How growing food helps kids even if they don’t eat what they grow – Food For Kids Podcast episode 79

Joanne Roach (00:13)

Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from The Foodies. It's nearly March already and although many gardeners will have already been sowing some early seeds, it's March when the real busy period of sowing and growing begins for most people who grow their own food. If you're a family or an education setting that grows fruit or veg with children, then you will already be aware of many of the ways it can be helpful and magical. But if you're new to gardening or you're not sure if it's for you, I wanted to do a quick episode to give you some ideas for ways it could be helpful for the children you care for and a couple of suggestions for super low key ways to start.

So let's start with the ways that growing your own can be helpful for kids.

The most obvious reason that growing food is great for kids is that growing food builds familiarity with food and that familiarity helps children to have more confidence around food and it makes it much more likely that they'll accept and eat new foods. Here at The Foodies obviously we're all about building familiarity in lots of different ways and growing vegetables and fruit is one of my favourites and it's the reason I got started with this project and writing the books in the first place.

Quite a few research studies have concluded that children who take part in gardening projects are more likely to have higher intake of fruit and vegetables than those who don't, so this is worthwhile reason in itself, and for those of you listening who have fairly fussy eaters, I can see the appeal of trying it for that reason alone.

But I do want to argue here that even if your child doesn't eat a single thing that they grow, you still will have benefited them in lots of other ways that will help over time to increase their confidence with food and with the world in general. And like many things in children's food, focusing just on whether something makes a child eat a vegetable or not adds pressure that's actually more likely to make them not want to eat it at all. A child that thinks they're going to have to eat the thing they're growing is less likely to enjoy growing it and then they're less likely to want to eat it out of their own curiosity.

So in the rest of this episode, I'm going to argue for all the other reasons that growing something is great for children, so that you can choose to do it for some of those reasons instead, and that will lift the pressure off you and your children to eat the results.

One of the great things about growing food is that it creates a more general understanding of where food comes from, how it works, what effort and time goes into creating it, how incredible and magical nature can be, and how important it is to look after the natural world. If a child understands that consistent light and water or good soil or weather is important to make a plant grow, if they see pests eating things or they accidentally neglect something and see the outcome. Or if they put care into a plant and see how it responds well, they can get a great idea of how we need to take care of our environment as a whole, how we need to help a balance of creatures in the environment and how much our food security depends on us taking care of our world. In an age-appropriate way, it gives us a chance to have conversations about caring for our world. And in education settings, it gives great context for conversations about sustainability as part of the curriculum.

A side effect of this increased understanding is also that it helps children with their own emotional development. Caring for a plant can help with independence, a sense of responsibility and pride in their achievement. It can help with coping skills when things don't go to plan and resilience if things need to be repeated. Gardening with siblings or in class groups can help them with turn taking, sharing tools, cooperative work on tasks that need more than one pair of hands, cheering each other on and commiseration and empathy when things don't go to plan. Being in nature itself can be wonderfully calming. It can help children to balance and regulate their emotions and feel the space around them. And being outside has documented mood boosting effects.

In terms of their physical development, gardening can also be very positive. There are lots of interesting tools and equipment in a garden and they are great for learning new bodily skills.

Not only does gardening require both gross and fine motor skills, but also a degree of switching between the two, which is very helpful. The fine motor skills involved can be super helpful for lots of other skills later on.

So for example, pinching seeds out of a packet to sprinkle for very young children can help the exact same muscles that are needed for holding a pencil later on for writing. The command of gentleness in their grip that is required for handling a seedling while you're potting something on, for older children can help with their ability to change grip for sports techniques or for handcrafts or art or some aspects of self-care.

Digging with a spade requires coordination between the hands holding the handle and the scooping of the soil without flinging it up into the air or the shifting of their weight onto a foot onto a spade to dig deep without wobbling and falling off. All of these are skills that are needed for gymnastic balance, handling sports equipment, coordination for things like

cooking, crafting, cleaning and other basic life skills.

Harvesting foods without destroying the plant that they're on also requires an assessment of force being applied, which may differ from one hand to another. So for example, one hand might need to hold firmly but gently while another hand pulls or twists with force. This requires quite a sophisticated sense of proprioception, which is a sense of our body's movement, force and position in space.

Watering plants can also be quite sophisticated. It requires holding a heavy container that becomes lighter as the water leaves it, as well as tilting and measuring by eye. It seems very simple, but it's actually quite a complex mix of physical skills.

Growing food can also involve a lot of scientific and mathematical skills. Understanding what a plant needs, measuring soil, estimating depth or wetness of soil, counting seeds, measuring growth, counting or weighing harvests, labelling accurately, comparing results. All of these are good basic maths and science skills. In younger children, seed sowing can be used for the basic skill of subitising, which is the ability to look at a small number of something in a group and know how many there are there without counting, which is a critical basic skill that maths builds upon later. In early years science, there's a lot of understanding about the world that can be explored through growing and being in a garden. And in primary and secondary school science, there's more sophisticated understanding of life cycles, seasonal change, plant science and experiments.

which can be done through growing projects in a much more wonder driven way that sparks imagination and curiosity and drives engagement.

Growing things also engages the senses in a way which is universal and inclusive. Most growing activities can be adapted to be inclusive to children with different skills or developmental needs. Engaging our senses can give us something in common and this follows through into the harvesting of the foods we grow and the cooking. We can grow all kinds of different plants from all over the world and both the growing and the cooking of the produce can be used to bring different backgrounds together using our senses and telling stories about food and culture.

That sensory rich aspect of gardening means it's a great basis for creativity. Children can paint, draw, talk or write about their gardening projects, as well as use natural materials in creative ways.

So you can see that growing a tomato plant or some lettuces might indeed help your child to consider trying a tomato or a lettuce, but even if it doesn't, it will probably help your child in a myriad of other ways along the way. And the main thing that I've seen year after year working with children in schools with growing things is that growing food is magical and memorable.

Children I taught who are now adults and bump into me still talk about things we grew a There's something so magical about a tiny tomato seed making a two metre high plant that yields 30 tomatoes. Or a handful of tiny wispy seeds making bowls and bowls of multi-coloured leaves that you can pick for salad over and over again.

I would argue that even if growing food never benefited your child in any other way, then this memory of something magic would be reason enough by itself.

Now, if you're listening to this and you're sold in theory, but you don't know how to garden or you haven't got any outdoor space or equipment, how can you do some growing this season? First, I'm going to suggest that you go back to episode 15 where I gave some examples of three growing projects for children and in the show notes I'll link to some articles about easy first gardening projects for kids.

But for you listening now, if you've got no equipment and no space, I'm going to suggest starting with one of those little bucket growing kits from the supermarket, because they have everything you need to have a little go at something with a kit. Or you can try out some cress seeds on a kitchen towel in an old Tupperware, no soil needed at all. Or if you're prepared to buy a £3 ish grow bag of compost and poke some holes in the bottom of a couple of old plastic food containers, then look in your local garden centre, big supermarket or homeware store for salad seeds that say cut and come again, which means you can pick leaves off them a few at a time to put on a sandwich and then more will grow. You can grow these on a window ledge and you don't need any garden. Pea shoots can be grown in the same way for salads and have bigger seeds for little hands. And there are instructions for that too in episode 15 that I mentioned before.

If you're feeling more fired up and think you can have a go at a few things, then I have a free download about how to sow seeds with children and things to watch out for to give you the best chance of having a calm and successful growing project with young children. I'll link to it in the show notes, as well as some articles about other growing projects on my website

and some links to other organisations that can help you to get started growing with your kids.

It's the end of February already now, so we're wrapping up our winter content and moving into spring in March. So I'll be back next time with March seasonal foods to explore and eat. So I hope to see you on that episode. And in the meantime, happy eating.