The Whole Parent Podcast
The Whole Parent Podcast
Do Dinner Better #006
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Ever wondered how to transform mealtime battles with your picky eater into a harmonious affair?
Join us as we unlock strategies to help parents like you, who face the daily challenge of expanding their child's dietary horizons. This episode peels back the layers on highly selective eaters, offering practical tips for introducing new foods without the pressure. We also unpack the sweets dilemma faced by so many parents, sharing advice from health professionals and my own parenting journey on navigating cravings and fostering a more diverse palate.
Cultivating a positive food relationship is crucial for our children's long-term well-being, and it goes far beyond the dinner plate. With insights from dieticians and psychologists, we explore how to make mealtime an enjoyable experience, free from anxiety. You'll discover the power of mindful language surrounding food and the impact it has on young minds. Our conversation is a reminder that nurturing a healthy mindset about eating is just as important as the nutrients on the plate.
Finally, we discuss the importance of respecting children's natural hunger cues and why the Clean Plate Club is out of date. By tuning into growth and appetite fluctuations, we emphasize the significance of her overall development over rigid mealtime expectations.
And don't forget, by joining our community via the email list, you'll receive even more exclusive content to support your parenting journey. So, pull up a chair and let's share a feast of knowledge that will help set the table for a lifetime of healthy eating habits for your kids.
And then you also have new foods on that plate, and again we are going to go really, really small portion sizes and you're not going to make them eat every single thing on the plate. In fact, you're not even going to make Helen try everything on the plate. You're just going to present that plate as an opportunity for trying new things. Hello and welcome to the whole parent podcast. My name is John, I'm the host of this show and I am also at whole parent on all of the social media places where you can find me TikTok, instagram, facebook although I'm like never on Facebook these days and this is the podcast. That's all about giving you tips and tricks and having deep in depth discussions about how to raise kids who grow up to be resilient adults, and doing so confidently as parents. Because, if I don't know, if you knew this, but parenting is super freaking hard. Like this is like the hardest thing that any of us has to do, and so it's really and all of us are brand new at it right, we've only been a parent as long as our oldest kid has been alive, and so this is the show that hopefully helps you to feel a little bit more confident and know that you are raising your kids with the best evidence based neuroscience first advice that can help your child to grow up to be a resilient, healthy adult in all aspects of their life physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, relational, attachment, all those things. So today we're going to be talking about something that kind of hits on that physical but also hits on that mental and emotional place, and it's food. How do we help our kids, especially our young kids, have a positive relationship with food? How do we deal with mealtime? How do we deal with kids who are picky eaters or who don't want to be introduced to new foods? How do we deal with kids who have seemingly an endless, bottomless pit for sweets? These are all the questions that we got, and so, if you don't know how this show or this podcast is structured and most episodes, what we do is we go out, we get real questions from real parents about a wide host of topics you know any topic that a parent wants to ask a question about. They can and then we take those questions and we organize them into little sets and we cover a topic, and so today we're talking about eating. We have three questions from Jen Bev and Jose about their kids, different ages five, six and, I think, four, although I'm not sure if that's the order of them and we're going to go into it and we're going to get into it and we're going to talk about, you know, how do we do food mealtimes better, because this is a stress point for so many of us. I know this is a huge stress point for me and my parenting.
Speaker 1:I was just talking to my wife today about how we can cut down on certain things that seem to be creating some difficulty for my kids food wise. How can we expose our children to more things? And so I'm really, really excited about this episode. And if you haven't done so already and you're listening to this right now and you've listened to a couple episodes maybe this is your third episode you've listened to or even if it's your first, but you already like what you hear, make sure that you go into whatever podcasting app that you are listening to this on Apple Podcasts, spotify, google Podcasts and rate this show and, if you have the opportunity to do so, if it offers you the opportunity to do so, to write a review. And this is kind of a fun way that you get to connect with me, because I read every single review that we have.
Speaker 1:So, without further ado, let me get into the first question, which comes from Jen. So Jen says Hello, this is Jen. My child's name is Helen and she is six years old. Helen is an extremely picky eater. It's becoming a daily struggle to get her to eat anything besides a few select foods. She refuses to try new foods and often throws a fit at mealtime. How can I help my picky eater like Helen expand her palate and make mealtimes less stressful, jen, this is a great question.
Speaker 1:To start with, and I am going to start. Before I jump into answering your question, jen, I want to first explain one of the fundamental principles that I'm going to be referring to over and over in this episode, and that fundamental principle comes from registered dieticians that I've talked to toddler food experts, people like kids eat in color, others psychologists, development specialists and pediatricians, and all of them agree that they don't agree on much. Right, if you put a pediatrician and a child psychologist in a room together and you add a dietician, they're probably going to disagree on a whole lot of things. But one of the things that seems to be a recurring theme in modern discussions of children's diets is that the primary job of a parent is not actually to make sure that your kid is eating all of the food pyramid every single day. It's not to track their vitamins and minerals, it's not to track their calorie intake. The primary job that a parent has, especially at six years old, but at any age, right, whether this kid is 13 or whether they're four, like it doesn't matter your primary job as a parent is to create or to help foster, I should say, a healthy relationship psychologically with food and eating. So I'm going to say that again your primary job as a parent is to psychologically help your child or foster in your child a healthy relationship with food and eating for the long term. Not did my kid have enough cruciferous vegetables today? Or did my kid have enough, you know, vitamin A today or tomorrow?
Speaker 1:And if any of this advice is directly counteracting or contradicting something that your pediatrician tells you, this is something I say in the membership all the time during group coaching. Because basically in our membership, which is a paid model for parents to sign up and then they have a weekly group coaching with me where I basically do what I do on this podcast, but I do it live and I do it in the moment, responding going back and forth with parents of their parenting struggles, questions just like the one that Jen just asked. But we generally, you know we're doing it live, and so one of the things I say on there all the time, one of the things that I should say here more, is that if I give you any advice on this podcast or anywhere that you see me on social media that directly contradicts the advice or the instructions that you're being given by either a mental health practitioner who knows your child specifically or your child's pediatrician. It is fine to ask that pediatrician or that mental health practitioner about my advice, but do not take my advice without first consulting them if it's directly contradicting them. So if anything I say about eating your food here directly contradicts what you're being told by your pediatrician, feel free to bring this to them and say, hey, I heard this podcast that I follow and I'm interested in your thoughts on this, but don't just completely ignore them in favor of me, because I don't know your kid's specific case. I don't know their specific body, nor am I a doctor, and that's actually another good thing to say here. I know I really should be answering the question, but I in this for this whole episode.
Speaker 1:I am not a dietician, I am not a nutritionist, I don't actually know about nutrition or diet. This is just me reflecting back to you what the best available research is that I've been able to find on these issues and then presenting that in a way that also brings in my background, which is in helping you implement this with your kids. So, jen, the first thing that I wanna say that I think about in your case, when you have a child like Helen, who is just absolutely refusing to try new foods and throwing a fit at mealtimes, is that to ask yourself the question am I fostering a healthy relationship with food and eating? If, every single day, the way in which we are doing mealtimes is creating anxiety or toxicity or rejection in food and mealtimes, I can promise you that is not going to, over the long haul, create a healthy relationship with food and eating. So that is actually more important, according to these dieticians who, again, their whole field of study is on diet. Their whole field of study is on what to eat and how to eat and when to eat.
Speaker 1:All of them agree on this, which is seemingly all the ones that I can find agree that it's way more important that your child has a psychologically healthy relationship with food and eating than it is that they get any sort of specific nutrient in any specific day, or that they try any certain foods, or that by age six, for example, your kids are eating enough vegetables or whatever. So, with that being the case, with that being said, the first thing that I would say is just stop, halt, take a step back and say is this working? And if it's not, let's just take a moment, and I'm gonna give you some strategies on how to introduce some new foods here in a moment. But let's for the moment say, hey, we're not gonna try and recreate or do some big thing right now. We're just gonna focus on grounding ourselves in the reality that we wanna create a healthy relationship with food and eating for Helen. So are mealtimes a good time? Are they an enjoyable experience? Is the act of eating seemingly enjoyable? Because what we don't wanna do is foster unhealth in those areas. That then leads to eating disorders later on, and I'm not saying that will absolutely happen.
Speaker 1:If you have a kid who's picky and you're having fights over who eats what every night, I'm not saying that your kid's automatically gonna have an eating disorder. But parenting matters and the way in which we are perceived to view our children's food matters. The language that we use about food matters we're gonna talk about sweets here in a minute. It matters if you call something junk food or not real food, right, like these kind of negative stereotypes about food that are grounded in value judgments rather than in factual data about, hey, you can't just eat lollipops, it's missing X, y and Z vitamins and it increases your sugar and your glucose levels or whatever. If your child is interested in Y, tell them why not? Just because I said so. So first thing I would do is take a step back. The second thing you can do to start to introduce some new things is to just do what I've often heard.
Speaker 1:It's called like a choosy plate. I think is what they call it, and the idea of this is that you are going to give your child a plate of food that has small portions right, so it might only be one strawberry or something like that, and At least one of the things on their plate is going to be something that you know that they like. So in Helen's case, there's only a few foods that she likes, but you're going to give her a very small portion of one of those foods and then you're going to surround that with foods that are maybe foods that you've tried in the past that she's maybe been okay eating if she's really hungry. I know I have my kids have that I have some really picky eaters and definitely my kids are willing to eat certain things when they're super hungry that they might not be willing to eat when they're less hungry. You know, when they just are looking for a snack they may be not willing to go for carrot sticks, but they might be willing to when they're hungry.
Speaker 1:So then you have those second-ring foods which are it's a couple of them that maybe they've had some positive experiences with, even if they might not choose that food as their primary source of nutrition, if it was completely up to them. And then you also have new foods on that plate and again we are going to go really, really small portion sizes and you're not going to make them eat every single thing on the plate. In fact, you're not even going to make Helen try everything on the plate. You're just going to present that plate as an opportunity for trying new things. Then we can do some other things too. So if there are foods that we, the next thing, the next step in this is as those foods are tried, and you'd be really surprised even really picky kids if they, if you do it in this way where you're presenting them, you know, a multitude of foods and in small portion sizes they may pick at some things that you're kind of surprised. Oh, I didn't think that they're going to pick at that and then they may ask for more of whatever the food is that they particularly enjoy. So when that happens, then you're going to say, okay, so this seems to be a food that they like, this seems to be a food that they want, so therefore we're going to give you some more of this or whatever, but you're only going to do that when they ask, right, so that's how you're going to start off.
Speaker 1:You can also do things like cutting food into fun shapes. That's a really positive thing. Some kids, you know, if you make it into the shape of a star, a kid might be way more willing to eat it. Kids are visual creatures, just like all humans, and so if it looks more appetizing, they might, they might be willing to eat it. You can, you know, make sure that your vegetables are cooked in a way that's enjoyable to eat. I mean, I can tell you I eat probably more broccoli as a vegetarian than the vast majority of the population, but I still don't like to eat broccoli raw and I don't even really like to just eat it, you know, boiled or steamed, with no seasoning. But if you put a plate of you know teriyaki broccoli out in front of me, I'll eat the whole thing, right? So the same is true for your kids. How can we make it more enjoyable to experience to eat? And again, this is increasingly creating a positive association with food.
Speaker 1:And then, the last thing that I'll say about this is that we have to temper our expectations about how long it takes for a child to enjoy a new food. Palettes, you mentioned expanding your palate. The action of actually expanding your palate takes a really long time. Like if most of us had to guess how many times it takes for our palate to adjust to a new food, whether that's, you know, something extreme in flavor, like curry, or something that's even less extreme, like salted broccoli. Many of us would say, oh, maybe like five or six times. No, it's more like 30 times, right? So so when you think about like oh okay, I'm going to put out broccoli on their plate 30 to 45 times before they may start to enjoy it. Now you can temper your expectations and go okay.
Speaker 1:So this, we're playing the long game. I want my kid to like broccoli from ages 18 to 75, you know, or whatever. I want my kid to eat vegetables from ages you know, 14 on. I don't really care if my toddler eats enough vegetables, because I want to create a positive association with food. And if your toddler loves vegetables and eats it all the time, that's great, but if not, that's okay too. Right, we're trying to work for the long term, so hopefully that starts to ground and you in some options and I may, even if we have time at the end, and if not, you can DM me or ask me to make a video about this on social media, or maybe I will just make a video about this on social media. I think I just will make a video about this on social media of the no thank you bowl, of actually how we can help kids expand their palate without even making them swallow. That's a whole nother thing.
Speaker 1:All right, let's get on to the next question from Bev. So Bev says hi, this is Bev and my child's name is Riley. She is four years old. She has an enormous sweet tooth. Riley consistently, constantly sorry craves sugary snacks and desserts. It's becoming a daily battle to limit her intake. I'm concerned about her dental health and overall well being. Good on you, bev.
Speaker 1:Could you please provide some advice on how to manage a child's strong craving for sweets and encourage healthier eating habits? Yes, I can, and some of my advice here is actually going to come from my own pediatric dentist, because not my own, I am not a child, so I don't get to have a pediatric dentist but the pediatric dentist that we send our kids to, who is really really well known in our area and it's kind of like the premier or the most popular pediatric dentist, and the reason why we take our kids to him is actually because he really agrees with kind of all things whole parent and positive association and thinking about the long term mental health outcomes related to dentistry even and so I'm going to give some advice from him here. And the thing that I will say about sweets is that what we're experiencing with sweets is the opposite side of what we're experiencing in Jen and Helen's case, what we just talked about with a picky eater, with kids who have a seemingly enormous sweet tooth. The issue then becomes limiting versus trying to get a child to try new things. And when you are constantly limiting sugary food that's in your house, I'm going to tell you right now that is going to be a really, really hard battle. It's going to be a really hard battle because your child has an inclination and certain kids especially have an inclination to go for that food. Because of their brain chemistry. It feels good to their brain to go out and seek out sugary foods. They get a dopamine hit from it and so, because of that, it's going to be really, really challenging for you. And so the advice that I got from my pediatric dentist that I actually kind of brought I like brought it to him and then he was like, yes, that's exactly what I told my patients is the real key with sugary snacks and fruit snacks and desserts and juices and stuff is just as much as you can to keep it out of the house. And I know that that might be not the advice, bev, that you want to hear for Riley or for your life, because many of us, as adults, enjoy sugary snacks and stuff like that. I will say that the longer you go without it, the easier it gets. It's kind of like any addiction in that way Not that I'm saying that addiction to sugar is the same as addiction to other things.
Speaker 1:Although we eat so much sugar in our society, it is highly addictive, there's no doubt. But, as with you know, even though it might feel to you like, oh, I don't want to give up my nightly bag of M&Ms or this or that or the other, absolutely, if you have it in the house, it's going to be much harder to create healthy eating habits around it. And I like how you said that, bev. You said how can I manage my child's strong craving for sweets and encourage healthier eating habits? Right, it's not just healthier eating, it's not just I, my kid, can't have enough sugar, it's how do I create a healthy eating habit? And constantly being like I want more, I want more, I want more, I want more, and like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can't have it, or I put it up high and it's out of your reach, and then you go get the stool, and then you go get it, and then I took it out as high and I put it even higher, right Like that type of cyclical activity can lead to a really kind of toxic relationship with sweets, which is it's something I can't have, but I want it all the time, and so it's much, much easier to just not have it in the house.
Speaker 1:And so this is what my pediatric dietitian told me too. He said you know, there is a real threat to dental health for parents who are really heavy on the juice, who do a ton of. You know especially gummy things like fruit snacks or just general. You know even hard candies, lollipops, stuff like that. Or you know, to a less extent, you know cookies and ice cream and stuff like that. But even those things have a really can have a really negative impact on dental health. And he said I still don't tell my parents not to give their kids that if it's in their house. I tell my parents don't keep it in the house as much as you can.
Speaker 1:And so this might mean that you have to have a new fun activity which is going out for ice cream, instead of keeping, you know, a gallon or a quart or whatever of ice cream in your house. This might be something that, no, we need to go out for ice cream, because actually that is a much healthier way to engage with ice cream. It may mean that you're willing to buy a candy bar at the store now and again, but you're not willing to, you know, keep the jumbo bag of many sneakers bars from Halloween for a super long time. It's just much better to have those things be things that they can have out than things that they can have at home. And what happens is that, you know, at their, at their total discretion, what happens is, if you're constantly limiting, eventually your kid's going to go to somebody's house and then there's going to be an unlimited tap there and they're going to just go nuts and they may eat so much that they get sick or they have, you know, a stomach ache or whatever, and that may deter them.
Speaker 1:But also and I've seen a lot of parents try and use that as a deterrent and I don't recommend that, I don't think that's a good practice that may deter them in the short term, but also it just kind of reinforces that. My parents, you know these are things that I should want and I do want them and I just I'm not allowed to have them because of, you know, whatever reason, and that's not a healthy relationship with food. So the best thing you can do is just keep it out of your house. That's as much as you can, and I know how big of an ass that is, especially people with multiple kids and you have older kids and they want it. Just do the best you can, and I'm not saying that you can never kid you give your kids sweets by far from that.
Speaker 1:Sweets and moderation are a really, really fun and engaging thing that you can do with kids. I am not like some sort of no sugar parents who never, ever done sugar. There is just stuff that you can do like not keeping in the house. That's going to really, really benefit you. And you also have to consider to the opportunity cost of having sweets in the house. And the opportunity cost of having sweets in the house is that your kids are less likely to be willing to be more adventurous with their diets when they're loading themselves up on just kind of carbohydrates all the time. And it's not that carbohydrates, again, are bad. Your kid needs sugar as much as they need, not as much as but your kid needs a full and balanced diet which includes some sugar, some carbohydrates. It's okay to do that it's just the opportunity cost of you know how many high sugar snacks and cereals can your kid eat, and then, when it comes time to eat dinner or whatever, they're just like yeah, I don't really, yuri, want that or care about that. Now I'm not saying that you should then force your kid right.
Speaker 1:The whole clean your plate movement that was very, very big for Gen Xers and, to some extent, millennials, is really toxic and it causes people to have negative relationships with food and I don't want to advocate for that at all. You will never hear me say that I'm gonna make my kid clean their plate, even if I'm going to, you know, go the extra mile sometimes to encourage my kid to try something. But I'm never gonna make them clean their plate. But they're way more likely to be willing to try something if they're not being constantly loaded up on other things that I would just like to limit more in their diet, and so just know that this is a huge struggle for me.
Speaker 1:I have some of my kids who have almost no sweet tooth. My oldest, I don't know. Maybe it was because he had sugar later, maybe it's just his you know biology, I'm not sure. Maybe it's just his palate, but you know he can. I basically don't have to worry about him having too many sweets because I can give him a lollipop. He may lick on it for a couple minutes and he'll just give it back to me. I'm just done with this, the exception being donuts. He loves, loves donuts and I just like love that he loves donuts. I just feel like he's kind of an old soul in that way who doesn't love donuts. Well, maybe that's just me, but you know he doesn't have this huge sweet tooth right. I have to constantly be worried about it. He's not like super asking for juice all the time or anything like that. But my other kids actually they have a hard time and maybe it's because they're exposed younger. I don't actually know, but but for sure they have a more challenging time as it relates to food and especially sweets.
Speaker 1:And so we have, just as a family, really really cut back on what we have in the house and I cannot tell you how much easier my life is when I'm not having meltdowns over. You can't have that fruit roll up that. You know where it is and it's in this drawer and you know I can go get it for you, but I'm not going to let you have it. It's much, much easier when it's just not there. So I cannot recommend enough just having less sweets in your house. And, by the way, it's been great for me too, those late nights when I'm staying up late and you know probably should be in bed and I'm whatever, doing whatever, and there's a you know gigantic Costco size box of peanut M&Ms out, or, like you know bin of peanut M&Ms out. I can't tell you how many of them I eat when they're just not in the house. It's amazing how I can't eat them and then I don't. So, yeah, that's what I would, that's what I'll say about sweets, but don't demonize them. Don't demonize them because, again, this is just the other side of the coin of creating a negative association with food and eating. And so, even if, even if they're having more sweets than you might like and you're trying to find other ways to limit shame, blame, punishment, these are not the ways to help your kid have a healthy relationship with food. And so you know, be, I guess, be a little bit more proactive in keeping it out. And this is a big thing around Halloween. I'm not even going to get into that. That's a whole nother conversation for another podcast episode, but it's a really good question, bevin. I hope that that helps you to navigate that with Riley a little bit better, easier.
Speaker 1:All right, before we jump into the last question with Jose and his daughter Amelia, I just want to make one quick call to action for you to share this with somebody in your life who has a kid who's in that early grade school age. This is the time four, five, six, seven years old when so many of eating, so many eating disorders have their initial seeds, get sown right, and this is a time when so many of us are developing, where our children's pallets are expanding. We're trying to develop good and healthy ways to deal with food and eating, and we have parents who just don't know any different right. They were forced to clean their plate, or they were shamed out of eating sugar, or they were told that, you know, certain things were junk food and certain things were good food, or they were told that all vegetables taste bad. I mean, it can go a whole different bunch of different ways and most likely you have parents in your life, in your kids' class, on your kid's team, at your faith community, wherever who'd really really benefit from hearing about a new way to view eating in this holistic way, and so share this episode with them even before it's over, right now. If you've enjoyed it so far, I bet they would have enjoyed it too. Just go into your podcast app right now, hit that share button and send it to one, two, maybe five. Send it to your whole contact list, if you want to right, send it to your kid's whole T-ball team, whatever it is. Just try and spread this message, because a healthy parent can get something that we all could benefit from, that we can all do better at, and so podcasts like this hopefully help you do that, and if it's helping you, I bet you it would help somebody in your life too.
Speaker 1:All right, so on to question number three, with Jose and Amelia. Jose says hi, my name is Jose and my child's name is Amelia. She's five years old and I'm having a hard time because Amelia never seems hungry for dinner. She often picks at her food and claims she's not hungry, even if she had a small snack earlier. I'm worried about her nutrition and her mealtime habits. Can you offer some guidance on how to encourage a child like Amelia to have a better appetite during dinner to ensure she's getting the nutrition she needs. Great question, jose. Thank you for asking it.
Speaker 1:The first thing I want to do right now, before I say anything else, is to double down on what I just finished, saying that I probably should have waited to say, but I didn't wait to say, I jumped the gun because I knew I wanted to say it, and it is that I am not part of the Clean your Plate Club. The Clean Plate Club should not exist, and so I'm not saying that you do this, jose. I'm saying that many parents who have children who seem to have a lack of appetite, according to the parent, do this, don't do it. Don't fall into this trap. This is the way Eating when you're not hungry, being forced to eat as a child when you're not hungry, is a surefire way to ensure that you're not going to have a healthy relationship with food and eating, and so never make your child clean their plate.
Speaker 1:It's just not a smart thing to do, and we can talk about ways of identifying whether this is an issue or not, but first and foremost, we're not going to address the concern by joining the 1990s or 1980s parenting thing of you have to clean your plate and you're not allowed to get up until you're done. And, man, I have seen the struggle of wills play out on social media so many times and I think I remember this video of a parent sitting there for like five hours or something with their toddler trying to force them to eat their chicken nuggets. Please, for the love of all that is good, do not do that. Do not make the dinner table a battlefield. I mean, don't get me wrong, sometimes the Thanksgiving dinner table in places become a battlefield for other reasons, but don't make the dinner table a battlefield over who eats what and how much, please. It's just not going to serve your child well and it's just going to be feel like beating your head against a wall because they're trying to listen to their body and surprise, surprise, they should. So the first thing to say is that. The second thing to say is whenever I hear somebody come to me and say, like they never seem hungry, they never seem hungry.
Speaker 1:The thing that you want to do is make sure that you're going regularly to your check ups, your pediatrician check ups, that you can have a scale at home. I don't necessarily think that it's great to have a scale at home, because weight is a number and there are healthy weights and there are healthy BMIs, but also those are really generalized metrics that we're somewhat rejecting now in the broader health community. Obesity is still real. Don't hear me saying that obesity is not real, but weight being a specific number, health is much more important than weight, and so you can have a scale at home and you can track your child's weight. But ultimately, if your child is developing and growing and gaining weight and having healthy relationships with their body and growing developmentally, just because you feel like they're not eating enough does not necessarily mean that they are not eating enough.
Speaker 1:People's bodies require different amounts of things and children especially especially kids as young as four, three, two and even five, like Amelia their bodies function differently with food than adult bodies, and so you can maybe know how much at 30 years old or however you are listening to this podcast how much food you need to take in to stay at a baseline weight, and that's something that can be established usually in your 20s or even in your late teens. Hey, I know, if I eat this many calories and I do this much exercise, et cetera, and this much stress and to keep a typical stress level, then I'm going to maintain a given body weight roughly. It's very different for kids. They can fluctuate their appetites, can just absolutely go crazy, big and huge swings, because their body can just take in different things at different times. They can get more out of a vitamin or a mineral, they can process it differently and I don't really understand this. I'm just trying to reflect to you my lack of understanding, my ignorance on this topic, to be honest. But what's been reflected to me by pediatricians, which is, if they're progressing well, we don't overthink that. And so if Amelia even doesn't seem like she's eating a lot, or she doesn't seem like she's hungry, but you're presenting her with food that is reasonably nutritious I'm not just not all lollipops and stuff like that but if you're presenting her with food in the way in which I told Jen to, with Helen, variable foods, whatever and then as a result, she's just choosing not to eat, that can maybe be completely fine. And then you might see, a couple weeks from now, a couple months from now, amelia goes through a growth spurt. This is especially true, by the way, for toddlers, two-year-olds and three-year-olds. They will seemingly eat almost nothing for weeks at a time and then all of a sudden you can't feed them enough and they're eating 14 bananas a day or whatever, and then they just shoot up in size, they gain a bunch of weight, they get much taller, and in a healthy way the kids can go through those fluctuations, and so if that's what you're seeing and experiencing with Amelia, that's OK, right that it's kids who listen to their bodies and identify what's healthy for them and what feels good for them. That's good, provided that they're staying on track. And so it may be that you need to feed Amelia a little bit earlier. You can try that.
Speaker 1:Some kids as they get closer and closer to their bedtime I don't know when Amelia's bedtime is at five years old I would guess hopefully around 7 o'clock-ish, and so if you're eating dinner, like many families do, at 6.15, you're getting really close to the bedtime. And then you get closer to bedtime. Our bodies don't necessarily crave as much food, which is good. We don't want to load up on food right before we go to sleep. That's not a healthy habit to build either. It's a habit that I kind of built. Some kids do need snacks before bedtime. Don't go and get me wrong. If you're kids craving that, give it to them, and other kids may just not necessarily get that hungry that close to their bedtime. So maybe try moving mail time up a little bit. Maybe she'll eat a little bit more, or maybe it is that she just is listening to her body and that's a good thing and that is the primary goal.
Speaker 1:Again, getting way back to where we were at the beginning of this episode half an hour ago, is the primary goal of parents is to develop a healthy relationship with food and eating. And if you're going to help your child to develop a healthy relationship with food or eating, you can't make them feel bad about eating. You can't make them feel bad about not eating. You can't make them feel bad about what they eat. You can't make them feel bad about not liking certain things. All of those things and all those shame triggers, especially around something that's so somewhat out of our control with appetite and taste and what we like and what we don't like. These things are not conscious choices and because of that they're so out of our control they can be real shame triggers and you do not have to go far.
Speaker 1:I bet you, if you talked to a half dozen adults, at least one of them would have some unhealthy relationship from their childhood with food and eating that they wish their parents had done differently. Now they may not be able to specifically identify that, but if you really sat with them and a therapist or a psychologist or a counselor of some kind especially a counselor who handles people with eating disorders you took your whole friend group. One of them probably has some childhood trauma and baggage around eating. And so all this to say, if that's our goal, we are going to. At the most, we can enjoy our time with our kids around the table and hope that they enjoy it too, and this kind of goes all the way back to the beginning again. But it's just another thing to say, hey, maybe we need to try some different ways of doing mealtime. Maybe we're going to do smaller portions and we're going to cut our food into shapes and different things like that.
Speaker 1:This is a good time to again mention the choosy bowl or the no thank you bowl, which is where you can have your child if you're trying to expose them to new foods, but they're not going to want to swallow those foods or they may not like the texture of those foods. You know, kind of have a little bowl next to you and it's a little gross, I'm not going to lie, but you can have them like take a bite and then they can chew it up and then they can spit it out. They still have exposure to that food to develop their palate without having to have the battle of swallow it. Right now you swallow what's in your mouth, so maybe it's possible that Amelia would benefit from something like that, but it's not guaranteed. Some kids just eat less and that is okay. That is good for them to listen to their bodies. And as long as you are hitting the benchmarks, that your pediatrician is not concerned, that you are tracking and aware that your child is not going through extreme weight loss or something like that, or not developing appropriately or on track, maybe this is just okay.
Speaker 1:And so it's really hard to be a parent. It's really really hard, especially around food, especially around all these things and not knowing what to do. I have felt so many times like, wow, I have a lot of parenting figured out and then meal time comes around and I feel like it just don't know what that to do. So if you feel like that Bev, jen, jose, anybody listening if you guys feel this way and you're just like man, I don't know what to do. Just know that I'm right there with you.
Speaker 1:It is hard to be a parent period. This is one of those places that it's hard. You may have trauma and diet good round eating. You're just trying not to pass it on to your kids, right? That makes it even harder. So just know I am with you in it. You are not a bad parent.
Speaker 1:If you've had any of these questions, if you're still struggling, if you listen to this whole episode and you go boy, that was some helpful information, but I still don't know what I'm going to do. You're not a bad parent. You're doing your best, and your best is always, always enough. So I hope that something that you can take away from this, even if it's just our mantra that we've been repeating over and over that our primary goal of parents is to help our children develop a psychological, healthy relationship with food and eating. Even if that's the only thing you learned, I hope that this is worth your time, because this stuff matters. Parenting matters, and I think you're doing a heck of a job.
Speaker 1:All right, we are at the end of our episode on eating and food, and so I just wanted to give one more shout out to all of the amazing accounts that I follow. Kids Eating Color is one of my absolute favorites. If you haven't followed them yet, go ahead and follow them. And to let you know that if you are not on the email list yet and yes, I know I always talk about it, but it is that good If you are not on the email list yet, you got to get on it.
Speaker 1:The email list is where we give the absolute best, that is, whole parent, the best tips and tricks, long form content, emails delivered to your inbox every single Thursday.
Speaker 1:And if I do anything whether that's release a course or open, you know, a special deal on the membership when I have a particularly cool podcast coming up. That's the place where I'm also going to reference that. I'm not going to spam you with a million different sales emails. I'm not going to be jumping down into your inbox every single day trying to get you to do this or do that or do the other. I am just going to give you amazing content every Thursday and along with that content, I may give you opportunities to connect deeper, and that's what the best of the email list is. And so if you're not signed up for the email list. Yet you got to be signed up for the email list. If for no other reason than you find out about the all the other amazing podcasts that you can listen to, whether I'm a guest on them or when I get you know guests to come on this one, you are going to love it. Okay, until next time. It's been a whole parent podcast.
