Latest / The Spiritual Parent: Mindful Tools for Raising Spiritual and Conscious Kids / Help Your Picky Eaters Try New Things and Enjoy Your Mealtimes with Jennifer House
Transcript
- 0:01Jennifer: Research shows adolescents who even have family meals three times a week they have a healthier diet, they do better in school, they have healthier relationships and they're less likely to be involved in risky behaviors like drugs and alcohol.
- 0:15Jennifer: So not that it's the food really that's doing that, other than the nutrition part, but it's the sitting down and connecting with your family right, like just even being there, because teenagers kind of you know, they go off on their own a lot locked in their bedroom.
- 0:31Jennifer: But even just a chance to be together it really has so many benefits for adolescents.
- 0:37Jennifer: And then the little ones, as you probably know lots about, they learn how to eat by modeling right, so they watch us eat and they learn how to try new foods by watching us eat them.
- 0:46Jennifer: So no matter, no matter the stage, I think those family meals are great to have when you can.
- 0:55Carrie: Welcome to Heart to Heart Parents.
- 0:57Carrie: Let's connect with our kids and learn together.
- 0:59Carrie: I'm Carrie.
- 1:00Carrie: I was a former teacher and speech therapist.
- 1:03Carrie: I'm also a parent of two spirited, gifted, highly sensitive kids.
- 1:08Carrie: I was quickly brought to my knees as a parent when I thought that I would see a rosy lens version of parenting, just as they present on Instagram, but I quickly learned that's not real life.
- 1:19Carrie: I will provide real life experiences and transform them into moments for connections and change for you to use in your house.
- 1:27Carrie: Hi there and welcome back to Heart to Heart Parents.
- 1:31Carrie: I'm Carrie and I'm here with a special guest today.
- 1:35Carrie: I have Jennifer House, who's a registered dietitian, a mother of three, an author of the Parents' Guide to Baby-Led Weaning, which I'm really excited to hear about, and she's the founder of the First Step Nutrition in Calgary, Alberta, which is really fun I don't think I've talked to anybody from Canada yet which is really cool.
- 1:56Carrie: So hi, Jen, Welcome to the show.
- 1:59Carrie: Thanks so much for being here today.
- 2:01Jennifer: Hi Carrie, Thanks for having me.
- 2:07Carrie: Is there anything that I left out with your background, that you'd like to share with us, or did I get most of it?
- 2:12Jennifer: I think you got it.
- 2:13Jennifer: Registered dietitian from Canada, mom of three, and I work a lot in family nutrition, pediatric nutrition so I'm really happy to talk a little more about feeding kids and picky eaters today, okay.
- 2:27Carrie: I love that.
- 2:27Carrie: That's really right up my alley and things I've worked with as well, so that's really fun, and I love that you use a more positive approach to picky eating, which is really cool.
- 2:39Carrie: So can you tell me why are kids picky eaters?
- 2:41Carrie: What have you found?
- 2:42Carrie: So can you tell me why are kids picky eaters?
- 2:43Carrie: What?
- 2:45Jennifer: have you found?
- 2:45Jennifer: Yeah, there are so many reasons.
- 2:47Jennifer: I like to talk about six reasons.
- 2:49Jennifer: Actually, kids might be picky, so the normal picky eaters.
- 2:54Jennifer: It's a normal phase between about age two and five, developmentally, because kids start to grow less, so their appetites might decrease.
- 3:01Jennifer: They start to become independent people and they learn how to say no, so they like to, you know, exert that independence.
- 3:08Jennifer: But beyond that developmental reason, there are a lot of underlying physical reasons why it could be hard for kids to eat, including nutrient deficiencies.
- 3:18Jennifer: So I had this issue with my daughter when she was four.
- 3:22Jennifer: I found out she was low in iron and low iron can actually lead to low appetite and therefore poor growth.
- 3:28Jennifer: So it can be a really bad cycle and a common one for picky eaters to get into, because they often don't eat a lot of meat or a lot of sources of iron.
- 3:35Jennifer: So I always like to look at you know, labs, if they're available, check iron status Okay.
- 3:41Jennifer: And they could experience pain while eating and this could come from constipation, it could be allergies, it could be reflux, it could even be cavities in their teeth and that pain can override hunger.
- 3:54Jennifer: So, you know, a child won't always eat when they're hungry.
- 3:57Jennifer: Sometimes that pain will condition them just not to eat.
- 4:00Jennifer: And then there's oral motor weaknesses, movement of the, you know the muscles of the tongue, jaw, lips, cheek, which you would be well aware of, and then sensory as well, which you probably have lots of training in, because we have eight different senses.
- 4:16Jennifer: All of them are used in eating.
- 4:18Jennifer: So it's actually the most difficult sensory task we do.
- 4:21Jennifer: So children can be under responders or over responders and any one of those senses which can make it tough to try new foods.
- 4:28Carrie: Yeah, yeah, and I've definitely learned my two with their sensitive moods.
- 4:33Carrie: When they're sometimes sensitive, sometimes they're not, I definitely don't introduce a new food when they're in their sensitive period or getting over being sick or grumpy.
- 4:42Carrie: I've really learned that with my two kids Allergies.
- 4:46Carrie: I thought that was really interesting that you mentioned that.
- 4:49Carrie: That's something my daughter has mentioned.
- 4:52Carrie: Sometimes she'll feel itchy in her mouth when she eats bananas or eggplant was when that really surprised me.
- 5:00Jennifer: So it was kind of interesting and yeah, it's really cool to when they're able to voice what's going on for them.
- 5:19Jennifer: Pharmacists, you know multiple specialists.
- 5:22Jennifer: Breathing can actually cause eating difficulties as well, and I've seen this, actually when I used to go into homes with an occupational therapist.
- 5:29Jennifer: She looked in the little boy's throat and she said he has really big tonsils.
- 5:33Jennifer: So that makes it hard to breathe, it makes it hard to do anything, including eating.
- 5:39Carrie: Yeah, yeah, we've had a little bit of that going on in our house.
- 5:42Carrie: We have kind of this.
- 5:43Carrie: It's like this chain reaction effect that goes on when they're sensitive to certain foods and then you add in the piece with the swollen adenoids and tonsils because they are sensitive to those foods and then they don't necessarily want to eat things.
- 5:58Carrie: So, yeah, it's like this little chain reaction.
- 6:01Carrie: So we're all just trying to tone everything down.
- 6:03Carrie: Right now in our house we're doing a pretty strict diet no red food dyes, gluten-free, dairy-free in our house.
- 6:10Carrie: So we're pretty, pretty locked down.
- 6:13Carrie: Oh, and yeah, definitely the red dyes.
- 6:15Carrie: We found red food dye in what was it?
- 6:19Carrie: Farm-raised salmon was causing my daughter to have eczema.
- 6:23Jennifer: Yeah, Wow, that's crazy.
- 6:26Jennifer: That is, and you know what Parents often think it's like sugar that makes their kids go hyper.
- 6:33Jennifer: But it's not.
- 6:34Jennifer: But actually food dyes can affect hyperactivity or sleep in children.
- 6:38Jennifer: So yeah, it's interesting.
- 6:40Jennifer: I hope you see some benefits.
- 6:42Carrie: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's.
- 6:43Carrie: We're definitely avoiding it and sometimes I feel like the crazy mama.
- 6:47Carrie: Yesterday my kids were served a Gatorade sorbet at an ice cream shop and for some reason I didn't think about the red food dye in this bright red sorbet.
- 6:57Carrie: But I ran over quickly and I was like, does this have red dye?
- 7:00Carrie: And they were like, yeah, it does.
- 7:01Carrie: I'm like, quick, switch it out for the vegan chocolate.
- 7:03Carrie: But yeah, I feel like a little crazy mama sometimes as we're going through this learning process.
- 7:10Jennifer: That's okay.
- 7:10Jennifer: We all have to protect our kids, you know, and for most selective eaters, really, they don't have an underlying cause.
- 7:17Jennifer: You know, if it's, if they're quite restrictive, then it's great to look into these reasons.
- 7:20Jennifer: But I find for most families it just tends to be a broken division of responsibility and feeding, which we can definitely get into.
- 7:28Jennifer: But that leads to, you know, battles at the table, fights over food, increased picky eating and, you know, perhaps it can affect the child's long-term relationship with food as well.
- 7:39Carrie: Yes, definitely, I was actually going.
- 7:42Carrie: That segues into, I was going to ask you some of the mistakes that parents make that cause these battles at the dinner table or breakfast table, any table.
- 7:53Jennifer: Perfect.
- 7:53Jennifer: And not that, you know, I ever want to blame or shame parents, because actually studies show that over 90% of parents use these tactics to try and get their kids to eat.
- 8:04Jennifer: Because we feel like that's our role to make our kids eat, to get them to eat more, to get them to eat their veggies, but really eat more.
- 8:11Jennifer: To get them to eat their veggies, but really the more that we pressure them to eat whether it's with even a reward chart or bribing with dessert or making them take a bite or the three-bite rule experience and actually quite a bit of research shows that that kind of pressure actually decreases a child's appetite, because they know when they come to the table they get stressed out, their cortisol spikes or appetite drops, and so they end up eating less overall and then they end up, you know, pushing back and not eating this food because again, they want that autonomy, they want to decide what to eat themselves without their parents forcing them to.
- 8:45Jennifer: So pressure is definitely one of the big mistakes, requires a big reframe of our mind to stop ourselves from, you know, trying to get our kids to eat.
- 8:54Jennifer: But you know, our roles are provide the food, so what food is offered, where it's offered, when it's offered, and the child's rules are if or how much they eat, so we often try and take control over that if or how much they eat.
- 9:15Carrie: Right, yeah, I think.
- 9:16Carrie: Do you ever work with the moms?
- 9:16Carrie: Sometimes, with that mom guilt we have, I think there's this pressure that we feel like if my child doesn't eat, they're going to starve or they're going to be lacking nutrients if they don't eat spinach with every dinner.
- 9:25Carrie: There's this piece that we have in our minds as moms today.
- 9:29Jennifer: Yeah, and you know, for most kids they'll get what they need over the course of a week.
- 9:34Jennifer: So we tend to look at it on a meal by meal basis like, oh, they didn't eat their dinner, they're gonna starve.
- 9:39Jennifer: You know, their appetite goes up and down and that's normal for kids.
- 9:43Jennifer: And I think you know, once we understand that maybe our expectations are a little bit bigger than they need to be, for how much in the variety that our kids need, I think that can help parents relax a little bit.
- 9:55Carrie: Okay, I like that.
- 9:56Carrie: That makes me feel good, cause I'm always thinking in my mind it's supposed to be a rainbow, but you are missing some colors.
- 10:03Carrie: We definitely get our reds and our berries in our house.
- 10:06Carrie: My kids love berries and fruits, so that's.
- 10:09Carrie: But yeah, some of the other colors.
- 10:10Carrie: Yeah, I like to try to loosen some of that pressure for ourselves today.
- 10:16Jennifer: Awesome, that's great.
- 10:19Carrie: Oh yeah, Go ahead.
- 10:23Jennifer: We're talking about mistakes.
- 10:25Jennifer: Do you want me to jump into more mistakes?
- 10:26Jennifer: Sure, go ahead.
- 10:28Jennifer: Okay.
- 10:28Jennifer: So the pressure?
- 10:29Jennifer: The pressure is definitely one.
- 10:31Jennifer: And then I think often the kids try and control the parents rules.
- 10:36Jennifer: So they try and control when they eat.
- 10:38Jennifer: So they'll often want to be snacking all day, headed to the pantry.
- 10:42Jennifer: They'll try to control where they eat, which ideally that's the parent role.
- 10:46Jennifer: Again, right, we want them at the table, family meals in a supportive seat, and then they try and control what they eat by saying I don't want this, you know, make me cereal.
- 10:56Jennifer: And that very quickly turns into the kid that only eats chicken fingers and fries because they know that they can get it right.
- 11:03Jennifer: Yeah, so being that shorter to cook is another easy trap that parents can fall into but just perpetuates the picky eating.
- 11:11Carrie: Okay, yeah, that that trap.
- 11:13Carrie: We we've fallen into that trap and it becomes that pattern, right Routine that they're used to Yep.
- 11:21Jennifer: They can figure that out.
- 11:22Carrie: Yep, I definitely have.
- 11:24Carrie: I've gotten there too, even a desperate mama that knows better we, we all sometimes end up in there.
- 11:30Carrie: So yeah, is there any way to decrease some of the battles that we see?
- 11:37Jennifer: Yeah, I think Ellen Satter has so many great resources she's the creator of the Division of Responsibility so if you need to learn about this concept, I would highly suggest checking out her website or she has a lot of great books just to feel more confident in the fact that you know it's your job to provide the food.
- 11:54Jennifer: You don't have to be the shorter to cook.
- 11:56Jennifer: You know you can set some limits, including the meal and snack times, but once that food is there, that's really you know your job and it takes the pressure off the kids, it takes the pressure off the parents and that, you know, will decrease a lot of the dinnertime battles and it'll help set your kid up for a healthier relationship with food as well, you know, if we let them listen to their one appetite.
- 12:16Carrie: Okay, and with three kids, do you feel like you have a good grasp on it?
- 12:22Carrie: Can you give us any pointers?
- 12:23Carrie: When we have a couple of kids that are demanding too, how does how does that look with multiple kids?
- 12:30Jennifer: Yeah, that can be really challenging, especially because they start to feed off of each other, right, and maybe you have one bad influence and you don't want the other ones to follow along.
- 12:41Jennifer: So I think it can really help to set some table rules.
- 12:44Jennifer: Maybe the child isn't allowed to say yuck, they can say they can say no thank, you, like if they don't want to try something, that's totally fine.
- 12:53Jennifer: They can just say no thanks Instead of ooh.
- 12:55Jennifer: That's gross and you know everyone around the table picks that up.
- 12:59Jennifer: So I think some of those table rules, and even if they don't want to eat again, that's okay, that's their job.
- 13:06Jennifer: But they can come to the table for, depending on the child's age, even five minutes and sit there.
- 13:12Jennifer: And I like to take the focus off of the foods.
- 13:15Jennifer: So we're not micromanaging who's eating what and how much.
- 13:18Jennifer: But maybe you know, if your kids are old enough, you can go around the table and have some of those, the little dinnertime conversation questions, just fun things, right.
- 13:27Jennifer: Like if you had a superpower, what would you want it to be?
- 13:31Carrie: Yeah, yeah, I love when we can connect heart to heart.
- 13:34Carrie: I feel like that brings us out of our our um, our nervousness or monkey mind brain and into our calm hearts and it really sets the pace for having a more calm dinner conversation and just trying things out and less stressful.
- 13:51Carrie: Yeah, that's great.
- 13:52Carrie: I love that piece.
- 13:53Carrie: So do you have any next level strategies for us as well?
- 13:58Jennifer: Yeah, absolutely.
- 14:00Jennifer: So.
- 14:00Jennifer: You know, the division of responsibility is great for all kids.
- 14:03Jennifer: Some kids might need a little extra support in learning how to try new foods, so in that case I like to have the family involved in food chaining or maybe some food play, which could look like you might be familiar with the sequential, oral sensory or SOS model of feeding, which is essentially play with the purpose, and the developer, dr Ketumi, talks about the 32-step hierarchy of eating.
- 14:32Jennifer: So you know, some kids just need to start at the bottom of this hierarchy of eating and get comfortable tolerating being around a new food, yeah, and then maybe they'll interact with it, right, like pass it to their, their parents, and then maybe they'll touch it, like with their fork and then their finger and then their whole palm, all the way up to, you know, smelling it, tasting it, eating it.
- 14:53Jennifer: So it can be a very gradual process for some kids to get used to these different smells or different textures or different tastes of food.
- 15:01Jennifer: So how we can do that is food play, and this is just away from the table.
- 15:07Jennifer: It's not really related to eating, it's just, you know, modeling, playing with the food.
- 15:14Jennifer: Like maybe we take a cucumber and, like roll it up our arm like a wheel or across the table or pass it back and forth and maybe they don't get up to the step of eating it.
- 15:24Jennifer: But even any of those positive exposures to food will help make the child more comfortable when they come to actually seeing that food at the table.
- 15:39Carrie: Yeah, I love that and the SOS.
- 15:40Carrie: It's been really good for my kids at home.
- 15:41Carrie: We've done it.
- 15:41Carrie: I don't know if, um, nack time would be a good time to do it for people when they're not feeling like you really need to get all of your nutrients in.
- 15:48Carrie: At that time it's less stressful.
- 15:50Carrie: We've.
- 15:50Carrie: We've done it where, yeah, we do the smelling and we work up to it.
- 15:55Carrie: For sure I love it and it's been really great because my kids sometimes the textures might look weird on, like a pudding or something.
- 16:02Carrie: They love to stick their finger in it, right on the plate with it, and it's been really fun and it's really helped my kids even just to touch it with their tongues sometimes just to get them to smell it and then touch it with their tongue and they don't feel the pressure like I have to eat this if I don't like the taste of it.
- 16:22Carrie: So it's been.
- 16:24Carrie: I feel like they feel more empowered with it and I love that where they don't feel cornered or they have to earn the reward ice cream at the end.
- 16:34Carrie: I remember I used to hear a lot of those rewards when I was little.
- 16:39Jennifer: Yes, and they do work in the short term.
- 16:42Jennifer: The rewards, but essentially what you're telling the kid is okay, you have to eat this nasty, gross vegetable, or dinner before you get this more desirable dessert that's now up on a pedestal and you're essentially creating a sweet tooth.
- 16:57Carrie: Yeah, is it, do you usually?
- 17:00Carrie: I heard once that it's great to serve berries and whatever dessert you're going to have with the meal, so it's not like you have to eat your meal before you get to the end result.
- 17:11Carrie: Is that kind of how you do it too, or have you?
- 17:14Jennifer: heard that I have.
- 17:16Jennifer: Actually Ellen Satter supports that as well.
- 17:18Jennifer: I love that idea and for kids, where this is just their normal eating pattern, it's funny because you'll see them go back and forth between, you know, the dessert and the main meal, or you'll have that kid that doesn't finish their ice cream because they're full right.
- 17:33Jennifer: So it's basically neutralizing food and not having those special rewards or treats or whatever you might call them, just kind of putting all food on a level playing field, which I think is great.
- 17:47Carrie: Okay, yeah, I think I need to try going back to that.
- 17:49Carrie: You always think of these great ideas, but then, in the heat of it, you're washing the strawberries after you've eaten dinner, because you forget during the time.
- 17:59Carrie: So I love that I'm going to try doing a little bit more of that and trying to neutralize a little bit in our house as well.
- 18:05Carrie: So I love that you mentioned connecting heart to heart with the kids.
- 18:10Carrie: Do you feel like that's something that you guys are able to maintain as the kids get bigger and as they get busier in their schedule?
- 18:18Carrie: Is that still a priority in your house?
- 18:21Jennifer: Yeah, you know it does get challenging when they all have multiple activities.
- 18:26Jennifer: But we do, you know, have family dinners whenever we can, and we know there's so many benefits to that.
- 18:33Jennifer: Research shows adolescents who even have family meals three times a week they have a healthier diet, they do better in school, they have healthier relationships and they're less likely to be involved in risky behaviors like drugs and alcohol.
- 18:48Jennifer: So not that it's the food really that's doing that, other than the nutrition part, but it's the sitting down and connecting with your family, right, like just even being there, because teenagers kind of you know they go off on their own a lot, locked in their bedroom.
- 19:03Jennifer: But even just a chance to be together, right, it really has so many benefits for adolescents.
- 19:09Jennifer: And then the little ones, as you probably know lots about, they learn how to eat by modeling, right, so they watch us eat and they learn how to try new foods by watching us eat them.
- 19:18Jennifer: So, no matter, no matter the stage, I think those family meals are great to have when you can, even if it's breakfast or brunch or what fits into your schedule.
- 19:30Carrie: Yeah, that's been really powerful in our house to have breakfast together and dinner together.
- 19:35Carrie: We're lucky to have both and we were definitely big sticklers at having the special chair, the stoke chair, with like the foot prop and the back prop, and my husband would check to make sure the 90, 90 degrees and yeah, we really.
- 19:52Carrie: It really helped both of our kids because they did not have a strong core, which we didn't know about when they were little, but we, looking back, it's like wow, that really helped to support them so they could come right up to the table and re-eat right off of the table.
- 20:06Carrie: Even when they were six months old, they were right there with us and it's just been something they've grown up with.
- 20:12Carrie: It's been really great to have that connection.
- 20:15Jennifer: Well they're.
- 20:16Jennifer: They're lucky that you knew about that, because that's the supportive seat with the footrest often gets missed and toddlers will be on adult chairs and their legs are swinging.
- 20:25Jennifer: And the parents are like, well, my kid won't stay at the dinner table Like he runs back and forth five times.
- 20:30Jennifer: I'm like, okay, well, what are?
- 20:31Jennifer: What are they sitting on, is it?
- 20:33Jennifer: A supportive seat.
- 20:34Jennifer: Is it easier for them to eat?
- 20:36Jennifer: Is it comfortable for them to sit there?
- 20:38Jennifer: So yeah, that's an important piece of it too.
- 20:41Carrie: Yeah, it was.
- 20:42Carrie: I think I looked like a crazy mama when my first one was six months old and we were getting ready to try solids.
- 20:47Carrie: He was reclined in his baby seat and I was like wait, this does not work, we need to figure this out.
- 20:53Carrie: But yeah, it's definitely.
- 20:55Carrie: It takes a little trial and error sometimes.
- 20:58Carrie: Well, jen, you're such a wealth of knowledge.
- 21:00Carrie: I have to ask you I always love to ask what is your superpower?
- 21:06Jennifer: Oh, my superpower is I am extremely tall so I can get anything off of the top shelf at the store and I often have people asking me can you reach that?
- 21:17Jennifer: There's some benefits, some drawbacks, like short pants, but that's okay.
- 21:22Carrie: Yes, I love that.
- 21:24Carrie: I would not have known, since I've only met you on here, since I'm in Colorado and you're in Alberta.
- 21:29Carrie: But I love that.
- 21:30Carrie: That's really cool that you get to reach all the tall stuff.
- 21:34Carrie: And I would be asking you, cause I'm five, six, so I would be asking for the tall things.
- 21:38Carrie: Yeah, that's great.
- 21:40Carrie: Thanks so much for sharing all of this and, jen, can you let our listeners know where they can find you?
- 21:46Jennifer: Sure, probably the best place to go is my website, which is firststappenutritioncom, and I have a blog there that probably answers all of your questions about feeding kids, as well as a freebies tab if you want to check out some more on picky eating or starting solids.
- 22:02Jennifer: And yeah, my services are on there as well.
- 22:06Carrie: That's great.
- 22:06Carrie: I will list those in the show notes and we really appreciate having you today and it's great to connect with more people that are passionate about feeding our kids and getting that healthy mindset with eating.
- 22:20Jennifer: Absolutely.
- 22:21Jennifer: That was fun chatting.
- 22:22Jennifer: Thanks for having me.
- 22:23Jennifer: Thank you.
- 22:25Carrie: Thanks so much for following along with us on our Heart to Heart Parents podcast journey.
- 22:30Carrie: I'm Keri and I am here to ask you for a quick favor.
- 22:34Carrie: If you've enjoyed today's episode, would you be sure to review us, rate us and give us a follow on any platform that you're using to listen to this podcast.
- 22:45Carrie: Also, we love when you share it with a friend.
- 22:48Carrie: That's super helpful.
- 22:49Carrie: One other thing we would love is if you would love to contact and reach out with us.
- 22:55Carrie: We now have an email.
- 22:56Carrie: It's info at hearttoheartlifecom.
- 22:59Carrie: Have a great week.