Hey everyone! This will be a fun podcast! We are going to open up into our life and family a bit and describe our children's daily herb, supplement, and essential oil routines!H
On today's podcast, we discuss:
Resources mentioned on this episode:
Transcript for the episode:
Hey everyone, it's Frank and, Jackie Ritz, and we're here with essential oil healthcare, radio and boy am I excited about this one. This is going to be a lot of fun. We get to talk about our kids, so are going to actually talk specifically about what we do to help make sure that the kids are healthy and stay that way for all periods of the year and we're going to talk to you about all the little things that we love to do with them to really just. Gosh, I can't even put words with it. It's just there are so great and it's so wonderful to have them and we just have gotten to this point now where they are pretty awesome. So let me introduce you to our little ones.
Frank & Jackie: 00:51 Arianna skye is nine years old and she's in fourth grade. She turns 10, the big 10. She turned next month, next month, and I'm definitely going to cry. I'm having a hard time with that one. She is a true farm girl. She's got grit and personality. She is very headstrong. She's A. I wonder where she gets that. She's a born leader, so I've just keep reminding myself like this, this strong willed that she has right now. It's going to be incredible one day when she leads, like, she'll probably be the first president woman. That's my assumption. But we're just slightly. Yeah, really bias by the way. So she's, she's an amazing little girl. She's very healthy, very tall. She's always been 99 plus, you know, and the height percentile. Um, she's always have had a hard time keeping meat, like meat on her body. She's a very skinny girl, but she goes through those phases where it balances out, you know, um, and she is very athletic so she's, um, she started playing basketball this year which made my little heart happy because I played through college and um, I just loved seeing her play.
Frank & Jackie: 02:10 It's really hard not to wish that I could go back into a nine year old body and play basketball with my skills. That would be so cool when a couple of movies back in the nineties that they did that I remember one of which was a. well, Adam's father like son. Yeah. But anyway, moving on to our other little one, Frankie Junior, so frankie junior is seven years old. He is pure boy. He's got the most gorgeous eyes with the longest eyelashes, so he always has the problem with the eyelashes going in the eye, which can create a long ordeal because just like his daddy, he hates anything coming near his eye. So it's absolute torture. Hate it. An eyelash gets in his eye. Um, he loves being like on the farm as well, but he's not as much as a farm boy as I would hope one day. I hope that the bug catches him, but he enjoys all the things boys love. He loves doing Legos, he loves building things. He loves knowing how things work. So he has an engineer brain where he has to know how everything works with, which sometimes is really annoying because I don't want to explain it or I don't really know.
Frank & Jackie: 03:23 That's the thing is that he doesn't understand that he's only seven right now, but he just doesn't know that. We actually don't know. So we, as of right now, we're okay to be ignorant, but one day is going to start calling us out on everything we don't know.
Frank & Jackie: 03:37 So, um, and he is in second grade. He, um, so physically, neither of them have had a ton of challenges. I would say we have struggled the most with him. He had some speech delays, what we thought, you know, in our brain because we compared him to Arianna who is very advanced in speech and reading. She reads like, you know, she's in the middle of the Harry Potter series right now. But um, and you just can't compare your kids. Right? So it's hard not to though. So, um, but he is reading on his own now. He's doing excellent. He is doing so good in school. And so, um, we are excited to share with you guys how we keep them healthy, happy and um, how we kind of harmonize together as a family using supplements, herbs and essential oils.
Frank & Jackie: 04:27 Yeah, totally. So we'll first start off with, as you're going to hear it. I mean, I, I really don't mean to sound like a broken record or broken podcasts I suppose, but uh, but it's really important to have foundationally and do the right thing. So that starts with food. It all starts with food. It always starts with food. And so we make sure that they have a diet very rich in vegetables. It's been a battle just like any other parent had to deal with. Veggies are not easy to get down or kids throats, but uh, in no way, shape or form, we're allowing them not to eat vegetables. So we had to get tricky when they were younger, you know, blend them into a spaghetti sauce or add them quickly into a smoothie or any of the other, you know, could be, you know, sort of callus ways, if you will, about how we had to sneak vegetables into their diet. Now we can just look at him and reason with them. Thankfully we have middle aged kids or I should say on the higher end, toward 10 and now we can just look at him and say, listen, you're not going to get this. Then I know that you want really, really to eat until you eat those vegetables first. So we kind of started off with that. That's first course for them.
Frank & Jackie: 05:30 And I would also say to make vegetables fun, um, you know, you don't boil your Brussels sprouts and expect your kids to eat it. I mean, I wouldn't, I won't eat those either. That's crappy. So like, you know, cut them up and saute them in bacon fat, um, with some salt and pepper and make it delicious. You know, don't, don't just think that you can pop steam fresh vegetable in the microwave and toss it in front of your kids. I'm one of the most essential things for kids is healthy fats for everything, for development, for a special, especially for oral health. So if you listen to our previous podcasts from a few weeks ago, you learned that I'm healthy. Fats is so important for healthy teeth. And so our kids as their teeth are going through this huge transition. I mean Arianna is always losing a tooth or had a wiggly tooth or has something going on.
Frank & Jackie: 06:26 It's very important that they are getting good fat into their diet. Um, and so some of our ways, let's, let's talk about one of our top vegetables are, and that we give our kids now. I don't sneak them into their diet anymore. Um, I make them eat them. So a lot of times if we're having like a, a meal, I'll put vegetables on their plate first and say you have to eat this before I give you anything else. Um, and then sometimes I don't care. So honestly I don't want to fight the battle. So I'm just like, you know, screw it. Let's just eat together as a family and harmony. And that's not fight. But most of the time we do make our kids eat their vegetables.
Frank & Jackie: 07:05 We also gave them a thing that just popped into my brain. We give them cute names. So like asparagus for like what night sores or something like that. And then, uh, and then Brussels sprouts became dragon eggs or dragon balls. Change that to dragon balls because I have no idea why, but he just makes us laugh when he says that. So, but uh, you give your food a fun names to, you know, it's like, it's all about the bonding experience. Here's something that's crazy to think about today. Cook with them. I know that that's wild to think about, but if they cook and prepare their own food, they want to eat it. So we have been allowing them under, of course, close parental supervision to allow them to actually make stuff in the kitchen and if they screw up, it's okay. We're right there to help them out, turn down the fire or turn down the heat or whatever you need to move the plate off and help them understand the importance of preparing their own food. Well
Frank & Jackie: 08:01 then take ownership in it and there's, you know, they're more likely to eat it if they've made it. So some of our favorite vegetables and honestly we really do eat the same ones. Our kids love cauliflower rice. In fact, I don't even really know what they know is cauliflower. They just think it's some kind of rice but not playing. Okay. As we know, cauliflower has absolutely zero taste to it. Um, so we put some butter in it, um, or d and we use salt and pepper and you can also make it more of an Asian flair if you're having some kind of an Asian meal, you can add sesame oil and some soy sauce or tomato sauce or even coconut Aminos, whatever you use for that soy sauce flavor, you can add that to it. So that's a really good way to, you know, use that.
Frank & Jackie: 08:50 And so I usually buy the prepackaged cauliflower rice. I don't buy the head of it and chop it down or food process. I just, you know, I skipped that step. So if you do, you can totally put it in a food processor and chop it down into a fine little pieces. Another favorite, I think we have this every week, like frank said, is our Brussels sprouts, so we quartered them. Do quarter of them are, depends on how big they are. Bite size and we cook it. We make some bacon first. And then in the Bacon Grease we removed the bacon and with a little onion. Right. Do you put on your unit or garlic or both? Yeah, um, once you cook on young kids can't even see it, so um, and it just makes the flavor better so we put a little onion and garlic in it and then saute that for a few minutes and then throw those Brussels sprouts back and salt and pepper them up and it is absolutely delicious.
Frank & Jackie: 09:40 So that's a very common one. Kale, Kale. So we've struggled with leafy Greens with the kids, but they're getting a little bit better. Um, they will eat it in their smoothie all day, you know, you can throw spinach in their smoothies or you can throw Kale in their smoothie, but like Swiss Chard, Kale and spinach sauteed up, they're just now getting to the point where they're eating it. Um, they'll pick around things that we throw into there. Like if we put mushrooms in the, in the Pan, but they are eating at a little bit better, what did you say?
Frank & Jackie: 10:11 And they call it bacony kale, You'd be surprised that there is a common thread here and that common threads. Bacon, I don't know who really doesn't like Bacon, but that's okay if you don't, it's cool because then it just means more for me, so, uh, but that is definitely a very good healthy way of adding that good healthy fat into a lot of the vegetables that we're eating because vegetables, of course they don't have any fat and fat helps those vegetables taste
Frank & Jackie: 10:38 better. So I've always had the mindset of just feeding my kids what I eat and what we're going to eat. We never have made separate meals for them if they don't want to. If they're going to spite me and not eat it, then they're just going to be hungry and then they eat anyway and they're not going to die anyway. That's one of the things a lot of parents think is like if they don't eat it, they're going to be so hungry and die. No, they'll going to be okay. In fact, it's actually, I, I, a little bit of my mission time comes back to me in those memories in third world countries. I often say to my kids if only you, but other kids around the world can't be or eating or can't eat tonight and how blessed they are and so they are growing up with that gratitude and that is something that we've instilled with them is that every single bite of food or plate of meat or anything, it's all just a blessing from God.
Frank & Jackie: 11:30 Okay. So with that being said, let's go ahead and dive into the meat and we won't say potatoes will say meat and sweet potatoes of the podcast for today,
Frank & Jackie: 11:39 which is what?
Frank & Jackie: 11:40 Which is what. Oh, fine. I guess I'll start. All right. Well it's the beginning of the day. It's our kids have gotten up. We weren't on a. we're actually going to put a, you know, we just started getting into this whole like environmental clock thing where we don't like the old school alarm anymore. We don't like being abruptly woke up like that. So we're actually going to outfit both their rooms with these really great lights that we kind of did an experiment on recently. Uh, and it's a natural light alarm. And so even the sounds on it or actually they go from sort of more quiet to hire quiet. So what the land essentially is trying to do is it's replicating what it would be like if the sun were to get up and be inside of your window and wake you up in a more natural.
Frank & Jackie: 12:23 Well, because it's winter right now in the sun's not coming up to like 8:00 AM, 8:00 AM, right. So, um, we, we've been testing it out for the last few weeks and I absolutely love it. First of all, I don't like an alarm clock period. I usually wake up anyway. Um, but we've been studying it for 5:00 AM and so around 4:45 it starts to. And it's only $20. It's very inexpensive as well. But the ups I think, well I don't know in the podcast link below, so it's around clock and it has a little light around the outside and it is actually the color of the sunlight coming in. And so at 4:45 it just slowly starts turning on an even before the little birdies come on and start singing. I'm usually awake because of the light.
Frank & Jackie: 13:10 It's a really good thing that we actually implemented and so of course we're going to put those in our kids' rooms as well. So they get up, they automatically know, go do the oral hygiene, which matter of fact we actually have a, a podcast on oral health. So they go in there, they brushed it, floss, they get themselves ready for the day, they make their rooms up and then they hit on downstairs and then from that point forward it's all about making sure that we get their lunches, taking care of and their breakfast, taking care of it. So we try to vary, ate breakfast when you try not to make the same thing every single day. Uh, and so once we're done or while they're eating is when we kind of like put in all of our other really quick thing. So like we do a quick devotional but then we start with stuff like fish or we love making sure that they're getting plenty of really good healthy fats by using fish oil.
Frank & Jackie: 13:58 And so it's super important to make sure that they're full of EPA. Dha and a lot of those other really great omega three and omega six fatty acids because those are great for neurological support and to help their neurological system which is rapidly growing at their age to get everything that it needs. We also have them are in the official other than we love to use as IQ Mega doterra that hopefully it's not a surprise to a lot of you doterra folks out there. The next thing we use is pb assist, which is a probiotic. This probiotic puts lots of really great colony forming units of bacteria down into their gun because even at that age as well, we know as adults that proper gut health equals proper overall health, so it's important to make sure that we're also helping them with the probiotics as well.
Frank & Jackie: 14:45 The next thing to make sure that we do, they get a great multivitamin in the morning or sometimes we give it to them with food during lunch, just to help ease it with its digestion. Any multivitamin that, excuse me, you do the research. Make sure that it is full of the bioactive versions, recommended that it's full of the bioactive versions and not the synthetic chemicals that can be used that are. For example, you know the chemical version of Foley is folic acid. That is a synthetic version if you will, so we want to make sure that we get the one that actually has methyl folate. We can definitely recommend some different multivitamins to you. We'll put those links down below as well. The next thing that they get, especially because it's the winter, they get them all the time, but especially because it's the winter, is vitamin D, we love to make sure that they're hitting those certain amounts of the international units that they need.
Frank & Jackie: 15:36 A one great resource that we use is Dr Mercola and before you start vitamin D drops, if it's a concern, make sure that you grab lab values if necessary because vitamin D is one of those ones that you can actually do too much with, but you want to make sure that you're doing prudent use of vitamin A, vitamin D, but anyway. The reason why I say all that is because vitamin D, uh, the way that we kind of give it to our kids is we base it on a Mercola recommendation which is per 25 pounds of body weight. They get so much international units and so I'll put a link on that as well so you can do your research on that.
Frank & Jackie: 16:15 And then in the winter they get a little bit more.
Frank & Jackie: 16:17 They get. Yeah, they, we usually try to up that amount because of course they're not getting lots of natural sunlight. Matter of fact, I'm looking out the window right now and it's another overcast day where we live, so they're not really getting a lot of really great vitamin D exposure. But Hey, you know what? Every little
Frank & Jackie: 16:31 that helps. So the last one I usually have to fight them to take. Don't I friend? You do. So just kidding. They usually remind me about their elderberry syrup.
Frank & Jackie: 16:41 If you could see the sarcasm on your face.
Frank & Jackie: 16:44 They love elderberry syrup. Um, I have a recipe in my brand new book, the Home Apothecary, home crafted recipes, using herbs, any central oils. Now I had two different recipes in there, have an alcohol free one and I have an alcohol base. One both can be given to kids with the alcohol based one. You actually want to put a little bit in some hot tea so that you can, you know, evaporate some of the alcohol. So because I don't have time to do all that and I don't really want to do it first thing in the morning and make them drink some hot tea. I have a alcohol free one that they take just fine. Um, and so I gave them about a teaspoon a day. And then if somebody in the family is under the weather or if we're just having a very active weekend where we're around a lot of people who could be under the weather, then we usually take it two to three times a day. But, um, and they love it because not only are you getting the, um, the immune boosting benefits of elderberry, which is an incredible immune booster, but you're also the protective raw honey. And so raw honey is a very good, very good thing for them to take. Especially during the winter months, it just really helps to boost their immunity and helps to fight off any unhealthy micro organisms that might be coming in contact with their body.
Frank & Jackie: 18:12 And then moving on. That's pretty much the morning. I mean like we send them off and they're good to go. And then, uh, we armed them also with Doterra just came out with a really great new kids line that, uh, that the kids can read and say like if they're feeling a certain way, it sort of empowers the kid to be able to say, you know what, I feel like I need some rescue or I feel like I could use some thinker, right?
Frank & Jackie: 18:33 Yeah. They have their own. So one of the things I did is I really just, I'm encouraging my kids take ownership in their health to be empowered and to know how their emotions are so that they can, you know, use the oils appropriately. So in their bathroom and in their room. I have oil. So one of the things that I've done is I put oil prompts all over the house, slight by the diffusers you'll see in our house to the ones that we use commonly. You'll see I'm a holder of essential oils, you know, up in their kid's room in a very local area. There's the top essential oils that I use upstairs in their rooms. And so these prompts just make it easy for me to remember to use the oils and also for the kids to know that, you know, whatever they're feeling or whatever they're drawn to for that day, they can pull those oils out.
Frank & Jackie: 19:23 So in their bathroom I have a little oil stand with some role on bottles and I have the kids line and they're able to apply their oils first thing in the morning as they're getting ready for the day so that, you know, if they're going to school and they want to put thinker on or if they have a bruise on her leg, Frankie likes to put, you know, rescue or on. Um, and so it's just an empowering thing to be able to give that to our kids. So that we can teach them how to take care of their own health. Um, we sometimes give on guard beadlets to them as well. So a bead that has literally like a fourth of a drop of the onguard essential oil. If your kids are over six, you can safely give them the beat. Let's, um, we give them one a in the morning. And then also we, when they're eating, we like to rub the onguard down their spine. And so at night they each have their own diffusers and they put them on. They get to choose what oils they want to diffuse piece lavender or serenity. And um, it really has become just a part of our life. It really doesn't feel like we're taking time on our, of our life to do this.
Frank & Jackie: 20:36 And then Jack, you spoke about food and Diet. She, uh, she made mention of like, you know, I'm just making that transition of being able to take some of those tips that we gave you a because they worked with our. They were really great and other actually becoming really good veggie eaters and they'll actually eat the foods that we eat. Um, you know, sometimes we have to kind of give them some mass mustard or maybe they have to throw a little extra tamari on it, but it's they'll eat it when you, when you give them those additional things, they get fermented foods as well. I mean, like our kids outdoor eating, Sauerkraut and pickles and we haven't gotten enough to Kimchi. We'll step them up eventually because Kimchi, she's one of my favorite fermented foods, but we do make sure that they get fermented foods as well.
Frank & Jackie: 21:18 Chock full of really great probiotics. And then one last lovely thing that we do throughout their schedules, if you will, is that we love to have them visit my chiropractor. Um, the whole family gets seen by one chiropractor and it is amazing what the, uh, what the simple addition of chiropractic medicine can do for the overall health of your family. So they go and they get adjusted and I'm only where it's necessary and stuff like that. And it's a very gentle thing and they adore it. I mean, they lay right down and they feel great afterwards. So it's been a very good adjunct to everything else that we're doing in our home.
Frank & Jackie: 21:56 In fact, we started at, back when they were babies and they were having issues with your discomfort. Um, and so we wanted to do chiropractic care to help those. The fluid in the ears drain, you know, the, the chiropractor has these magic tricks that they do and what they do. But, um, that's when they started going and we've been going ever since. So, um, they're probably seen about once a month, sometimes once every other month. But usually it's just like when one of us has an appointment, we had the best chiropractor in the world. Um, he'll just take a look at our, our kid when we're there. So find a good family chiropractor. It's one of the staples of natural and holistic medicine. I would recommend for anyone.
Frank & Jackie: 22:39 And that's about it guys. We, uh, we, we just have tried to focus on, you know, if we're going to do stuff for herself than um, you know, just why not, it makes perfect sense to also involve our kids as well. I mean they are little humans guys, so we got to make sure that we take care of them. So, um, all of those tips and tricks pump, did you found some value in that? By all means, if you need to re listen to this podcast or something like that, go ahead and do so. And just to let you know, I think it's time for us to do a giveaway. So I, like I said, I get a crazy endeavor once in a while and that's mine. So what should we give away this time? First of all, let me do something that we haven't done in the past that I'd love to do for you guys.
Frank & Jackie: 23:20 I want to read a really wonderfully nice sweet note that we received as a compliment to everything that is going on in this podcast is from a gal named shelly and she says on her email, she says, good morning frank and Jackie. I was driving over it this morning by the way. She ended up getting a copy of our ebook, a excuse me, catching on your podcast or my name announced. Totally shocked. I'm so excited. I've been planning on getting the block and I'm hoping that I'm not too late to claim our prize. You're not. Don't worry. We're definitely making sure that you got it. Okay. Um, you guys have become my favorite podcast, which we really appreciate. Love learning all the new info and you two are so cute. Aw. Excuse me. I feel like I know you personally and then we get along great.
Frank & Jackie: 24:08 If we knew each other well, continue to listen. Shelly and all you other guys who are listening, guys and gals out there, because that is the best way to get to know us. So we really, really appreciate that message and if you want send us messages, it's frank at ritz essentials dot com and you are very welcome to give us a shout out on an email and would love to get back to you. But Hey, time for a giveaway again. What do we want to give away? She's. She's frantically. Yeah. Looking through boxes to determine what we want to give away. Goodness Gracious. Really big. Okay. So guess what we're going to give away. So there is an active botanical nutritive duo that has just recently came out, bro. You crazy doterra fans. It is Yarrow and POM. We're going to give away one bottle of yarrow and POM onto our podcast. Give us a review, subscribe, give us a comment. That way you can be entered into the drawing. We will be giving one special person on a future podcast. Make sure that you go and do that so you can be entered into a chance to get this. And this bottle is. I don't even want to think about it, but it's cool because our listeners are worth it.
Frank & Jackie: 25:20 Okay. So it's over $100 retail. So we are excited to give this to you. We'll give you a few weeks to comments and we'll pick one winner from those comments. Make sure that you go to Itunes, you ready to do it on your desktop. I know, I know, but you can do it and leave us a comment and let us know how much you love our podcast. What else do you want to hear from us? And give us five stars guys. Those reviews and ratings really do make a difference. And iTunes okay. They have this whole weird algorithm that they, you know, base everything off of. So we would appreciate your love and support and um, and your continuous support to listen to us each week. We come out with brand new videos every single Friday and we've been talking about throwing in another day.
Frank & Jackie: 26:08 Absolutely. Let us know. Matter of fact, if you want us to do that too, if you're actually enjoying this podcast once a week late and you want to make it go twice weekly, let us know as well. That would be really great to get that kind of feedback, but that's pretty much it. Get those comments on there so you can get entered for the giveaway and we will very much be looking forward to seeing you on our very next day podcast. Take care everybody. Bye. Bye.
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