7 positive messages about food from 7 months of the podcast – Food for Kids Podcast episode 62

Joanne Roach (00:13)

Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. This episode's going out in the middle of the twilight zone of the holidays and so I wanted to do something a bit different.

The podcast has been running for seven months now. So as we come to the end of the year, I thought I would bring you seven messages from those seven months that might make you feel more confident about your child's eating as we head into the new year.

So coming up are seven short clips from some of our guests and I hope after you hear them you'll feel reassured that you're doing a good job. And I hope it gets you fired up to keep going on your journey to help your child develop a good relationship with food. So let's get to those seven messages.

Message one is that there's nothing wrong with you or your child if your mealtimes have got a bit stressful, if your child seems to find eating at the table difficult, especially evening dinner time, or if you're finding that you're dreading meal times sometimes too. Most families go through some of this some of the time and there are perfectly understandable reasons why. Here's feeding therapist Emma Fitzgerald from episode 51 to tell us some of the reasons why kids can find mealtimes difficult.

Emma Fitzgerald (01:25)

When they're asked to come to the table, an anxiety reaction is provoked because the range of sensory input that's required to sit at a table, the tastes, the smells, the sounds, mum's asking me to eat one more bite. I don't like the taste. I don't like the texture. Why do I have to sit here for so long? So immediately children are anxious, afraid, and the way that kind of comes out is, you know, a bit of a tantrum. And it's not that they're being picky or it's not that they're being a problem child. It's this deep rooted kind of anxiety and fear of what's going to happen when they come to the table. And the way I like to explain it to parents and caregivers is it's a bit like a phobia. So if I asked you to come to the table and eat 10 tarantulas, you'd be like, there's no way I'm going to do that that. And for children with these sensory processing difficulties, that's pretty much what it feels like.

Joanne Roach (02:28)

Message two is that you're not failing as a parent if your child's eating progress is very slow, if they cling to their safe foods, or they're very slow and cautious about trying new foods. Try to be patient, do keep offering opportunities to build their familiarity with foods, but try not to be frustrated if their pace is really slow. Here's dietitian Emma Shafqat from episode four to explain.

Emma (02:52)

If they eat their safe foods a bit, then that's fine. Always produce their safe Never don't have an option where there's nothing that they're gonna eat on that plate. Cause that's just gonna cause more anxiety. And actually you're better off starting  with just having those safe foods available to start with and looking at making mealtimes more fun again. Because there are basically  32 steps to eating and only the last few steps are actually eating the food. So sometimes you need to go through all of those stages first before your child's actually going to start even attempting to put that food in their mouth. Like I'd love to give people like a magic wand and just say like, right, just do this and your child will eat everything and it will all be fine. Because sometimes it's not. And sometimes it takes a long time. Change isn't going to happen overnight. And it's going to be a very small change. I always say to parents, write down any small changes. So like, even if you're starting with just changing the color of the plate or changing the cup that they drink with, that is still a change. And you know, your end goal might be massive and you might want them to eat broccoli or whatever you want them to achieve but you're not going to get there without these tiny, tiny little steps all the way through. So I think it's patience as well. And trying to block out some of that, you know, from family, why does your child not eat? What are you doing wrong? Because you're not doing anything wrong.

Joanne Roach (04:12)

Message 3 is that taking the pressure off the dinner table is key to helping your child to feel safe enough to branch out. All of the messages we were raised with and still get told to us by well-meaning relatives and friends about making children try one bite or making them eat what they're given is not only not helpful, but it usually has the opposite effect. More relaxing mealtimes where your child feels like they have some control is the key. And here is dietitian Kirsty Porter from episode 34 to explain.

Dr Kirsty Porter (04:41)

So it's about creating that atmosphere and that environment that supports curiosity and comfort. So that can look like having that no pressure zone at the table. Children learn through repeated exposure. And the less you push, the more space they have to engage with that food. The first thing I would tell you to do is start small. So choose one meal and remove all expectations. So what you can do is serve the meal, sit together and talk about your day instead of the food. So I always talk about this term called family style dining. And that's where you literally put all the food in the middle of the table and everybody helps themselves and that way even if your child doesn't want to try that food they can plate that food up for you and they can control exactly how much of the food that they want and then watch what happens because when that focus shifts from eating to connecting your kids start to enjoy mealtimes. Eating with kids is like snakes and ladders game. some weeks you'd be flying, making lots of progress, other weeks you're pretty much the same and then some weeks you'd be like, my word what's happened, we've literally gone back 20 steps. But that can usually be explained because if your child's over emotional, like school's coming to an end so total change in routine and structure, or there’s a heat wave like you know kids have really gone off their food so those are all reasons why sometimes things won't go well so don't fall into the trap of going back to your old ways because you're like right that's it this doesn't work anymore you need to keep at it so let's just take the pressure back and let's just focus on the fundamentals and just keep that and not push with all the extra bits for now.

Joanne Roach (06:15)

Message four is that building familiarity is the way to help children to accept foods, what dieticians call repeat exposure. You probably know that this is the whole mission behind my company The Foodies, to give children chances to meet and greet new foods without pressure to eat them, and to do lots of these exposures to food away from the dinner table. I have a workshop just on this topic, which I'll put a link to in the show notes, and all of my content and products are about building in little moments of familiarity to make new foods less new before they show up on your plate. So this one is obviously a message that's close to my heart, but here's Emma Shafqat again to talk about some examples of where to start.

Emma (06:56)

Getting away from the tables as well. So getting away and doing things like messy play especially with the younger children So we're just touching and playing with food, feeding the Teddies, even feeding the parents and just making foods sort of fun so that they can explore it. So doesn't have to be about eating the food, it can be about just getting them involved with food being in the kitchen. And even if to start with, they don't want to help you with the cooking, least getting them involved in laying the table even like I call it like what we call food rehearsals. So, you know, maybe they can be in charge of turning some music on and pouring water for everyone. Okay. Well, maybe their job next week can be that they serve everyone at the table, depending obviously on their age. So you can get them involved with food without actually them having to eat it to start with. And at the table just don't talk about food like you don't need to talk about what broccoli does or why it's good for you.

Joanne Roach (07:51)

Message 5 is on a similar note but more about broadening children's horizons to foods which aren't necessarily eaten in their own home but are eaten by families from different backgrounds. Even if your child is comfortable eating a broad range of foods in your own home, they may still be hesitant in restaurants with different cuisines, going to friends' houses who come from different backgrounds, or going on holiday to unusual places. So the work of building familiarity is just the same, but the tactics might be a bit different. In episode 53, I talked to dietitian Rachel Mujanovic about this and here's what she said.

Rachel (08:26)

It starts from building that familiarity at home that different people will be eating different foods around the world. And that can start off with simple things. So story books that children are reading. Can you find books that talk about different types of families and eating different types of food? Not for every single book, just having a few in there that build in that variety and expose the children to different households and understanding different cultures. And I think TV programmes, watching them together, cooking programmes, that kind of thing, are always ways of exposing children to things without them actually trying these different foods. Being a role model as a parent yourself, so showing curiosity about different foods, showing that it's safe to try different foods. You might not like them all, but it's nice to have a try and try to connect with people through food. Something that I'll often say in my household is try not to "yuck somebody's yum." often if we're exposing children to lots of weird and wonderful different cultural dishes, their initial response as children might be a bit… “that looks a bit yucky”. And it's fine to have an opinion on the food, but it's about trying to promote acceptance that we might not like it, but other people do. so let's be supportive of that.

Joanne Roach (09:49)

Message six is that cooking with children is a brilliant way to build familiarity and confidence, but it doesn't have to mean that you have to turn your kids into mini chefs or give over the kitchen to them to cook whole meals or recipes. Lots of everyday kitchen tasks are good for children to do, and we underestimate how many small, mundane steps are involved in getting a meal onto the table. They're all important to understanding how to cook and most of them can be practiced by kids. Chef Florence Rebattet gave us some examples of how to break this down in episode 38.

Florence Rebattet (10:21)

So I would say the first thing, explain the step-by-step recipe, but just don't go from A to Z. Like you're gonna lose the children. So if your first thing is, you need to wash the vegetables, okay tell them that. Go and wash the vegetables then they can do it. It doesn't have to be a full recipe, it's too much, especially if the kids are very little So you just go slowly, you can be like, we need to make pasta, do you know how to make pasta? And they don't realize that they have to boil the water. So it can be that simple like that. Take the saucepan, put the water, and by the way, tell them to put salt in the water because you need to bring the salt at the beginning of the cooking to make sure you get the flavours. And it could be just this. Thank you for your help and the child will realize that it is part of the cooking process.

Or if they like garlic bread, If you buy it already made, fine, just ask them, do you know how to switch on the oven to make the garlic bread? Hey, most of the time it's a big no. So you just take the child and say, okay, you turn this button on the right and you put it at this temperature and then you need to wait to preheat the oven. And they didn't know that you need to preheat the oven before putting your garlic bread in it. And when you open the oven, you just tell them, careful, when you open the door, the steam will go out and it will be really hot. So when you open the door, always go on the side. And you suddenly involve them in the cooking process. The kids also can be involved by just testing the recipe in the process, you know? I'm making the tomato sauce. Come, do you want to taste it? You take the spoon, you blow it. And realize that, it can be super hot if I lick the spoon straight. So you are teaching them that you need to blow on the spoon before tasting the food. And that is part of the cooking process. And it's like cleaning. Cleaning is part of the cooking process. And kids love putting everything in the dishwasher. So yeah, this is all my tips to get the kids involved in the kitchen.

Joanne Roach (12:35)

Message seven, our final message, is the most important and sums up the whole philosophy of this podcast. Feeding kids can be a tiring, nerve-racking, complicated and bewildering job, probably much more than you thought it was going to be before you started. And everyone thinks they're messing it up at some point, and most parents get frustrated or feel guilty about something along the way. But if you're trying to get it right, if you listen to advice from people who know what they're talking about, and then you trust yourself and your child, you will get there in the end. Here is midwife and health visitor Liz Priest from episode 57 to sum that up perfectly.

Liz Priest (13:11)

That is a really important message that this is all a developmental process. approach it really with an open mind and think one day I might not succeed with this, but the next day I might and just take it day by day, meal by meal. If you've tried breakfast and it didn't go down very well, doesn't mean that lunch won't go down very well. Nobody's perfect. Nobody gets it right first time, even if it goes right first time, guaranteed the second time it won't. And the fact that you're worrying about it shows that you're a good parent because you care.

It's very difficult when something doesn't go to plan and somebody said, well, this isn't working or the baby hasn't put weight on as we'd have expected. It's really hard to have those knockbacks, you become very hyper alert to thinking, Am I doing something wrong? Am I meeting my baby's needs? How will I know? Automatically your brain's thinking I'm going to protect myself by thinking everything's going to go wrong, rather than thinking, actually, that was one setback and the next bit might go right. Just allow yourself a bit of self-compassion and just because it's like that one day doesn't mean it's always going to be like that. Take a day at a time, it makes it easier and if you're really anxious about things, reach out and talk to people because guaranteed you'll be talking to somebody else who's either been there or feeling the same. Communicating with others absolutely is key to successful parenthood.

Joanne Roach (14:43)

So that's my 7 messages from the last 7 months. I hope that they have made you feel like you're not alone in this journey of feeding kids. You're probably doing better than you think, and other people are probably not doing as perfectly as it appears. And while there are lots of reasons why your child might struggle from time to time that are not your fault, it's also true that you can still make a difference. You can help your child to have a good relationship with food over time, and this is a marathon, not a sprint. So have some faith in yourself and your child.

This is the last episode of the year and so the next episode will be at the start of the month run through the seasonal foods of January. So have a wonderful new year and I'll see you on the other side. And in the meantime, really, really happy eating.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

00:56 Message 1

02:28 Message 2

04:12 Message 3

06:15 Message 4

07:51 Message 5

09:48 Message 6

12:35 Message 7

14:43 Summary and outro