the Jai Institute is.
Kiva Schuler: We are a parent coach training organization, and I would say the world’s leading parent coach training organization. We support passionate parents, pediatricians, therapists, and educators to really learn a parent-centric approach to supporting parents to become actual adults. And I say that a little tongue-in-cheek, but the reality is that children will best meet the goals and aspirations and worldview and values and decision-making that we want them to have if we embody that ourselves. And so our core belief is that changing behavior starts with adults, versus the way that it was really looked at in the past, which is that kids needed to change their behavior so that our life was easier and better. And we could feel more proud and all of that.
Haylie Pomroy: Well, I think it’s so cool that you’re doing this because, I mean, my kids are a little bit older, and they’re 22 and almost 26 now. And I will tell you, like, one, I believe parenting is not for the faint of heart, or at least if you want to try to be a good parent. But when I was parenting, there really was not a lot of support for parents. And I was lucky I had a great mom. And so there was some modeling that could happen for me, but I didn’t have a dad that was around until I was much older. And so it was hard. It was difficult. And so I love... I was online, like, looking at a lot of the things that you do. And I really loved that. And I think it mirrors, like, a lot of what I always say, which is we’re not meant to do this alone. And parenting, again, can feel really lonely and really judgy. I mean, I used to, before I had kids, see kids with, like, snotty noses. And I’d be like, “Oh, someone needs to clean up that child.” Then I had the kids that I had.
Kiva Schuler: Then you have them, and you’re like...
Haylie Pomroy: Oh my God. I was like, “There’s mud in every orifice. Let’s go, guys.” Totally different, different experience. The biggest thing that I love is that you’re supporting the parent. And so give me some ideas for parents. I want to jump into how a parent can keep a kid on a healthy routine. Now, it’s like, where I want to go is, how do we support the kid? But first I want to take a step back and go, how do we support mom and dad or auntie or grandpa or whoever is doing the parenting? How do we support that person to feel healthy and whole? Give me a couple of steps that you think, pencils and crayons, are where we can support that person.
Kiva Schuler: It’s important to acknowledge that when you are tasked with being responsible for a whole human being’s growth from infancy in and beyond, or to and beyond adulthood, that is a leadership role. To do parenting well means you are accepting responsibility in ways big and small for this person’s health, well-being, sense of self, and confidence. It’s a big responsibility. And one of the ways that I look at the world is that if I am a leader, the way that I take care of myself is essential. Like, I think of myself as an Olympic athlete. Am I an Olympic athlete? No, but I have a big company to run. I am a single mom of two children. And so part of it, again, is accepting that kind of mature, wise responsibility that how I fuel myself, how I sleep, and how I get my needs met has a direct link to my ability to meet this child’s needs in the most successful way possible.
Like, when we don’t parent well, often it’s because we’re exhausted. We’re overwhelmed. We haven’t given ourselves good food, and then we beat ourselves up relentlessly or lose our minds or take the toy away. Whereas if we prepare to meet that huge amount of energy that it takes every day first, then we’re going to have more fuel in our battery to be able to navigate. I mean, you said it yourself, like, parenting is hard, and let’s stop pretending that it’s not. Of course it is.
Haylie Pomroy: I think also about you using the term coaching an athlete. Like, I’ve never had an athlete, and I’ve never had a parent that’s hired coaches on the side. Like, when my son played baseball or my daughter was riding, we had coaches. And a lot of parents had coaches on the side that helped them to develop or excel in the right way.
But I loved when you talked about parents having coaches, because I think oftentimes when parents need help or ask for help, maybe I’m projecting, but there’s, like, a little bit of guilt that I just organically or innately can’t pull all of this off.
Kiva Schuler: I think it’s shifting. I founded Jai in 2011, and there was still very much a cultural belief that if I admit that I need help in my parenting, I’m somehow admitting that I’m not a good person. The idea is that parenting should come naturally, that I should know how to raise a child. Well, that’s kind of crazy. We didn’t know how to drive a car before we went to driver’s ed. And what people are really recognizing now, I think one of the positives of social media and these conversations being more in the open, is that for most of us, what comes naturally is directly linked to the way that we were parented. Now, that doesn’t mean if we got the belt as a child, we’re going to use the belt, but it might mean that we’re hyper, overly, like, too much parenting. Hypervigilant is the word that I was looking for. And so part of our work is to help a parent pause and take stock. What matters? What are the values? What are your goals? What are aspects of yourself that are perhaps unintentionally causing harm to your children? Do you stonewall? Do you yell? Is your love conditional based on their achievements? All these things really do cause relational harm between parent and child. We can learn our way out of them, but that’s going to take a coach. We can’t see our blind spots without somebody holding up a mirror.
Haylie Pomroy: That’s true. That’s valid. I love that. So, in our community, we have a lot of people at different phases of parenting. It’s really cute because we have a large community, but little do they know I’m in there all the time. We have someone that was just going to start the cleanse with us, and she just found out she’s pregnant. We have grandparents that are raising their kids or that spend a lot of time with their kids. We have aunties and uncles and a lot of foster parents in our community too. One of the things that we try to encourage in our community is that their lifestyle is something that they can share with their children too. In the diet space, a lot of times the things that people do are things we would never do to a kid. Like fasting, like this crazy fasting thing. Could you imagine if we sent our kindergartner off to school with no food, a little bit of coffee, no food, until two o’clock, nothing? The body, if that child is developing and all those neurotransmitters... yet we do that to mom or dad or auntie, and I’m just like, you guys, first, stop trying to perform under conditions of torture. Starvation was never meant to be this. This is crazy. Archaeological, I’m going to call it bull, you know what, that people are attesting to. We try to nourish and nourish.
And what I love about your community is you’re infusing the parent. You’re not saying, “Look, this is what you’re doing wrong.” You’re saying, “Look,” it’s acknowledging, “it’s awesome that you want to do this task well. And let’s give you the school, the tools, and the skill set for that.”
Give me, like, again, our community loves one or three bullets. Like, what can I do today? I’m a proactive practitioner. We have a proactive community. What is the best way for parents to keep their kids on a healthy routine when it comes to a busy lifestyle? Give me some things we can start tomorrow.
Kiva Schuler: Well, I mean, I think it really is about what’s happening in the home. The majority of the time... my kids still laugh at me and call me the sugar Nazi. But the food that we have available in this house is healthy food. And it’s always been that way, so that’s number one. Are we practicing what we preach? Are we walking our talk?
Children are so smart, and they will be the first to notice where we are not in integrity with what we are asking them to do or how we are asking them to behave when we ourselves aren’t. They’re kind of like, “Hey, wait a second here.
This isn’t fair.” And over time, that can really cause quite a rift because our kids won’t trust us.
Number one is, if you aspire for your children to eat healthy food, have healthy food in the house, and model those kinds of eating habits.
Haylie Pomroy: Since I have you here, I’m going to ask you a parenting question for myself because I love what you just said. Last night, yesterday, it was actually Mother’s Day, and we were watching movies and chillaxing and chilling out. I was telling my daughter, and she’s 22. She’s older in the child space. But I just said, “I’m just not feeling great. I feel, like, a little tired. I feel exhausted, a little achy.” And she said, “Mom, have you taken your vitamins today?” I traveled, and I said, “It’s so funny.” And I call her Sissy. I said, “So funny, but I actually left my case, and I haven’t dished them out today.” And I didn’t take them last night. And she walked over, and she set them next to me with a bottle of water. And I was like, “Oh my gosh,” taking my handful of items, and I don’t miss my vitamins, but it was just the weirdest week, really, for me. And I thought, I was super stoked, because she didn’t say... she acknowledged that I felt bad, that I wasn’t feeling great. And then she asked if there was something that I hadn’t been taking care of or caring for myself with. And then she provided for me. But knowing that I was going to talk to you today, I had this question. I was like, how do you teach kids responsibility without parentifying them?
I felt parentified a little. It was lovely. It was Mother’s Day. I took it all in.
I was like, “Ah, but the care... they’re taking care of me,” and it was Mother’s Day. I completely received it. But how do you help a kid learn responsibility, like for their health, for their food choices, without parentifying them?
Kiva Schuler: First things first, I think we tend to look at some of these ideas that are bandied about in the gentle parenting space, peaceful parenting, conscious parenting, whatever we want to call it, as black and white. And they are not; there’s nuance, there are gradients, there’s consistency. Parentification, through my lens, becomes harmful when a child, from an early age and consistently over time, is asked to play the role of the parent, to essentially meet the adult’s emotional needs or physical needs. That’s parentification.
What I hear in that story is a 22-year-old young woman who has empathy and intellect, who didn’t judge you about it. It was just like, “Hey, Mom, let me help.” I mean, to me it sounds like you’ve done a great job raising your daughter. Children love to feel useful. They love to... like, this is where it gets a little wobbly if we don’t understand that so much of this lives in nuance, because is asking a child to unload the dishwasher parentification? No, of course not. It’s helping them contribute to the needs of a household, and those practices, especially when started young, but really at any time, develop a very healthy sense of competence, taking responsibility, and being a part of the collective family ethos.
Our job as parents is to raise adults, which means that over time we need to give them more and more adult-like responsibilities and not coddle them or be so afraid that, “Oh my gosh, I’m asking my child to do something for me. That’s bad parenting.” Like, it’s just silly.
Haylie Pomroy: I think the fact that, obviously, I’ve raised my kids, they’re raised right. But the fact that I would lie on the couch and go, “Emma, is that... was that an okay parenting move?” shows, in my opinion, how ingrained it is that you’re going to screw it all up. I mean, the first time you get your hands on those little ones, you just go, “Oh my gosh, don’t screw it up.” And the support matters. I am so fortunate. I have an amazing group of women, friends, for everything from, “I know how to sleep, lie on your side while you’re nursing.” Like, there were people that could kind of filter in things that helped me, or, “You had a really shitty parent move, Haylie.” And they would also kind of call me out on that and help me acknowledge that.
I love what you said, that children love to feel useful. What about having kids help with preparing healthy things, like cooking? Okay. I’d love to hear experiences that you’ve had with your clients. We cook as a family. We also have the kids pick; we would do the queen for a day, king for a day, whatever they wanted, we would make them, type thing. We’d teach them how to be in service to someone else. But then also the responsibility of deciding dinner one day a week. And it was early in our family.
Hi, it’s Haylie Pomroy, your host. I’ve written six New York Times bestselling books on metabolic pathways. And my latest book, Toxic Overload, tells you exactly what to do when your body’s overburdened. If you go to hayliepomroy.com/book, for a limited time, you can download a digital copy of this book completely free. That’s hayliepomroy.com/book. Grab your free copy while supplies last. Now, back to our show.
Kiva Schuler: I mean, there are so many positive outcomes that come from time together in our homes. And one of the ways that has to happen every day, pretty much, in our homes is food preparation. We are living in complicated times where kids are... we can get into talking about screens if you’d like, but we are up against a ginormous challenge as parents, which is, how do we create connection in a world that is really tantalizingly disconnected, where people are looking at a device 80% more than they’re looking at another human being? And so this is where we get to step into leadership as parents and become the antidote to this thing, which we are now... the data is unequivocal.
Ever since smartphones came online, children’s mental health outcomes have decreased significantly. Suicidal ideation... I mean, not to get hysterical about it, but this is a real problem. And the only people who have any hope of providing at least some counterbalance to that, I think, are parents. I say that as a preamble to saying, having a family culture where everyone’s in the kitchen when it’s dinnertime and the phones are down, and the music is on, and we’re cooking, and then someone’s going to set the table, and we’re going to sit down at a kitchen table or a dining room table with no devices, gives us an opportunity to fuel not only our children’s tummies, but also their sense of identity and belonging, creating family rituals. That creates a sense of self. And children, especially getting into the preteen and teenage years, who have that strong sense of, “I know who I am. I know where I came from. I know what’s important to my people,” are far better equipped to handle, “Who liked my Snapchat today?”
Haylie Pomroy: What does a parent do, though, who wasn’t raised that way? Who didn’t have family traditions? How do they start to, I mean, establish those? There are a lot of traditional parenting and women’s wisdom books that were really helpful to me. Traditions in Native American and Irish folklore, just different things that I tried to bring in. I was also fortunate that I was able to expose my kids to things like Waldorf and Montessori and different education philosophies. It was a real hunting down of some of those tools. But what about a parent that doesn’t have those resources? Because that’s the reality for most parents and a lot of young parents too.
Kiva Schuler: It doesn’t have to be big. And what I would say is, first of all, this is why working with a parent coach is so great, because that coach is going to help you identify, “Okay, this is a gap. Like, this is a need that we have in this family for more cohesiveness and connection. How can I create accountability for you, parent, to follow through on that?” And then what I will say is children love their ideas way more than they love ours.
Haylie Pomroy: I like that.
Kiva Schuler: I mean, I used to, when the kids were little, do forced family fun Fridays where we’d go for a hike, or, like, it was like, “We’re having forced family fun, and you can roll your eyes at me the whole way there. And that’s what we’re doing today.” As they got older, just like you said with the cooking, each of them would get to plan a Friday. Like, “What’s on your family fun day this Friday?” “Ooh, I want to go hiking.” “I hate hiking.” “It’s your brother’s happy day.” But I would invite the kids into the conversation. “Hey, guys, I’m feeling like we’re not, like, having, like, that super fun time together like we used to, because we’ve just gotten busy. What ideas do you guys have that we could do once a week or every night at the dinner table? Like, that’s just for our family.” And listen to what they have to say, because then you have buy-in.
For those of you who are leaders, managers, CEOs, people are far more likely to follow through when it’s their idea, and it’s no different with kids.
Haylie Pomroy: I like that. And I like empowering the kids. We have a whole series on empowering the patient. It’s like how to advocate for yourself. And it starts at a very, very early age. We... which one is it? We have two cookbooks that have tons of pictures in them. And one of the things that I always say in our nutrition programs is it’s something that you would be so proud to feed your child. It’s something that you would be so proud to bring to a family potluck. And we always encourage people to, like, go through the pages of the book and see what looks good to the kid. See what looks good and make that. It’s teaching them healthy food advocacy and all of that stuff. I’m going to jump to mom or dad or parents, the person that’s parenting. In the nutrition space, I want my humans and my dogs and my horses and our cattle eating within 30 minutes of waking. Because everything you do is nutrient-dependent. Every thought you have, every hormone you secrete, whether it’s feel-good joy, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed butterflies, or stress, anxiety, depression, they’re all nutrient-dependent. We try to infuse the body with nutrients upon rising.
That’s always my trick.
I’m a big “don’t do coffee, don’t fast” before breaking the fast. All these little things about how you’re going to rob yourself before you become the person that you want to project for the day. Give me some tips on a daily basis, like, what can a parent do first thing in the morning that can help them feel more whole so that they can do a better job during the day?
Kiva Schuler: I mean, for most parents, that time before the kids wake up, it’s like the precious quiet. And I think that while it does take a certain amount of personal discipline and commitment, having a morning routine really is, to my mind, something that when I’m not doing it, everybody knows. Let’s just put it that way, because my temper is shorter. I don’t feel grounded. That might look like getting up 30 minutes earlier. For me, I follow... what’s the book? Oh, The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. I actually just got to meet him this week. It was super cool, but he has this very simple morning routine that I picked up probably six or seven years ago. And I still do it to this day. I try to get outside, get some fresh air. I get my feet on grass. I do live in New England, so sometimes that’s a little painful.
Haylie Pomroy: Get outside, get some fresh air, feet on the grass.
Kiva Schuler: Get some fresh air. It’s like, I’m alive. There’s sun, I hope, maybe. Feet on the grass. I just do a short meditation. And again, that’s just a way for me to kind of anchor myself into my day. Like, I am a human inside of a body, and I’m going to listen to it today. I journal. I read a minimum of 30 pages of something that is going to inspire me. I have a big community of people that I’m responsible for. And so I do feel that kind of... it’s the same with parenting. Like, we are leaders. Parents, by definition, are leaders. A little bit of reading. And then I eat my morning food with coffee, I will admit. My one cup of the day, though, Haylie.
Haylie Pomroy: I hope it’s organic. Put a scoop of dandelion root in it to support those poor adrenals that I’m crying for right now. But I’m so happy that you’re eating with it. Yes. Check, check, check. You’re doing a good job, mama. You’re doing a good job. I love it.
Kiva Schuler: Oh, I think there’s one last piece, which is really important: to review your day before it starts. Parenting is so, like... especially if you’re working, you have appointments. “Oh, the kid’s got a dentist appointment at 2 o’clock.” It’s not fun to be reacting to dings on your phone from your calendar. If you kind of sit down for five minutes: “Okay, this is what my day looks like.
Yes. I’ve got Pilates at 4 o’clock. I’m committed. I’m going, which means I need to be done with work at 3:30.” And this way, you just kind of then are more prepared and able to meet the inevitable course corrections that life will throw our way.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely. I love those. And I wrote those all down, and in our blog post with this, I will lay them out. And I like a checklist. Sometimes, you just have that populate on your phone or put it in your calendar. Because the one thing that I remember when the kids were little was, it was always so hard for me to stay organized. I mean, really hard. I was a single parent for the majority of the time, and it was just really difficult.
Tell me about your book, The Peaceful Parenting (R)evolution. When did you write that book? When did it come out?
Hi, it’s Haylie Pomroy, your host. When I was going through my health crisis, the worst part of it was feeling lost and alone, and I decided that I didn’t want anybody else to feel as desperate as I did. That’s why we set up a private membership group where you can come in, ask questions, get support, and be connected with people that can actually help you on your health journey. If you go to hayliepomroy.com/member, you can join me for 30 days for free. I’ll see you there. We can jump in, and we can start to organize the path for your wellness. That’s hayliepomroy.com/member. I will see you there. Now, back to our show.
Kiva Schuler: Oh my goodness. Now I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast yesterday. It’s been out for about a year and a half. I want to say October 2023. I wrote it... there is definitely a method to our madness at the Jai Institute for Parenting. There are so many... I love parenting Instagram. I love parenting TikTok, but there’s a simplification of the message, which I think has been a little problematic, because peaceful parenting is not as simple as “use a quiet inside voice” or “stop using timeouts.” Becoming a peaceful parent has far more to do with who you are than what you do. And so I wanted to write a book that told the truth. Like, I think parenting peacefully is far harder than parenting traditionally. Like, it’s much easier to scream at my children until they clean their room or do their homework than to get curious about their needs and to work with them in a cooperative way to set them up for success, to think that, like, if I’m having a reaction to something, it’s my daughter’s fault and she should just... It takes a lot of humility and vulnerability and commitment to look at our behavior and look at how we are out of integrity or alignment with our children. That is brave work.
And so the book... what I love about it is that I worked with seven of our parent coaches from different backgrounds, races, and ethnicities to hear their stories and to create a book that hopefully illuminates what it means to be a peaceful parent here at Jai, because it’s not three easy steps, and it’s definitely not permissive.
Haylie Pomroy: I always feel like podcasting in general is a selfish self-expression, in my opinion, because I get excited to ask questions about parenting, or ask about parenting on behalf of our community. I poll my community. We have a question for you. There are many tough times to parent, or at least that’s my belief system. Maybe it was easy for everybody else, or to parent as best as you darn can. One of the times it’s really hard is kind of combating all of this unhealthy crap that’s out there. Like the birthday parties and Halloween at school. And even when my kids were in school, we had a teacher that sent this big long list, and it said, “We only allow healthy snacks. You can only bring Diet 7 Up,” or whatever it was, diet soda, Skinny Cow popsicles, or whatever those Skinny Cow ice cream pops were on this list. And, like, the fat-free Lay’s potato chips. I was like...
Kiva Schuler: So basically, we can bring in chemicals.
Haylie Pomroy: I know. But as a parent, so I also had really severe food allergies as a kid. Like, I never had sugar cereal. It was funny, because we were just talking the other day. I’ve never tried Lucky Charms or Cocoa Puffs in my life. You know what I mean? I don’t know. My gut microbiome wouldn’t survive it. I just was born that way. I had eczema and problems, but it’s hard as a parent to be that parent that says... and I did. I spoke with that teacher, and I brought her a bunch of articles and a bunch of stuff. And I just said, like, “On the contrary, I don’t want you feeding my kid that.” But I also didn’t want to come across as this nutritionist or this expert or just that mom. A lot of my girlfriends are teachers, and they’re like, “Oh, Haylie, don’t be that mom.”
How can you navigate that? How can my community navigate those times where there’s so much detriment, and then you get the kid back and they’re wired and cranky and maybe have rashes? Like, my daughter would get big, big rashes, very red rashes. And my son would be sick to his stomach. How can we parent through that? Help us, coach us.
Kiva Schuler: This is obviously dependent on different factors. Are we talking about a food allergy, where there’s going to be drastic physical repercussions to a child having food they shouldn’t have? Are we talking about an ideal, kind of like an “in our family”? Like, we love the words “in our family.” Like, “In our family, we eat healthy food.” Here’s the thing: I’m going to go back to the idea of nuance and leadership.
Number one, you’re the leader of your family. Only you get to decide what food is or is not appropriate for your children. And the level to which you are firm in that boundary is really a very personal choice. That being said, I have a couple of words of caution. And they’re deeply personal. I grew up a dancer.
I had eating... I used to call myself a failed anorexic. I wasn’t good. I wasn’t willful enough to be as thin as I wanted. And I still have a very... I have my relationship with food. I’m very committed and passionate about nutrition and raised my children in that culture. As my daughter approached puberty and started to put on some body fat, I became... it was like, I thought she was going to die. Like, my whole fight-or-flight system was triggered, and I became more and more controlling.
And we worked with therapists. Like, it was a road we went down together. It took probably a couple of years, all told, for us to, like, really work through it, and for me to get over my stuff, and her... it was very complicated, and I don’t need to go into details. And one of the things that the eating disorder therapist said to me was, “Were you highly restrictive around treats when she was young?” And I said, “Yes, yes, I was.” And so what we have to become aware of is, if we’re highly restrictive, not because there’s a peanut allergy or celiac disease, but because we have this hyperfixation on everything being healthy, good food, it creates, as children start to individuate and want more autonomy in their... in other people’s houses, almost a hyperfixation on the things that they weren’t allowed to have.
And so I think now I might have been more flexible and created conversation around it. Like, when my son goes to a birthday party and eats ice cream, he gets a stomachache every time. And so we’ll have conversations like, “Was it worth it? How did you feel? Would you do it again?” Because at the end of the day, they’re going to choose what to put in their bodies. And so our best hope is education, curiosity, and being careful to not make food a scary thing or a restrictive thing, and then they pendulum into eating disorders or overeating because we had stuff with food.
Haylie Pomroy: It’s interesting that you say that story. My daughter was in high school rodeo, and we were all walking up to the arena, and there was a mom and her 17-year-old daughter; both of them had their cell phones in their jean pockets. And I heard this ding-a-ling-a-ling, this chiming going off. And they both whipped out their phones, and they were hitting their phones. And I said, “What’s going on?” And they said, “Oh, we both just got tokens.” And they got tokens for fasting, for not eating. And I was like, “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.” Talk about... yes. And I’m looking at this beautiful young 17-year-old and this gorgeous young 44-year-old mom. And I’m going, “Our community is praising these women for not eating.” It’s just crazy. And one of the things that I did with my kids was I would say, “You’ve got to fuel your body. You’ve got to fuel bone growth and hair growth. And think about how careful we are with what we feed our dog and how careful we are with what we feed the horses. And we make sure they get their vitamins. We always check that they have fresh water. And I’m going to make sure that we take care of all the four-legged and two-legged people and animals around us,” just with all this love and everything. And I would do a lot of exchange. Like, if you’re going to do... and curiosity, like you said, like, “Gosh, that hurt your tummy. What could we eat instead? What could we do instead?” But also exchange, like, “Don’t come up and ask me if you can have a slice of pizza until you tell me what you’ve done that’s good for yourself. Tell me, like, really brag.” And so when they were little, they would say, “So far, I’ve had a carrot and a cucumber and some raspberries, so is that okay if I have a popsicle?” I said, “Wow, what a great body, nourished to be able to handle that.”
Kiva Schuler: Balance. I mean, it’s how I want my relationship with food to be. I want to eat really healthy food most of the time. And sometimes I want to get the hot fudge sundae.
Haylie Pomroy: As long as it’s real food. I mean, that’s my whole thing. My whole thing is like, look, if you’re going to take a swig of paint... we would never, as a parent or as a teacher or as a school system, if we took the chemicals out of the food and put them in a jar, would we ever serve them in the lunch line? But because they’re sprinkled within our food, we’re allowed to serve them. That’s one thing where I just say, go, there is no bad food. It’s just when food is called food when it’s not food.
Kiva Schuler: I mean, have them read... my kids used to read labels. This is, again, like, stepping into the right relationship with parenting doesn’t mean being their drill sergeant. It doesn’t mean being their disciplinarian or the person who’s controlling every decision that they make. It does mean that we are their educator.
Haylie Pomroy: I love that.
Kiva Schuler: And their guide. And so when you’re passionate about whole food, teach it. “Let’s read these labels. Ooh, look, that ingredient has 9,000 letters. Let’s look up on the internet together what that is.” Now we’re empowering children, versus the old way of, like, “Because I said so. You can’t eat this because I said so.” Well, guess what they’re going to do as soon as they’re out of your eyesight.
Haylie Pomroy: Well, the other thing too is, if anything, with all of this shift in technology, we can all acknowledge the capacity for our children to learn different things outside of memorizing for a standardized test. And so in empowering them, again, I’m always... I feel like everything, in every foundation, it’s all nutrient-dependent. I’m always driving that education home because it’s so empowering when they have their periods, when they have pregnancy, when they have bone density issues later in life, when they start to have low testosterone as a man. I get the clients that come in that are 40, 50, 60, 70 years old that have no knowledge of autonomy over their body and their health, and of empowering their health.
Kiva, I just want to make sure that my community knows how to get a hold of you. What’s the best way, and where would they go to find out more about you?
Kiva Schuler: Well, the book, The Peaceful Parenting (R)evolution, is available on Amazon. You can find it there. There is tons of information on our website, jaiinstituteforparenting.com. And if you’re looking for just yummy, compassionate tips that don’t boil parenting down into three easy steps, our Instagram channel, Jai Institute, is awesome.
Haylie Pomroy: That’s great. I want to thank you so much for being on. It was a really cool topic to talk about with our community, because I think when you do things with intention, it really helps escalate or magnify your capacity for success in that. And we see that. I love that you brought that athlete analogy. We see that in sports. We see that in business and in mental health. We’re starting to see that. I’m so glad the conversations are happening, and definitely in supporting the parents.
Thank you so much for being on. Please say you’ll do this again. I know after this podcast, our community is going to be like, “Wait, ask this, ask this, ask this.” I love having you. Please say you’ll come back.
Kiva Schuler: A hundred percent. I would love to.
Haylie Pomroy: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. And I do have moments where I think to myself, if I could do it again, I would probably parent differently if I had a coach. And I feel fortunate that I had the resources that I had, of people to give me ideas and support, and I still definitely fell short with parenting my own kids. I wish I had you at the time. I’m glad I have you now, and I’m glad our community has you. So look out for our questions, and we will see you again soon. Thank you so much.
Kiva Schuler: Bye, everybody.
