- Thank you for joining us for another Ohio Learns 360 webinar.

Today we're joined by Kathleen Tullie, Founder and Executive Director of Active Kids, and she's going to help us learn the importance of creating and cultivating an active lifestyle for your family.

Thank you so much for joining us, Kathleen.

- Thank you so much for having me, Abigail.

I'm really, I'm thrilled to be here.

I love to talk about physical activity.

- To get started, I guess we should just start with the basics of talking about what the benefits of an active lifestyle are for families and for children.

- Well, I mean, I think the science is overwhelming on how even a little bit of exercise can really help you jumpstart your day.

And the whole, you know, the way I got into creating Active Kids and Mind was I read Dr. Ratey's book "Spark."

He's a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and he talks about the profound impact that exercise has on us, that if you exercise for 15 to 20 minutes at 60 to 80% of your maximum heart rate, it has the same effect as taking a little Prozac or Ritalin.

And we're in a culture now where we all mostly live a very sedentary lifestyle.

There's not a lot of, commuting is in cars or trains or planes, we're on screens way too many hours of the day.

Physical activity has really been engineered out of our lifestyles, which is unfortunate because we were designed to move.

And the evidence is there that it's one of the best mitigators for stress, for physical activity, for mental health, for physical health.

And so, you know, it's an easy solution, but unfortunately it's not part of everybody's life.

- I think when people think of the benefits of an active lifestyle, they mainly think about the physical benefits, but as you mentioned, there are also a lot of good mental health benefits to being active.

Can you talk a little bit about some of those other benefits?

- Oh, yeah, I mean, absolutely.

Like, you know, Dr. Ratey talks about how it's miracle growth for the brain.

I mean, it immediately, you know, when you start to exercise, you immediately start to release these endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine that help the human body handle stress, regulate emotions.

They're able to focus more.

So we're driven by dopamine, humans are, and now we're surrounded by dopamine triggers everywhere, social media, those are not the natural addictions.

Something like exercise actually produces a much more beneficial dopamine response where you're actually getting long-lasting benefits in the brain where you're more focused, you're more calm.

I mean, I know personally the days that I run in the morning versus the days that I don't are completely different.

The days that I run in the morning and get a little sunlight, I am able to focus better.

I'm happier, I'm more confident.

And we see that with our kids.

We see that in the research we've done with Active Kids where kids, especially kids who are coming from adverse childhood experiences and their stress levels, they come with high cortisol levels to school as it is.

They'll actually say, they'll self-report and say, "It's so much easier when I'm able to run around and play before school because it gets my mind off of the stressful things."

And then they can actually sit in the classroom and focus and be able to regulate their emotions.

They can create friendships and communities while they're not focused on the stressful things of life.

I mean, think about today, when you look at social media, these kids have no downtime from the pressures of everything going on in the world.

There's no time to just sit back and relax and have fun and be a kid and play outside.

They're constantly on social media that is throwing them different signals of FOMO, fear of missing out, on wars going on around the world, on how they should be, body dysmorphia, or these curated artificial realities that aren't true.

And it just, it's really dangerous what we're setting kids up to do.

And then they don't have the release of the exercise that allows them to experiencing much more calm, authentic lifestyle.

- Now that we've discussed the benefits of exercise, I think a lot of parents and caregivers are wondering how they can fit that into a busy routine with school and work and afterschool activities.

So how much should kids be exercising?

How frequently, how long, and how do you recommend fitting that into a family's busy schedule?

- I mean, the recommendation is 60 minutes a day.

The reality is very little.

You know, I think right now the most recent statistic is 24% get the recommended daily allowance of exercise.

A staggering 82% don't get the recommended daily amount of exercise for kids.

So if there's a way, and you don't have to do, it doesn't have to be all together.

It can be a 10-minute walk with the dog in the morning before school or running around on the front yard and then some time on the playground, then joining some type of sport after school.

And one of the things we did with our family was we used to do after dinner walks, which was really nice because you're not on your screen and you're together as a family.

- You mentioned the impact of social media and screens.

We see parents struggle with how to reduce screen time for kids.

So how do you recommend parents model an active lifestyle for their kids?

Is that a good way to get kids more active and maybe spend less time on screens?

- Absolutely.

And I thin you can't expect your kids to put down their phones and go outside and play if you are not.

So don't bring your phones to dinner with you, I mean, how many times have you gone to a restaurant and you see parents sitting there with kids propped up with an iPad?

And not only is that unfortunate for the family right there not having interaction, but also it's these kids aren't able to learn the skills of communication and actually, like, let's look each other in the eyes and have a conversation.

So I think you have to, you have to model the behavior first.

You have to, I mean, I know I'm bad at it too.

I'll take my phone to dinner and then I check myself and I say, okay, time to put it upside down or away.

My husband actually, when we do group family dinners with a lot of families, he used to pass around a basket asking all the kids to put their phones in the basket, even out to dinner.

And the kids will resist at first, but then you look around and they're laughing and they're telling stories or they're playing cards and that's how it should be, rather than, it's really sad when you look around at a dinner table or an outing and everybody is just staring at their phone.

So I think you have to model the behavior.

You have to put your phone away and you have to make, you have to make opportunities.

The Health and Human Services came out with a great campaign, Move Your Way campaign, that actually speaks to all sorts of different ways to create movement with families, with coworkers, and I would recommend looking at it, but also parents can bring programs to their school before, during, or after school.

They can be part of the solution because schools are so stretched, and even though schools are focused on or know the importance of physical activity, it's not a priority.

- And for people who maybe don't have the ability to join a great program like that, you've talked about the importance of play and letting kids have the freedom, maybe just a little less structure to kind of just move their bodies and play games together.

So how can parents cultivate that sense of play and movement without their kids being in the structure of a program like that?

- Yeah, I mean, the reason I had just left the corporate finance world and I was gonna be a stay-at-home mom, which lasted for about two weeks.

And I've read Dr. Ratey's book "Spark," and here I was, our school, our little elementary school in Natick, Mass didn't start until nine o'clock.

And so every morning on my front lawn, I had like eight or nine kids playing soccer and I was doing relay races with 'em and what have you, waiting for the bus.

And at the same time I was reading Dr. Ratey's book and I thought, this is a no-brainer.

Like the evidence that he shows what happened in Naperville, Illinois was amazing.

Like, so why don't we not do this just on my front lawn, why don't we bring it to Memorial Elementary and let kids get dropped off an hour before school?

It will help parents who need that extra hour to get into work, drop off their kids, and it will give kids an opportunity to just run around and play.

So I went to my principal and superintendent and got their blessing and with a few other moms and dads, we started, we sent out an email and say, evidence shows that kids will do better in school and be happier if they can run around and play.

If you'd like to drop your kids off before school, we're gonna run this program two to three mornings a week.

We had 82 kids sign up, Abby, and we had no idea what we were doing.

We had whistles around our necks and some balls, and we were playing games, we brought the dogs.

I mean, it was just a free for all of good old fun, like let kids play.

And within weeks, parents and teachers were emailing me saying, "Geez, huge difference in these kids.

They're sleeping better at night.

They're excited to go early to school.

They're making friends" because a lot of kids also have trouble socially, especially now because they don't know how to socialize because their phone is their social content.

So these kids were, the evidence was just overwhelming on how these kids were doing.

And then the kids that struggled with a little ADD or ADHD, they were able to sit through a class, they would eat their breakfast after.

So it was a win-win.

So what I call word of mom started to spread and other communities started to reach out to me for a copy of our curriculum, which we didn't have a curriculum, but I had a bunch of amazing moms who said, "Well, we can form a nonprofit and build a curriculum."

And so that's what we did.

- I think some of these habits we're talking about, daily walks, no phones at the dinner table, those can be kind of hard to start when you may be getting pushback from your kids who are used to doing things one way.

What advice do you have for people trying to start some of these better habits?

- I think just going outside and I mean, that's what a lot of our games that we have in our curriculum is unstructured play.

It's just taking the content and setting up relay races or tag games or different outdoor activities that will allow them, or even indoor, I mean, there's plenty of games you can play inside that get you moving and be part of the play, whether it's hide and go seek or it's freeze tag or it's a dance party.

Like there's, I mean, who doesn't love a good dance party?

Like put on some good music and just dance.

I think the earlier you start, the better.

So, you know, I think Dr. Ratey said at one point that kids learn their habits by age eight.

So if you start early on and you ensure that this is more of the norm, and by age eight hopefully they're not on their phone yet.

So you start early, you model the behavior and it becomes a family value, a family tradition.

Like this is how we're going to do it.

And think about the stressed out mom too, or dad that comes home from work.

Like they might think it's easier to pour a glass of wine and sit down and look at their phone, but we know the science is, if they actually get home, whether it's before dinner or after dinner, and actually no matter what the weather is, go outside and go for a walk with their child, like you're both gonna be happier long term.

I mean, the proof is there.

So you know, sometimes a little bit of pushing yourself out of your comfort zone leads to tremendous results and make a habit of it.

Maybe it's you pledge like, and some days, you know, I find that community is everything and that if you don't have somebody holding you accountable, I mean, I see it with my running group, I know it's gonna sleet in the morning and be yucky and I could just turn on my computer and sit in my pajamas, but no, I have the 9:00 PM text chain from a group of people saying, "Okay, see you at 6:00 AM no matter what weather we're gonna run."

And so I think creating accountability too, where some days you're gonna be the positive force and some days you're gonna need somebody else to be the positive force.

- Speaking of starting early, you talked about how that's important to cement these habits in a child's life, but as kids grow and change, can it be harder to fit physical activity in, maybe as kids enter teenage years and are less interested in spending time with family and more interested in growing their independence?

Do you have any advice for how to create healthy habits that evolve as your family grows and your children get older?

- I think if you do start young before age eight, I think it's going to naturally evolve into those kids wanna be part of a team or some of their own sports.

They're gonna, their body is going to be used and their brain is gonna be used to craving that type of stimulus.

So right now there's such a huge dropout in sports for girls.

I think by age 14 you see this precipitous drop and it's because it becomes so competitive and it's only the A teams.

I think that if you start early with kids and just let them enjoy their own fitness, it doesn't necessarily have to be about being on the A team or being some elite athlete.

It just is about moving your body and enjoying, everybody has an athlete inside of them.

Everybody benefits from it.

So starting early, it's funny, when we first went in with Reebok and Adidas, when they first sponsored us, part of the reason was that they actually said, "Look, we believe that the sporting goods industry has created a culture of spectators and we need to reverse that and create a culture of participants.

And the best way to do that is to start with the youth."

- How about if say I have a kid who is a spectator, who doesn't see themselves as the star athlete and maybe isn't the most athletically gifted.

What kind of movement do you recommend for kids who aren't the star of the baseball team?

- Right, or club soccer or club lacrosse, like that's the other, I mean, it's crazy, the cost and the eliteness is really been damaging.

I mean, I personally think that there's so many other ways to be physically active where you don't have to be this ultimate athlete.

You can go hiking, you can go for a dog walk, you can go for a bike ride.

I mean, how liberating is it to get on a bike and just go tool around whether it's mountain biking or road biking, or take that dog for a walk.

I mean you also know that I think the Japanese call it nature washing where if you go for a walk in the woods for 20 minutes, it has a huge benefit.

And just the breathing in the woods, Dr. Andrew Huberman talks about sunlight in the morning hours and how it's one of the top five things you can do to fight depression and anxiety.

So there's a lot of kids that are not going to be on some track team or baseball player, or, I mean the majority of them.

But if you create a love of being outdoors and moving early on, then it could be gardening, it could be doing some type of project, but there's plenty of ways movement can be part of their lives.

And that's where I said, you know, we've unfortunately, we've engineered physical activity out of our lives because 50 years ago people would walk to their friend's houses, they'd walk to school, walking was such a big, and even in Europe still, you walk everywhere, right?

But here, unfortunately, there's plenty of days where I bet you you're only, a lot of people are only getting a couple of 100 steps in, which is not good for the brain or the body.

- You spoke about how social media and technology and phones can really hinder this active lifestyle to getting out, playing with friends.

Is there any way though that technology can benefit an active lifestyle?

- I certainly hope so because technology's not going away.

So yes, I do think that, I think social media companies, first of all, Meta, TikTok, they have a huge responsibility here and they need to step up to the plate.

They have the funding, they have the resources.

They know consumer behavior better than anybody.

I definitely think there are ways technology can help with prevention and health and wellness.

I just don't think we're completely there yet.

I do think wearables is a wonderful thing as long as it's used correctly and not used obsessively.

Like I see some people wearing the watches that track their sleep and then they start telling me how they're not sleeping as good.

And I was like, that's because you're becoming obsessed with your sleep.

But there's also, you have to be careful because I think some people will have the tendency to overdo it, whether it's with tracking their calories, which is not a good thing, tracking their steps, which for some people is not like, it's just in moderation, everything's good.

But I do think wearables are our future, whether it's wearables for biosensing of different things from sodium levels to diabetes and also suggesting what your body's able to do.

So yes, I think technology has a lot of benefit.

I just don't think right now I think we're probably at a little bit of a hurdle and hopefully with the lawsuits being brought against Meta and others around social media, I think they'll be forced into, okay, maybe we need to start being part of the solution and creating a culture of prevention.

- Another barrier that I think families face is weather, especially during the wintertime.

I know I live in northeast Ohio where it's dark right now at night when parents may be getting home from work, some days it can be so cold that it's not safe for kids to be outside and playing.

So what options do families have to still be active during these winter months?

- Well, I agree.

I mean, living in New England and from Michigan before, winters are long, but I think it's even more important, Abby, to get outside during the winter because our body needs that vitamin D, it needs the sunlight.

And you know, yes, sometimes it's a pain to put all that clothing on, but it's also really fun to get outside and explore.

So, you know, you can find indoor activities, but I think winter months really challenge us and that's where having a partner or community to hold you accountable or be part of the hiking club or running club or yoga club, just doing anything.

I mean, even with my love of fitness, I need a lot of encouragement from others.

So I can't imagine people who don't like fitness how much it takes them.

But you know, I think if you look at it like it's medicine, you wake up and you feel like, ugh, can I do another day of this?

If I turn on the news, it's gonna be so depressing.

You say, okay, I'm gonna take my natural pill that makes me happy.

And that's getting outside and going for a walk for 20 minutes.

And you know what, sometimes when I don't have a partner to do anything with, I put on a good podcast, there's so many good podcasts, whether it's, you know, things like Dr. Andrew Huberman or it's true crime, like make it a habit and with the kids, so that's adults obviously, but teenagers too, I mean my daughter listens to a ton of, she likes the more academic podcasts and that motivates her.

And try new things, try new sports.

I've seen my kids go all over the place with different sports and they've enjoyed learning all the skills and meeting the different friends.

There's also, I think the local clubs, the Boys and Girls Club, the YMCAs, they offer very affordable or free programming that is a great option to keep kids safe and also provide extracurricular activities, whether it's physical activity or art or tutoring.

It's all there.

- We got some questions from parents about food and nutrition.

So I wanted to ask how you see food fitting into an active lifestyle for families.

- So food is critical.

So food is our fuel.

No food is bad food.

You must, you have to eat, and I think it depends on your body, what feels good and helps you fuel.

But you make sure you get your veggies, your fruit, your protein, your carbs.

There are a lot of dangerous diet fads out there and I think it's a very slippery slope for so many.

I think we know that 9% of our population suffers from eating disorders, which is a very, people don't talk about it and it's a very big problem.

So it starts with people restricting their food or body dysmorphia or some stressful trauma event.

So the most important thing is, especially if you're exercising that you're eating your three meals a day and snacks, the minute people start to restrict, they start to mess up what their body's able to do and take away those superpowers and they also will slow down their metabolism.

So I think the food is critical.

There's a lot of junk out there on advice.

You talk to your pediatrician and take their advice, you talk to your parents, but be careful of, I would say, for those teenagers, stay far away from social media or fad diets, they don't work, no diet works, eat well and exercise.

- I was going to say in regard to social media, kids can be influenced by so many dangerous ideas without even realizing.

So in a time where kids have access to so much information, does that make parents fostering a healthy lifestyle in terms of exercise and food even more important?

And how can parents emphasize that more to drown out the misinformation and the dangerous rhetoric that's happening on social media?

- Start young and also be really open with your kids, open and honest, have open conversations.

I mean, I know from my personal experience like I had a daughter who, I have a daughter who, I have two kids, but you know, my daughter was a top performer, like never thought she had any issues.

She was great student, great athlete, seemed to be the leader of the pack with everything.

And little did I know that she was struggling with a eating disorder, she would complain to me about stomach aches, which I just thought were stress or anxiety, which is one of the definite precursors to an eating disorder.

And then she had a really bad ski accident that led to multiple, she was med flighted and had multiple surgeries and ended up really exacerbating, I think what was maybe disordered eating or eating disorder, it really put her over the cliff and it was a very humbling experience for me.

And also very scary to realize how dangerous the right combination of things can lead to something that is very life-threatening.

So again, this goes back to the moderation, like nothing excessively and if you are doing a big workout, you need to fuel yourself appropriately.

And I think people just need to be more open about what they're seeing on social media and also share it with their parents, share it with their friends, like it's dangerous out there.

Meta talks about all these tools they've created.

Okay, the tools are, and Abby, you tell me, have you gone onto Instagram or Facebook and picked who you're gonna block or restrict?

Like people don't self-select to use the tools.

So, and teenage brains, they're not developed until I don't know, 23, 24, 25, our prefrontal cortex.

So you know, they're being fed this algorithm that is just giving them continuous dopamine.

And so they don't, they're not gonna go on and restrict, oh well that might be bad content.

No, it was giving them good dopamine.

That's like asking a heroin addict not to take heroin.

Like, so I think it's just keeping a really open dialogue.

- Another part of exercise and diet that I don't think we talk about enough is rest and how important rest is for our bodies.

So can you talk about the importance of rest and sleep and how parents can support their kids having good sleep habits?

- Yes.

So I love sleep.

My friends actually make fun of me 'cause I'm the early, I'm like, can I be in bed by 8:30 or 9:00?

So yeah, so it's one of the pillars of health and having sleep that's not interrupted, easy for me to say, is really critical.

And we know you don't go to bed with screens on, I just saw a staggering report, I don't remember the numbers, but the amount of hours and how late teenagers were staying up till the middle of the night, like somewhere three in the morning on video games or their phones was horrible.

And that's, it just completely kicks off your rhythm.

So I think you set up a bedtime somewhere around 10 o'clock at night, at least for me, no phones in bed, no social media and you know, you set that early, I try to read, I love reading, but once I read two or three pages, I'm dead asleep.

So I just think that putting the phones away, making sure that you have a consistent bedtime, making sure you get that morning sunlight in the morning is critical.

And how about no more daylight savings time?

- You talked a little earlier about accountability and how important community can be to keeping you accountable.

How about goals?

Do you have any recommendations for setting realistic activity goals for families and how that can help motivate people?

- Well yeah, you could, I mean, what we've done in our family is we always had, we like adventure.

So we pick, can we go hiking this weekend or can we sign up for this 5k?

I drag my kids everywhere doing 5k races or picking an outdoor activity to learn together.

We were fortunate enough to pick downhill skiing that we did every weekend, which is great, but not a very accessible option for many.

So I think going onto using the internet and technology to find local hikes or 5k races or little fun events that you would do together outside as a family is great.

Or you know, during the summertime, going to the beach and going for swims or to a lake and there's lots of different fun activities you can do.

But you know, I would say planning vacations that have some type of exploration activity is great.

- What is a healthy way to attack goals of maybe just trying to be more fit at home?

Like say I wanna go on a walk with my dog five days a week.

How can you kind of include kids in some of these more accessible fitness goals?

- Yeah, I think that you put it into your calendar, you say you know what, we're trying to strive for x amount of whether it's 60 minutes a day, these are the times we're going to walk the dog or offer to walk the neighbor's dog or go out for a walk ourselves and make sure that it fits in the calendar that you make it a priority.

I think that's the bottom line, Abby, if if it's a priority, you'll make it happen.

And it's good for the parents to be with the kids and I think that's why Active Kids has been so successful where parents showed up as the volunteers before school because they were allowed to run and play too with the kids.

And that not only accomplished your goal of getting to 60 minutes a day, but the science is behind that if the kids do run around and play before school, they're gonna do better academically, socially, mentally and physically.

- I have another question from a parent about what the best kind of food to give a kid before they are going to go do a physical activity like play in a soccer game.

So what kind of snacks would you recommend before sending your kid off to running a cross country meet or play in a soccer game?

- So I will say I'm not a registered dietician.

I can tell you what I would eat or what, I mean I usually have peanut butter toast and an apple.

Again, that's what's for me, I also make sure that I have a lot of water as well.

But you also, if you're exercising over 60 minutes, you wanna make sure there's some sodium in that water as well.

And there's great natural things, salt tablets, LMNT is a great one.

But yeah, I think it's the amount of kids that I see that don't eat breakfast is crazy to me.

And that's just unfortunate because if they did fuel themselves before the workout, they would perform so much better.

They'd feel better mentally, they'd perform better physically, and that's something again you can get from your pediatrician that will speak to how you should fuel yourself.

Again, just you look at food as fuel.

- We also had a question about what the signs.

We also had a question about what signs you can look for if your kid isn't fueling properly.

Are there behaviors or energy level signs that parents can look out for to kind of adjust physical activity and diet?

- Yes, there certainly is, and again, I would say I'm not an expert in this field, but there are so many great resources out there.

There's the National Eating Disorder Association, NEDA, there's Equip Health.

If you go to their website, and this is where, Abby, the slippery slope of disordered eating, which so many people, I mean, you just look around, it's everywhere.

Disordered eating can quickly turn into eating disorders.

But I think restriction is huge.

Make sure you or your child are not restricting, counting calories.

That was probably one of the biggest mistakes we've done culturally is putting calories on menus and labels.

I wish we could get rid of that.

If you find out who I can talk to about that, I'd like to talk to him.

I think, stomach aches for little kids, a huge, like listen to your child, like when they say I have a stomach ache, it's probably a mental, it's probably anxiety, depression, but then they could possibly not eat because they're stressed, but then that turns into a habit, it's doing odd behaviors with food, like cutting food really small or moving food around on the plate.

It's, again, I have a little experience, but I am not the professional here.

But I think you have to openly have a conversation with your child.

And a lot of the times people will hide eating disorders because they feel a lot of shame.

But follow your parent gut, your mom gut, your dad gut.

And also obviously the pediatrician should catch it if there's a change in the height and the weight chart.

We all track, we're all born with our own beautiful bodies and God gave us something like to track at a certain level.

Pediatricians know when we fall off the weight chart, even if parents can't tell because you're with them every single day.

But I'm hoping that pediatricians are now more open to that because it's become such a problem during COVID with eating disorders.

So I would say those are some of the behaviors, which it's a slippery slope because it also can lead to self-harm.

It's just the quicker, the sooner you catch something like that, the better you have for long-term success.

- What kind of resources are out there?

I know your organization has a lot of great resources for parents, maybe parents looking for new ideas for movement or maybe some advice on some of these diet questions that we talked about.

What kind of resources do you recommend parents check out to start cultivating this lifestyle today or to add to the lifestyle they're living right now?

- I would say check in with their pediatrician.

There is, again, because you have to be careful of all the stuff that's out there and especially the whatever social media, whatever, Instagram or TikTok, I'm not even on TikTok, but whatever gets sent to you, just that's not the magic bullet and that's not what you should be trusting.

You should listen to what the pediatrician says.

I'm happy to share with you after this podcast resources that I found incredibly valuable.

I also think it's really good for kids early on if you sense any anxiety or disordered eating or anything, talk to a therapist, like have a child talk to, it's not a failure.

It's actually something that's going to prepare you to handle stress later on and create healthy habits.

- Through the website for Active Kids, what kind of information can parents get?

Would you recommend looking for any certain tools on your website?

- Yeah, on our website we have a ton of curriculum.

So right now everything's free.

We've had, I think over the last 60 days we've had 1,600 enrollments, almost 375,000 kids.

We have lesson plans that range from mindfulness and yoga, meditation, to running curriculum.

Some of these you can do at home as well.

We have a bootcamp, you could do that with a group of kids like in your garage if you wanted to.

We have nutrition nuggets that were developed both with Mass General Hospital and America's Test Kitchen on different recipes.

And actually November is nutrition month for us and we'll be posting soon a few videos and photos on kids doing some recipes.

But you know, most of our resources are on physical activity.

We send out a monthly calendar with a theme every month.

September was back to school.

October was running month, my favorite.

And every day has, you can click on the day and it gives you an activity and it gives you a YouTube video to follow the activity.

It also has nutrition links in there.

So if you go to activekids.org and then you log into our Trainer Hub and if you're just a parent, you don't have to be associated with the school, you could just put in Sarah Smith's Homeschool, and you have access to all of our curriculum.

We've seen, and we've had Harvard, Mass General Hospital, and Dalhousie out of school time and Wayne Westcott have all done studies on the efficacy of our program and the impact.

And we've seen tremendous results.

- Lots of good resources for parents to get inspired and start building some healthy habits.

So thank you so much for joining us, Kathleen, that was incredibly helpful.

I so appreciate all of your insight and expertise.

- Absolutely.

And I'll tell you one other resource too, as I'm thinking about athletes and therapy.

There's a great group called Unlimited Resilience.

Dr. Kim O'Brien is the head of it and she's put it together for athletes that are struggling in any way, whether it's eating disorders or mental health issues.

- For Ideastream Public Media, I'm Abigail Bottar, and thank you for joining us for this Ohio Learns 360 webinar.

And please check back in and join us for future webinars on other topics for families and kids.