Yes, your family's relationships are based on emotions
and healthy relationships need a foundation of solid social-emotional skills that we've never been taught.
Let's build them.
🚫 This is NOT another parenting book, meal plan, or behavior chart.
This is not about fixing your kid.
This is not about disciplining your way to peace.
And it is definitely not about teaching them to diet ('cause you know that doesn't work).
This is about changing the emotional climate of your home—
By starting with you.
What works for your family?
When you're living in fear of overweight, obesity, and now eating disorders, the long-term consequences, the right-now shame and guilt, it's overwhelming to figure out how to help your own family, isn't it?
You can find all the advice in the world about what to feed your kids... and take in everything your doctor suggests
(if they consider your child overweight enough to recommend anything),
but how do you figure out what will work for YOUR family?
It's frustrating and confusing and leaves you feeling like you're fighting them all the time.
Hi, I'm Wendy
The pediatrician who is fueled by coffee, connection and laughter. I'm also an emotional health rebel.
I created Feel – Connect – GROW because parents like you are exhausted by the noise:
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The pressure to get health “right”
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The guilt when your kid is anxious, shuts down, or eats all the snacks before dinner
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The silence around emotions that leads to shame, shutdown, and side-eye at the table
You’ve tried “healthy habits” and they didn’t stick.
You’ve tried to be calmer—and then you yelled anyway.
It’s not your fault.
You weren’t taught how to feel emotions, let alone teach your kids to.
That ends here.
If only it were as easy...
As easy as following the doctor’s directions or all the advice you find online to... wait for it...
Eat Less, Move More. (Sigh. Not this again...)
But it’s not the “bad” food, it’s not the lack of moving, it’s not that there’s another test for the doctor to run.
In fact, the strict eat less/move more creates:
- stress
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diets
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food rules
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sneaking foods
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arguing about “mandatory-fun” exercise
- shame
It focuses on what is wrong with you, your child, your and family.
And shame doesn't make anyone healthier.
Here’s what you need to hear:
Your child's weight does not mean there is something wrong with them, you or your family. It is not your fault.
It's not their fault either.
And there’s no ONE elusive answer, diet, or motivation that you’ve overlooked.
(PS - You don’t have to be at a certain weight to make changes either!)
What if your family didn’t need fixing—just feeling?
When emotions are understood—not feared, shushed, or avoided—they become the foundation for:
✅ Healthy eating habits (no more food bribery or food guilt)
✅ Honest conversations (no more emotional shutdown)
✅ Deep connection (the kind where your kids actually want to hang out with you)
✅ Confidence to lead your family without second-guessing everything
This isn’t magic. It’s social-emotional skill-building.
And it starts with the person reading this page. (Hey there.)
Imagine when you will have...
- Consistency in your approach (ooh, whining & fussing will not be your kryptonite!)
- Flexibility to handle exceptions
- No more food fights
- Confidence that you're on the right path
- Lighten the heavy burden of guilt
- A healthier relationship with food: for you and your family
- More connection with your children
- Focus on relationships more than the number on the scale
- Emotions that don't drive you to snack
- Peaceful sleep knowing you're doing exactly what you need to do
- A PLAN
But Doing This As A Parent Isn’t Easy!
Sure, you could go and Google weight loss for kids, find Pinterest recipes, get all sorts of input on Facebook about how your kid doesn’t “look overweight,” isn’t “that overweight” and have all sorts of doubts…
...but as someone who has worked with families for 20 years, I understand that the wealth of information isn’t helpful. It’s overwhelming.
More input from different voices is confusing. They are simply repeating the same old story of guilt - shame - sell you a "quick fix."
It makes you want to throw in the towel because they aren't living your life.
What You Really Need...
is to understand that all your prior struggles have nothing to do with your ability to make real, lasting change. And a plan to make it happen:
You CAN become the role model for your family’s health.
You CAN create healthier habits
You CAN lighten the burden weight-focus and health-management has had in your life
You CAN strengthen your relationships and bring your family closer together
You CAN create a path and then invite your family to join
Introducing: Family in Focus
The Comprehensive Program for Raising a Healthy, Whole Family
This is the only program that empowers parents to become the role model for health at home by creating changes from the inside out.
You'll learn how to understand your own body image, eating habits and relationship with food.
You will learn about the power that emotions have in the habits you practice and the ones you want to create.
You will decrease the frustration and worry to have a calmer approach to health.
You will develop a deeper understanding of why your kids' motivation varies so much.
You will learn to understand what works for your family and why other things just don't work.
You will feel better about your role in leading the family to health.
You will learn tools to help you develop the confidence to say, "I'm leading the way."
Because you, my friend, will know where you're going and have a plan for success.
Now is the time to shift focus from finding what is broken and instead build a healthier family.
You're invited to start now
Over the past 20 years, a big part of the fun of being a pediatrician is watching families grow: new family members, new skills, patients becoming taller than their doctor! I’ve also watched kids grow on the scale and the growth curves. At first, the concern was that we needed to define and identify obesity so that we could treat it. And then, it became clear: the standard medical prevention and treatment weren’t making a difference for a large number of the families.
At the beginning of every visit, I would plot the child’s growth on a chart, and look at the curve. Parents would hold their breath…. “What’s the news?” I could hear it in their anxious voices, “What kind of parent am I being for my child?”
Emily's mom stands out in my mind: at 6 years old, Emily's growth curves showed she had always been over the 85% for body mass index (and growing consistently). Her mom leaned in and asked me why I wasn’t having the “BMI chat” with her. I asked, “Why? What are your concerns?” We had already covered that she was eating a variety of whole foods at meals with her family, and lots of activity over the course of the day. There were no “red flags.” Mom came to tears. “You’re the first doctor who hasn’t told me I was doing it all wrong because she’s still “Overweight”.”
The child was thriving. The mother was struggling because she thought she was doing it all wrong.
Mom was carrying the weight of all the things she thought she was doing wrong.
Let's get rid of those burdens, the drama, about all the stuff we've been doing wrong. Let's start making it right for our families.
Here’s what’s inside
Feel – Connect – GROW
A 6-month VIP experience with the right combination of structure to make progress—and enough flexibility for real life.
💬 1:1 Private Sessions
You’ll get SIX personalized coaching calls (yep, for YOU, or any adult in the household), to work through your real parenting, eating, and emotional health challenges in real time.
🌱 Bite-Sized Learning
Forget the 37-tab PDFs and dusty parenting books. You’ll get short, powerful tools that focus on:
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Understanding emotions (yours and theirs)
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Eating habits without drama
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Communication that actually lands
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Building sustainable change at home
- Full access to the Family in Focus resource library to meet your needs in real time
👨👩👧👦 Family-Wide Access
The tools aren’t just for you. They’re made to be lived and shared—with your kids, partner, or anyone in your crew.
🎉 Regular Pop-in Live Group Calls (Optional but glorious)
Community, celebration, Q&A, and a big ol' exhale every other week. Not another parenting panel. This is support that sees you.
It's time to get startedThe Key to Helping Your Family Be Healthy is to ...
Start with You
Parenting is hard... we are stressed! And now we are responsible for our kids' health? The first step is to regulate our stress response so we can bring presence back to parenting.
Focus on Practice, Not Numbers
I know... society (and our healthcare team) focuses on metrics for outcomes. When we shift our focus to understanding the emotions driving those outcomes, behaviors and habits change.
Do It Together
You will get tools to help all family members create healthy, sustainable relationships.
Have a PLAN
You will receive support to design a customized plan - made by you, for you, for your family. You'll learn how to create a plan with love, and then consistently follow it without fear of meltdowns.
Build Stronger Relationships
Learn what works to build lifelong, stronger relationships with food, body and - most importantly - each other.
We don't do before & after photos here
((ew, toxic diet culture strikes again))
We Feel the Transformation
Before:
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Food fights
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Meltdowns (yours and theirs)
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Googling "how to get my kid to stop stress eating" at 2am
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Fear that you're repeating your own childhood patterns
After:
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Confident parenting grounded in emotional clarity
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Meals that are about nourishment, not negotiation
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Emotions that don’t scare you—or your kids
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A new family rhythm that feels like yours
Introducing:
Family in Focus®
Feel - Connect - GROW
🎯 Who this is for:
✅ Parents ready to do their own work—for their kids and themselves
✅ Families navigating eating challenges, weight concerns, or communication breakdowns
✅ Adults who want to raise emotionally aware kids without passing on shame, diet culture, or perfectionism
✅ Anyone tired of trying to “fix” their family from the outside in
❌ Who this is not for:
❌ Parents looking for quick behavior hacks
❌ Families committed to diet culture or punitive parenting
❌ People who aren’t open to exploring their own emotional habits (with humor and honesty)
Anonymous, Mom of 2
“I am working through a resurgence of disordered eating with [my daughter], that showed up originally last year and returned after [her father] and I separated.
I am approaching the conversations from the perspective I learned from you in the beginning stages of your journey with this program, and they have made ALL of the difference in the world to help me recognize behaviors and communicate with (my daughter) about the beliefs leading to them.
It is powerful, powerful work you are doing. Thank you!”
Lindsey, Mom of 3
"THANK YOU! For so long now I have felt like I had to control and fix everything and if it wasn't working I must be failing... what a heavy feeling. I entered this course to help essentially one child who struggles with weight but I've learned the weight struggle was mine. Her weight doesn't hold her back.... it was me. I was thinking by fixing this I could protect her from being made fun of or help her to look a certain way.... these were never her insecurities.... they were mine. It doesn't seem so overwhelming and hard now.
In fact, in such a short time I've gained so much from your course beyond food and weight. It makes me a better person, Mom, and wife all around."
