Doctor Mom: What If It’s Not About Your Child’s Weight? with Dr. Wendy Schofer

Episode 93: Doctor Mom: What If It’s Not About Your Child’s Weight? with Dr. Wendy Schofer

Topics Covered

• From Pediatrician to Emotional Health Advocate: Dr. Schofer’s Journey
• The Question That Changed Everything: “What Is Actually Working?”
• Growth Mindset Isn’t Pretty: Perfectionism, Burnout, and Reality
• For the Perfectionist Physician Mom: Why Slowing Down Is Essential
• Emotions as Patterns: The Missing Link in Parenting and Burnout
• Start With Yourself: Emotional Awareness Before Fixing Your Kids
• Guessing vs. Labeling: How to Talk to Kids About Big Feelings
• It’s Never Just About Food: The Emotional Roots of Body & Eating Concerns
• Advocacy for Moms: Identifying Needs, Speaking Up, and Getting Support

What if the real issue was never your child’s weight… or their eating… or even their number on the growth chart?

If you’ve ever found yourself Googling “I’m worried about my child’s eating and weight,” this is for you.

Today I’m joined by Dr. Wendy Schofer, a board-certified pediatrician who practiced for years inside a system built on prescribing answers. But after watching families struggle with food fights, body image worries, and guilt, she noticed something. The advice sounded right, yet it wasn’t helping at home. And she felt that tension in her own life too.

What changed everything was a different question: What is actually working?

This episode is about shifting the focus from fixing your child to understanding the emotions underneath the worry. Because sometimes the most important person in the room isn’t the child on the exam table. It’s the parent sitting beside them.

Find the full transcript and bonus resources for physician moms at inspiredmommds.com/93.

From Pediatrician to Emotional Health Advocate: Dr. Schofer’s Journey

Dr. Cindy: Hi, everyone. I would like to introduce my special guest today. Her name is Dr. Wendy Schofer. She’s a board-certified pediatrician, lifestyle physician, and emotional health educator whose work focuses on helping families build healthier relationships with food, body, and each other.

She’s the founder of Family in Focus. It’s a weight-inclusive, trauma-informed space where emotional health sits at the Center of Family Wellbeing, and she’s a podcaster too. And she hosts the Family in Focus Podcast. Wendy brings a thoughtful and compassionate lens to conversations around children’s eating, body image, and family health, and she helps parents move away from shame and toward connection and curiosity.

Dr. Schofer: Thank you. You are now in charge of writing all of my bios. That was beautiful, so I really appreciate that.

Dr. Cindy: Oh, thank you. I appreciate that too. You’re like, “Hey, that’s me. That sounds familiar.”

Dr. Schofer: Oh, but that sounds really beautiful. I’m like, those were not my words. I really love what you did there.

Dr. Cindy: Oh, but they are. Yes, it’s all what you’ve put out there in the universe. You have your LinkedIn and your website and those go into so much more depth than I could cover in my short bio.

Dr. Schofer: Well, and I think that that’s part of the beauty of hearing it reflected back to you. You’re like, oh, I’ve been putting out all these different things and so I want to thank you. This is the real human side of it that you’re like, oh, that, that sounds kind of cool. Hold on a minute. You really encapsulate all the, and then thank you.

Of course it’s what I’ve been putting out, so, yeah.

Dr. Cindy: That’s where I got it. Yes. So I would love to talk about you and your story a little bit first. So you’re a pediatrician, you’ve been working with families for years. How has your career evolved, and how has it changed? I imagine when you started with training, and about the years that I did, you were trained in a certain way, and now I think you might be very different.

Tell us about your story.

Dr. Schofer: How things have evolved and I mean, honestly things have evolved. I have evolved. It’s just really something that I could have never dreamt that I would be here way back when. So I’ve been in practice now for 21 years.

The real heart of the story is I was trained within military medicine, and so I had the layers of, this is the way that doctoring looks. This is what it looks like to practice medicine. And then this is what it looks like to be a military officer, to be a mom, to be a wife. Like all these different levels of this is what it looks like.

And so, no big surprise, I hit a wall because I was really feeling that my practice wasn’t up to the standards that I thought that it was supposed to look like and my practice meant, as a physician, but also as a mom, as a wife, as a military officer, all these different ways that I was like, oh, this is so not what I’m hearing it’s supposed to look like.

And a lot of that also was reflected in the practice that I had. I was building such wonderful relationships with families and hearing about the concerns that they had about growth, about eating habits, about mental health.

And I was like, oh, I got the answer. You know, here’s the prescription. And then, families would come back and they’re like, so that prescription that you wrote, we are failing at all of this. It’s not working for us. We’re having food fights. I don’t like to work out, my kids don’t like to work out.

We’re fighting over this. We’re finding candy wrappers underneath the bed. And I was like, me too. I’m having the exact same struggles. And so it was one more layer initially of thinking, well shoot, man, I’m failing this too. None of this is panning out. And that was really through taking some time, like again, hitting a wall.

It wasn’t like an epiphany of, oh, there’s a different way, but I was like, hold on a minute. This isn’t working. This is totally not working for parents, for kids, for me. And so I started really looking at, well, what is working? Because I could find so many different ways that it wasn’t working all along the way with the prescriptions, with the approach, my doctoring, all of it.

And so I went back to the basics. Well, what is working here? And that is a completely different question. That flipped all of it. I started actually looking at for myself what is the area that really works within the office practice. By the way, it’s totally relationships. Totally relationships.

What is it that was working for families and really starting to focus there and it completely changed my practice. Completely. But I gotta tell you, it was very uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. because all I first saw was, my goodness, none of this is working.

The Question That Changed Everything: “What Is Actually Working?”

Dr. Cindy: Wow. You flipped the script and said, what is working? And that’s what changed. That sounds like a pivot for you. A slow pivot.

Dr. Schofer: Yeah. It was huge. And I appreciate you saying the word slow.

Because there was not like, you know his epiphany on a Tuesday, that all of a sudden it did not happen that way.

It was. Yeah, I mean, it was really a slow roll of a lot of questioning, a lot of feeling kind of lost, but I gotta tell you, that’s so powerful. My kids ask me all the time, they’re always looking for like, what’s the path? Where am I going?

A lot of it’s around career.

It’s a lot about making sure they’ve got the next right step. And they’re like, well, it was easy for you, mom. You’re a doctor. You knew exactly, you know, what you were doing, where you were going.

I’m like, the only straight line is looking back. Like, none of it was a straight line. I got here through all the different curves and turns and doubling back again.

And let me tell you about it, kid, like none of it is a straight line. You get to take all the turns and curves in the road. That is where you get to where you’re supposed to be.

Growth Mindset Isn’t Pretty: Perfectionism, Burnout, and Reality

Dr. Cindy: Right. And you really strike me as someone who embraces the growth mindset because you’re looking forward to, well, maybe I’m a mirror again.

You raise your eyebrows at me, but you know what is working, and it’s this curvy path, and you’re, you’re following what’s going to grow? Tell me if I’m close.

Dr. Schofer: I want to say yes to all of that. And yet I’m going to, the eyebrows going up was because I know that embracing the growth mindset isn’t pretty.

There’s a lot of fixed mindset along the way, and I see that in myself all the time. I mean, it’s very easy to say this is what you should do. And yet the real part of it is that you keep on bumping up against the pain, the uncertainty, the comparisons, the perfection, oh God, the perfectionism.

All the time. And so, yes, I recognize, I think a lot of it, uh, the metaphor I’m coming up with, so how often we look at describing like balance, work-life balance. How do you have all this balance so you’re not in burnout and so that you’re actually progressing and all these different things?

I think the same thing with mindset. It’s not actually about balance. It’s not about finding this perfect kind of mindset. I think it’s because we brush up against the fence or the guardrails, like when I find myself, kind of like getting really icky, like, oh, hold on a minute. This is not the mindset that is helping me right now.

When I’m touching up against the fence, if you will, of perfectionism or that discomfort. It’s not that I’m in some kind of, like, beautiful growth mindset all the time. Oh, bring on the pain, bring it on, I’m going to grow here. Oh my gosh. And I think it’s the same thing about learning about burnout.

For me, I really look at it as stress and emotions. And it’s recognizing when I’m touching on that, when I’m like, oh, hold on, this is overwhelm. This is fear. This is, let’s call it out. This is perfectionism.

When I’m getting over that, I’m like, okay, hold on a minute.

Let’s come back in. It’s not a balance where you’re just like, do, do, do. Yeah. It’s really the teeter totter. It’s the whole thing. Oh, I’m gonna use all sorts of visual metaphors here.

For the Perfectionist Physician Mom: Why Slowing Down Is Essential

Dr. Cindy: I love visual metaphors. So, let’s talk about the mom who leans towards perfectionism so easily and forces up against that fence.

And it’s me too. It’s like so many people listening right now, and let’s bring that mom and put her into a family and let’s talk about how she can interact with her kids, because parents are models for their kids, right? What advice do you have for moms like this?

Dr. Schofer: Oh, first of all, I just want to say, I see you. I feel it. I am right there with you.

And, I think that so much of it is about just slowing down, like really slowing down. There’s so much that we’re like, okay, let’s keep on going. Let’s kind of muscle through this, and it’s gotta look a certain way, and yet when we slow down, we can kind of see, okay, hold on.

Is this working for me? Is this working for my family?

What is it that’s really uncomfortable for us right now? I realize a lot of it, again, I think that so much of the perfectionism, I’ve just kind of like, integrated, like that was a big part of my success. I was really rewarded for what I thought of as perfectionist.

It has to look a certain way. And then I hit a wall where I was like, hold on a minute. This is not working for me. What is it? And it was the perfectionism, kind of like the ugly side of it. The other part that really made me question it was again, when I saw my kids emulating it, like striving for perfectionism.

And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on a minute. Seeing how it wasn’t helping them,

It gave me a moment to be able to stand back and say, oh, what’s going on here? Oh my gosh, hold on. They are just like me. And so it, again, it’s not like a given Tuesday where all of a sudden it changes, but it’s kind of like taking this time to be able to say, hold on a minute. Is this really working for me?

Is this working for my children? I think slowing down is one of the most magical, unexpected things because we’re in such a pace where we think that we need to keep on going, and everything in our lives, in our families, and our careers is about you gotta fit it all in.

That’s also perfectionism.

Thinking that it’s going to look a certain way, that the pace of life has to go a certain way. Slowing down is, first of all, questioning it. Like, is this really supporting what I really want? Is this what I really want to feel? And so, yeah, that’s where the emotions come in, where I’ve noticed that when there’s pressure that’s building, to really start getting curious about what’s really going on here. If I’m rushing through it all, I don’t have an opportunity to really experience that, to really question it, and to redirect it if I so choose.

Dr. Cindy: So what I’m hearing is that slowing down means noticing the impact of your behavior on your family and your kids and questioning that impact. And when you slow down, then you start to notice emotions. Can we talk a little bit about emotions and that role?

Dr. Schofer: I love that. because this is what I love.

Emotions as Patterns: The Missing Link in Parenting and Burnout

Dr. Schofer: It’s all about emotions. Yeah. So I appreciate the way that you just framed that with slowing down and opening up for emotions, because I really think that this is the most important part, that slowing down, I think of it as a pattern disruptor.

I look at everything as patterns. Sometimes we’ll describe it as habits. Sometimes we’ll describe it as diagnoses.

It’s all patterns. Slowing down is the most important thing that we do because it disrupts the automatic pattern, whether it’s emotions, whether it’s the pace of our day-to-day, whether it’s our relationships. When we slow down, we disrupt the automatic so that we can start actually seeing what is happening right now in front of us. So curiosity, awareness. Absolutely, definitely applies to emotions all along the way.

Dr. Cindy: How do you interpret emotions in your kids? How do you figure out what their behaviors mean? I mean, you can have a five-year-old with a certain behavior and a 10-year-old and a 15. They’re all different ages. I appreciate that, and the behaviors are different for each age group, but how do you figure out what their emotions are by their behaviors?

Dr. Schofer: Take a darn good guess.

Dr. Cindy: Yeah. Okay.

Dr. Schofer: Honest to goodness. Yeah, ’cause there isn’t like this flag that’s going up that’s saying, this is “overwhelm.” Yeah. This is “anxiety,” this is “frustration or boredom,” or whatever it is.

Start With Yourself: Emotional Awareness Before Fixing Your Kids

Dr. Schofer: It’s two-sided. One, it’s starting to really get the literacy about your own emotions.

So, really taking that time to start. Getting a good guess about hold on moment. What are the emotions that I have? Because so much of it is about, well, I want to figure out what’s going on for my kids. But we don’t actually understand what’s going on for ourselves.

And so much of this is about starting with us.

Like, what are the emotions that I am having right now? What is it that I am trying to fix when I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with my kid? What am I actually feeling? Because in a lot of that, we’re trying to fix what’s going on with our kids.

Guilty. Absolutely. We want everything to be better for them, but a lot of it is that we are also trying to fix how we’re feeling.

And so slowing down, like, what is it that I’m, oh, frustration. I can’t handle any more frustration. Oh. Yes. Guilty. I want to get their behavior to change because of the way that I’m feeling.

And so starting with us, really getting that language around our own emotions, and again, I was not kidding when I said guessing.what our kids are feeling.

And you can guess inside, and kind of like, oh, I wonder if he’s feeling overwhelmed. I wonder if it’s anxiety, and we can kind of play with that a little bit. But the other thing is even just saying it out loud, Hey, it looks like you’re feeling kind of anxious right now, and the most amazing thing will happen.

They’ll either let you know, uh, no. I am just pissed off, you know, whatever it’s like, they’ll come out, and your children’s language may be different than mine, or they’ll, you’ll see them kind of settle because you nailed it.

You totally guessed so. They will let you know. Yeah. Spot on.

I think that that has been such an amazing step. So first, getting to know the language of your own emotions and then being able to guess and connect with your children’s emotions. It’s okay. Don’t be afraid to guess. They will let you know.

Dr. Cindy: Well, I think that’s holding space for them because you are in the moment, listening and watching them. Even if your guess is wrong, they know that you’re holding space for their emotions and you’re curious. I think that shows curiosity on a parent’s part, and so I would imagine we should not be afraid of what we’re guessing.

Guessing vs. Labeling: How to Talk to Kids About Big Feelings

Dr. Schofer: There’s a difference between guessing what they can feel and, I’m going to say, labeling or accusing. Okay. So, guessing, you know what, it seems like you’re really overwhelmed right now is really different from saying you should stop being so overwhelmed all the time. Or, you know what? Your anger isn’t helping anything right now, and so just noticing it seems like you’re really angry is very different. It’s not accusatory. It is something where it’s observing.

Or, I see that you are angry. Just, you know what you’re noticing. So I’m offering that because I think that there are a lot of times, oh my gosh, if I have one more person who ever tells me to calm down, oh my God. How many discussions I’ve had with my husband. Don’t ever tell me to calm down.

That does not help me. He’s like, but, but you’re all like jazzed up.

You’re so excitable. You’re so whatever. I’m like, not helping. Not helping whatsoever. That’s poking the bear.

And yet let me introduce you, my dear husband, to some language that does help. Do not ever tell a woman to calm down. Okay. That will have the opposite effect.

The same thing applies to our kids.

Dr. Cindy: Thank you for explaining that so clearly. I would love to hear how you talk to parents about food issues with their kids. I’m thinking of a friend in my mind, just one example, where her kid, a little boy, was too thin based on the growth chart.

And people would comment, are you feeding that boy? What’s he eating? What? And she just, oh my gosh. She spent so much time with doctors and tests and all these things because everybody was worried that he wasn’t eating enough. And I know we often hear about the opposite. Your kids are eating too much or eating too much junk food.

It’s like on both ends of that spectrum. These parents, I feel for them, I feel for my friend, they are struggling with what society’s telling them their kid should look like. They’re struggling with maybe this feeling of failure or guilt that their kid doesn’t look the way they should, according to the doctor’s growth chart.

How do you work with families around this type of issue? Whether they’re on either end of the spectrum or maybe they’re right in the middle, and they’re technically “normal”, and they’re still struggling with these body image issues. And the parents may still be feeling a sense of failure, and the kids are wrapped up in this whole ball of emotions and tangled messages from both family, friends, society, and social media.

I just see it in my head, this jumble of mixed messages. How do you handle that?

Dr. Schofer: This is the realest question because it is all jumbled up.

And I’m going to answer it very, very directly. I go right to the emotions that the parent is experiencing.

I go right there and I call it out. I’m like, you know what? This sounds like there’s a lot of reasons for you to worry. Tell me about it. This sounds overwhelming.

Tell me about it. Again, I’m taking a guess. I’m totally picking out the best guess that I have based on what I’ve just heard, and then I open it up for them because, oh man.

When you identify an emotion, it gives a space. It gives permission to be like, yes. I am worried. Yes, my God, I am so anxious about this. Yes. I’m afraid because everybody keeps on telling me all these different things to worry about.

And I’m not sure if it’s something that I’m making up or what’s going on.

Am I inflicting harm on my child? So what I actually do is I name an emotion. Take a guess, and then we just start opening up more and more of the conversation. Because at the heart of it, it is never about the food. It is never about the child. It is never about their weight. Yes, there’s so much more into it, but if we just focus on food weight, diagnosis or not, we’re not understanding, again, all of the patterns.

All of the patterns and the most important ones are about patterns of emotions.

It’s Never Just About Food: The Emotional Roots of Body & Eating Concerns

Dr. Schofer: They are always operating in the background. And this is the thing that we have missed. We’ve really honed in. We’re like, okay, well, does this child meet a threshold for this diagnosis? Whether it’s, and I am just going to use generalities here.

Too slim, too big, too fast, too slow. We’re always looking for where we fall in and fit this categorization, and we’re missing the emotions that are operating in the background. Because, quite honestly, we just didn’t; we haven’t had the practice with it. We haven’t had the language to really be able to explore that.

But doggone it, we know the language of diagnosis, fear. Watch out for it. You know what, this is what you should do next. Telling everybody and parents are just “ping-ponging” all over the place with all the different guidance. That’s not helping parents really be able to help their kids.

I want to just exhale here of just that calm, that grounded kind of feeling like you got your feet underneath you. Like, I know what to do next. Everybody’s telling us what to do next.

It’s something where it’s about connecting with parents and their experience first. We’ll figure this out, but my goodness, this sounds overwhelming for you right now.

Dr. Cindy: Wow.

That might be the first time I’ve heard a pediatrician turn and look at the parent and say, how are you feeling about this?

Dr. Schofer: It’s the most important part.

So I learned this again, rewind. Quite a number of years back, when parents were coming in. One example was this 6-year-old girl who was coming in for her well visit.

They had seen my partners before. But it was my first time meeting up with her and mom, and I saw that she had always been growing above the 85th percentile for her weight and her body mass index. And I just took note of the growth curve, and I went on in, and I just started asking about all the things, who was she?

What did she enjoy? How is everything going? Everything was fabulous. What she ate, how she moved, interactions, social relationships, academics, sleep, everything.

And I was like, all right, this is awesome. Like, two thumbs up, I’ll see you in another year. This was amazing.

And mom leans over, she’s like, when are you gonna talk to me about her BMI?

And I was like. What about her BMI?

What’s your question? And she’s like, you are the first doctor who didn’t tell me that I was doing it all wrong, that I need to change everything. She’s like, every single time that I come to the doctor, I hear that I need to change what I’m feeding her. I need to get her to move more.

I am failing my child because she continues to grow. And so again, right there, I was like, I hear a parent who thinks that she’s failing.

Right there is where I had to pause. And again, the focus is completely on the parent because if we have parents who think that they’re failing their children, we are failing those parents, those families. It’s all about equipping parents with what it is that they need so that they can help their children.

That, oh my gosh, that visit just impacted me so much because I heard loud and clear what it is that we need to name, like how we need to be able to connect with parents to be able to really help them. In those moments where you’re questioning, and none of this had been said beforehand. It was at the very end of the visit.

And I’m so grateful because if she hadn’t said that, I would’ve never known, I would’ve never known about what was going on the inside. Again, the emotions.

And so I took away from that to, again, slow down and to really start getting curious about what else is coming into the office. What is unsaid.

By the way, it’s usually emotions because we usually don’t talk about them.

We just don’t have the experience and the practice of talking about emotions and so I call them out early on. I get curious about them. Absolutely.

What is it that you’re worried about? What is it that you’d like to discuss? What is it that’s keeping you awake at night?

Bring it on because of course as a doctor we always get those as you’re going out the door, like hand on the doorknob, and they’re like, oh, by the way. And let’s just move that all up earlier. What else is there that you want to tell me?

What else is it that you wanna ask today? Oh, I put that out there very early on.

Because it’s giving permission to be like, okay, let’s do this, let’s do this. I’m listening.

Dr. Cindy: This is a wonderful takeaway for the listener today, who is in a family practice, pediatrician, or internist role.

I’m wondering about the mom out there, what if she doesn’t have a doctor like you to take care of her children? How can listeners advocate for themselves? And when they go to their doctors with their kids, how can they make changes on their own?

Advocacy for Moms: Identifying Needs, Speaking Up, and Getting Support

Dr. Schofer: This is something that we’re all learning to really be able to speak up about what works for us, what it is that we need. And I think that more than anything, it’s about having the vulnerability, the bravery to say, this is what I need.

I need your help. I need you to listen. Which, I mean, talk about being vulnerable. Sharing with someone else, like, this is what I need from you.

It is a completely different conversation than what we’re used to having.

And so much of the work that I do with parents is actually about helping them recognize what it is that they need.

Because if you wanna talk about emotions, emotions are a fabulous way for us to identify are our needs being met or do we have needs that are unmet?

Just a spoiler, when you feel bad, whatever that is. Like, feel uncomfortable. You’ve got unmet needs. Okay, well, what is it that is unmet?

Okay. I’m tired. Okay. What can help you? I’m exhausted. Okay. Another flavor of that. Okay. I need a break. I need a rest. I need some quiet, I need people to just zip it.

I need help. I need some assistance here. I need someone who listens to me. It starts by checking in. To really understand, okay, this uncomfortable feeling I have right now. What is it that I need?

Dr. Cindy: And that ties back to the beginning of what you said, slow down so that you recognize your emotions, and then you have the language to ask for what you need.

Dr. Schofer: Yeah. And to recognize it for yourself.

Because so much of this is about recognizing and offering to ourselves what we need, which is not some kind of woo thing.

Like, oh, the answer is all within, and yet how often, okay, let’s just call it out. And yet there’s truth to that.

Where it’s like, oh, hold on a minute. I want other people to do this for me. And yet how often we need a break. We need silence. We need space. This is most often the answer when I ask parents, what do you need?

It’s always a vacation, a break, zip it, all these kinds of things. And the first answer is always right. And yet we can’t go around telling everybody, I need you to give me a break. We have to start finding what that looks like for us. Because I’m going tell you, going up and telling a three-year-old, “I need a break.”

Not going to work. No, not going to work. And yet it can still be the honest-to-goodness truth.

This is what you need. Now, let’s start seeing what that really means. What do you really need right now, and how can you start taking steps towards making that happen? Including a break when you have a three-year-old?

Dr. Cindy: Exactly.

Where can people find you if they want to listen to your podcast or just want to learn more about you or come to see you?

Dr. Schofer: Welcome, come and see me. So I am going to offer, when you’re saying if you don’t have a doctor like me.

This is why I’ve really created such a practice. So my practice is virtual, it is available globally and really being able to connect with parents where they are. And so yes, this is available to you. This is a conversation that we can have. So coming to Wendy Schofer MD (wendyschofermd.com). You can also join me with my Family in Focus podcast and we will just build the conversation from there.

Dr. Cindy: Thank you for starting the conversation.

Dr. Schofer: So this is why I like just hanging out with you because it goes both ways. We’re doing this.

Dr. Cindy: It is such a joy to have you here today on the podcast. I thank you so much.

Dr. Schofer: Thank you. Oh my goodness. I love this. My heart is full.

Dr. Cindy: Oh, so is mine.

Links:

• Family in Focus with Dr. Wendy Schofer, MD
• Family in Focus Podcast
• Facebook for Wendy Schofer MD
• Instagram for Wendy Schofer MD
• LinkedIn for Wendy Schofer MD