transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:05] Hello, and welcome to the M Is for Mama Podcast. I'm your host, Abbie Halberstadt, happy wife, mom in a 10, Bible believing Christian. And I think every mom out there is gonna enjoy and get so much out of today's episode because it tackles some FAQs that I get about kids, nutrition, getting kids in the kitchen without losing your mind, practical ways to address good food in your pantry and in your home, and just help you feel more successful as a mom who wants the best for her kids, wants them to gain skills, and still feels like she needs a lot of help in this area. Or maybe you feel like you've got a great handle on it and you just need some more tips and tricks. I definitely learned things from this episode and I think you will too. Enjoy. All right, friends, you have a great resource coming your way on the podcast today because one of the big questions that I get asked every week on my social media Q&A is about how to get kids to eat healthy, how to get them in the kitchen, and help them to develop more life skills in the kitchen and around food specifically. And then there's a lot of questions about picky eaters, especially with small children. And I have someone here who is able to address all of those things and has a really good background in the different facets that help us to understand why kids do what they do with food. So Katie Kimball is here from Raising Healthy Families. Hey, Katie, thanks for being on the podcast today.

Speaker 2:
[01:32] Thank you so much, Abbie. It sounds like I'm a good fit for all of those questions. I don't go super deep anywhere, but I have lots of interests, so lots of things we can talk about.

Speaker 1:
[01:41] Well, and I think in a 30 to 40 minute podcast, going super deep would probably be pretty overwhelming to parents. What I love to do is provide them with information as a jumping off point or really simple bite size practical things that they can start applying today. And I'm feeling you're going to be perfect for that. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 2:
[02:00] Well, I have been online since 2009, so I'm a bit of a grandma around here. My four kids currently are 2017, 14, and 11. And I started out online really just teaching families how to stay healthy without going crazy. I was learning so much in the baby and toddler years, and I have a heart of a teacher. That's what I went to school for. It's what I did before I had kids. And I just was always thinking, how can I help other moms avoid some of these roadblocks and speed bumps that I have been hitting in the kitchen? And through that, actually, I ended up launching another business teaching kids to cook. It felt like such a gap. I was hearing a lot of my audience as an old school real food blogger just say, Katie, I want to be healthy, but my mom never taught me to cook. Like, I don't even know how to cook at all. And so I was sort of like two mountains to climb. And even as I was observing my own behavior with my kids, the more kids I had, the less I was inviting my kids into the kitchen. And I don't know if you find that or if there's this tipping point where you have so many, you just have to get help. But I found that I was doing so much work in the kitchen. I was forgetting what the faces of the children I was feeding looked like. And I thought this needs to change. And I need to, you know, I'd always wanted to have them involved. But again, the busier life gets and you still only have two hands, you tend to go for what feels a little easier at the time. And so I was even seeing it in myself with the goals I knew I had. And I thought, all right, I'm a teacher, I'm a mom. I feel like I can step into this gap. Like I'm not a chef, but I feel like I can really help other families get their kids in the kitchen and teach them to cook. So that's been my mission for the last ten years is really to connect families around healthy food, bring them to the dinner table, you know, create those family bonds and give the kids the life skills that they'll need. Both when they are children and teens and when they launch and the benefits we've seen have just been amazing.

Speaker 1:
[03:56] I love that. And I love that on a personal level because I typically have invited my kids into the kitchen with me, but obviously when they're all really small, not only will your results vary, I mean, when they're really small, your results actually won't vary that much. They're gonna be a little bit messy or a lot of it messy. You know, somebody's gonna knock over the bowl of eggs that in with our family size, there's a lot of eggs in there. That has literally happened, like 18 eggs on the ground, you know? And somebody is going to, you know, drag a chair off over somebody's toe while they're trying to get to the stove to help you out. And then you're trying to keep people from touching the stove. So yes, 100%, I think so many moms will be relating to exactly, I don't have my kids come in because that just would make a job that's already a lot of work, even more work. Have you found any techniques or quick tips or whatever you wanna call it that have helped you to streamline that process of inviting your kids in?

Speaker 2:
[04:58] For sure, two hot tips for that. One is do not teach children a new skill in that witching hour right before dinner. Because first of all, you don't really have the bandwidth to slow down. At that point, typically, somebody's got an after-dinner event, there is a timeline and there is a deadline. That makes it stressful for you and for the child. If the child comes into the kitchen, they're excited to help, especially, they're younger ones, they're more excited to help. It's a negative experience. That's training their brain, I don't belong here, I don't like this, I don't want to come back. That's the last thing we want. For many, many reasons, we wanna be really intentional about that. Of course, right before dinner is when kids are generally asking. And so the answer is yes and yes, I would love your help, but you don't have any skills I need right now. Tomorrow after snack, I'm gonna teach you two new kitchen skills, for example, right? So I love after snack, after lunch, anytime where they're already in the kitchen, they're fed so they're not hangry, and you don't have a time crunch. And then if you think about cooking as a montage of skills, as opposed to taking a food from the fridge to the table, that's so much easier because you can just think, all right, I'm gonna teach my three-year-old how to measure a flat teaspoon. That's my goal for today. That's a very short, doable, manageable task. And so that helps our brains, and pulling it away from the stressful hour is gonna really help the kids. And then the second tip is to get the children at the kitchen table instead of in the kitchen. So part of the problem is that they are underfoot and they're in our elbow room. And so once you've taught a skill, let's take that measuring a teaspoon, and it's a three year old or a five year old, now it can be dinner time, and they can say, mama, can I help? And you say, yes, in fact, I need someone with the skill of measuring flat. Like, do you know that skill? And they're all excited, you can set them at the table with a little spill bowl and your jars of oregano and basil or whatever you have in that meal, and you tell them the size spoons you need. You can check their work, it's not gonna matter if they're a little too big or a little too small, going into your homemade spaghetti sauce or whatever you happen to be making, and they can take five minutes, seven minutes, right? It doesn't really matter because you're still trucking along in the kitchen. Plus the table, ergonomically, it's actually better for kids. It hits right about their belly button, and so it's much easier for them to just stand or sit or kneel on a chair if they're really, really tiny, and they're out of your way. So those are the two strategies that I would recommend any family employee. It does take a little intentionality, like you have to make a decision. I want to do this because this is important, and we can talk about that if you're not sure, if your audience has that motivation yet.

Speaker 1:
[07:41] I have an audience of mostly Christian moms, a whole lot of homeschool moms. Moms of many are drawn to me because they see someone that looks like them in a world that doesn't have a lot of people that look like them, and then I have quite a variety of other women, and a couple of men that follow along, but very, very family-oriented people. I think this is actually the perfect target audience for the tips that you're giving, and you said exactly what I was going to follow up with is that you're talking about intentionality. This isn't going to happen by chance. You don't have to make a spreadsheet the day before, but you probably do want to do a teeny bit of mental prep, if not a little bit of physical prep. I mean, most of the time you just take something out of a drawer, but at least a teeny bit of mental prep that, sure, has some leeway. In other words, if it ends up being that even though they're not hangry, they're still completely unfocused and it's a bad day for it, you can say, we'll try again tomorrow. But that prep ahead of time, I talk about this in a lot of other areas where you actually mentally prepare your mind and heart to do this thing because it's worth it to you, and most of my audience will think that this is worth it, goes so far. I mean, it makes a huge difference.

Speaker 2:
[08:55] Oh, absolutely. And let me give one more tip for the moms of littles with this, with specifically that measuring skill. One strategy that you need when the children are at the table and you're in the kitchen is a common vocabulary. You need to be able to direct them with your words without having to stop and walk over, oh my gosh, and show them which spoon is a half teaspoon. You know, your five-year-old might not know fractions yet. That's very common and very normal. So what we've done with my Kids Cook Real Food e-course is renamed the Basic Measuring Spoons, Dad, Mom, Kid, Baby. Oh, that's adorable.

Speaker 1:
[09:27] I love that.

Speaker 2:
[09:28] So easy for kids. And even if your family structure doesn't match that, it's, I promise I've tried every like permutation under the sun to try to make other people happy. Dad, Mom, Kid, Baby is the easiest. Tablespoon, teaspoon, half teaspoon, quarter teaspoon. That's perfect. You can just call from the kitchen, I need a mommy spoon of salt. I need a, you know, daddy spoon of chili powder, whatever it is, and just have those lined up. We even provide little recipe cards with like the picture of the dad or the mom and the number and the name of the herb or spice. So you can kind of just set that in front of the jar and have your bowl. And that way, like we've got four and five-year-olds who will make their family's homemade taco seasoning with seven ingredients. And it takes a long time. Don't get me wrong. Kids don't get quick. It takes a really long time, but it doesn't matter because they're engaged and they're working and their brain is working and their hands are working and it's beautiful. But that wouldn't happen without a little creativity.

Speaker 1:
[10:25] I love that solution. And also those are just more fun names than half teaspoon and quarter teaspoon. I mean, kids want to bring you a mommy spoon and a daddy spoon and a baby spoon, not a half teaspoon. So that's fantastic. So I have so many questions for you about this because this is something that I'm really passionate about. My kids are in my kitchen all the time. You know, sometimes the six-year-olds are, I don't have six-year-olds yet, actually. Five-year-olds are my two youngest. They'll be six this September. And there's two of them. And they'll be in there and you turn around and you're doing math with somebody. And they are just confidently spreading that peanut butter and squirting that honey on that bread. And you're like, I mean, on the one hand, this is amazing. On the other hand, yikes, like that's a lot of honey. We're not doing that. Yeah. And so, and then of course, now I have a 14, 15 year old daughter who is making most things from scratch and like kind of turns her nose up at anything that comes out of a box, which is really fun.

Speaker 2:
[11:27] You're making my heart sing.

Speaker 1:
[11:29] She's fantastic. She has a lot of natural skill for it. She just has the feel for it, but also just the interest having been in there all this time. So yes, I love all of this. Circling way back around to you're mentioning healthy foods and the fact that your background is in education rather than nutrition. And I think you mentioned something to the effect of doing something in a way that made it feasible for parents. I mean, you're already giving us tips, but like so that parents didn't feel overwhelmed. I know there's a lot of families listening that are like, okay, what's your definition of healthy? What should I be shooting for? Like give me some recommendations, break this down for me.

Speaker 2:
[12:07] For me, really simply, it's things that grow in the ground or animals that eat things that are grown in the ground. You know, like that is the absolute simplest. And if I can make it in my kitchen and it's made from plants, not in a plant, is another way to think about it, not made in a factory. There's a lot of processed foods. There's a lot of foods you can buy off the shelf. And if you flip it over and you read it and you go, all right, I have every single one of those ingredients in my kitchen, this is something I can buy. Now you're probably gonna spend 30 to 40% less if you make it on your own, right? So then that becomes a budget conversation is more than a health food conversation. But that's, you know, and also, then the second limit test would be foods we've been eating for at least 100 to 200 years. You know, so we're kind of creating new food substances now, and they do come from plants, but you don't understand, like, so there is really a food like substances rather than food. Right. And obviously, in each family, and then we have to say what makes our bodies feel good and what fuels our bodies, you know, and doesn't make us feel sluggish or brain fog or belly ache or whatever, because you can take a perfectly healthy food, like milk from a cow serves a lot of people's bodies, doesn't serve my daughter's body. You know, she happens to be dairy sensitive. And so, and so I do think this is a really important conversation to be intentional about as the grownups in the household, you know, passing our sort of food values, or to speak on to our kids, is it's good to be cautious about words like healthy and unhealthy, just because it can create such a black and white dichotomy for kids. And then that can create separation between people as well, as opposed to, you know, we choose to eat this because it really makes us feel good and it fuels our body. And I'm a person of faith as you are, so I would say this is what God designed humans to eat. And I want to eat the meat from the cow and the pigs and the chickens that God designed them to eat. I have a friend who actually worked in a factory where they made feed for cows and chickens, and they would get bakery waste. And so it would come like maybe it would be this huge pallet, we're talking like a four by four by six box of rice crispy treats, let's say, in its packaging. And the packaging goes right along and gets ground up into the food. And I'm like, oh, I know. First of all, cows are not made to eat rice crispy treats, right? There's a lot of substances in there that do not exactly grow in the ground. Cows are made to eat grass. They have four stomachs. They're clearly built to ruminate. But the packaging that goes right in it, like that is pushing it too far, I think, even for people who are fine with factory beef.

Speaker 1:
[14:48] Cows are having a treat.

Speaker 2:
[14:51] Yeah, right. So it's good. I think it's good to dig into some research. I think it's also good to not get too scrupulous about it.

Speaker 1:
[15:04] Yeah. Absolutely. Because we obviously have a huge uptick in wellness conversations online, which can be really positive. And I love that. I grew up homeschooled in the 90s by a pretty crunchy mom who got most of our groceries from like a health food co-op. And we very minimally processed foods. She made all of our food and we ate, quote unquote, wheat for breakfast, which was fresh ground, like fresh milled flour mixed with water with fruit in it and stuff. Now, I'm making myself sound way too healthy right now because that's not what I eat for breakfast now. But like, you know, I had a homemade muffin and two eggs and some raw milk this morning. So it's, you know, it could be worse. It could be better kind of thing. But I grew up with that as my background, but also we would have Little Caesar's Pizza and Pepsi some nights for like a movie night as a treat. You know, it wasn't like this, you will die if it's not the best thing for you.

Speaker 2:
[16:07] Yeah, I like to tell our kids that we can handle some junk. Like God gave us a filter in our liver and it's okay. Like we can eat some junk and we just need to see it as a treat and eat it in moderation and understand that if we eat junk all the time, that filter is gonna get clogged up and we're gonna start to feel really poorly. I think if parents could get their kids to understand the lesson of eat for how you want to feel and listen to your body, they'd be so far ahead. Those of us raised in the 80s and 90s, because I don't think anyone ever said that, like your tummy hurts after you eat. I wonder if it was something you ate. We just assume that the body, you have a tummy ache and I was never taught to think about observing what I was eating and looking for commonalities to figure out why I had a tummy ache.

Speaker 1:
[16:53] Yeah, almost as if it's a separate entity that there's no holistic connection. Yeah, okay, so we talked about the definition of health that we're working with and I think you and I are completely on the same page. Talk to me about the mom who's like, well shoot, I agree with you now and this is what I'm shooting for, this is what I'm trying to work toward incrementally. But I grew up in this era of packaged everything and process everything for convenience foods. My mom worked, I was a latchkey kid and I fed myself rice krispies or whatever. And that's what my body craves, it's what I'm conditioned for. I'm trying to get out of it, but it's what my kids have been eating. What do I do?

Speaker 2:
[17:36] The good news is it's always possible to change. I mean, I started my marriage buying hamburger help or bottle dressing. Everything was a budget decision and not a health decision in any way, shape or form. So for me, having kids was a revolutionary change. And so for me, for most women, I think baby steps is a really important piece of the puzzle. And that's what I started. My old blog was called Kitchen Stewardship. It was all about being good stewards of the gifts God's given you from your time to your money, to your nutrition, to the environment based in baby steps. Because if you try everything at once, we tend to crumple under that pressure. So I like to tell moms like just pick one thing, pick one ingredient or maybe one type of food. Like I'm going to ditch the munchy crunchy snacks, right? Or I'm going to, we eat mac and cheese once a week. I'm going to find a homemade recipe for mac and cheese. Just find one thing that you can change. And once that becomes a habit, you can change the next thing. When I was first starting my real food revolution, it was one a week. It was one change a week. And sometimes you get on board and then you're like, oh, I knew this and this and this. And it builds momentum. And it's fantastic because then you're internally motivated. The good news, Abbie, that everyone needs to hear is that your taste buds turn over in two weeks. We slough them off and we grow new taste buds and to children and adults alike. So to say, oh, like I have the taste for the processed foods. If you were to go cold turkey, if you were to cut out all processed foods or say do like a sugar detox and cut out all sweeteners for two weeks, your taste buds would completely have refreshed and a fresh raspberry would taste exactly like a Hershey's Kiss as far as the joy and the pop that it brings to your palate. So that's the good news. Only two weeks.

Speaker 1:
[19:25] That's amazing. I don't think I've ever actually heard that exact fact. I mean, I've kind of been like said in this space growing up with a crunchy mom and then more and more as we have gotten rid of some toxic things in our home with personal care items and been more careful about ingredients and all those things. Because even growing up in a crunchy home, I mean, when you have a lot of little kids, convenience feels pretty important. And I think a lot of moms hear, okay, so I have to make all my own dressings. I probably have to like roast and grind all my peanuts too, don't I? And I, you know, like things like that, which is more going to the extreme, right?

Speaker 2:
[20:04] Oh yeah. I mean, and that's why I preach baby steps is how can we, you know, if you do one baby step a week, that's 52 changes in a year. And so it may feel like you're not having really forward progress, but if you look back after a year and go, wow, like our eating has completely transformed. And we also know that some changes are going to make more of an impact than others. So, you know, if you're eating a ton of, let's say like deli meat, you know, you rely on deli meat and sandwiches. And we know that deli meat, first of all, it's super expensive per pound. That's why they rarely sell it in a pound package because they don't want us to see that actual dollar amount. And it has a lot, a lot of preservatives. It's, you know, a lot of questionable stuff in there. So maybe you just change deli meat to real meat, not even animals that have eaten the right things yet, right? But that's gonna be such a huge change for your family's bodies. And it might take two or three or four weeks to get used to that. Actually, I've just, I've been hanging out with a friend who had that exact goal. That's why I thought of it. She was like, dog on it. Like it really bothers me that we eat so much deli meat. And whenever we would have a conversation, she would get that too big to change mentality.

Speaker 1:
[21:14] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[21:14] As if she had to change everything at once. And so I kind of nudged her a little bit. I was like, well, what if you just one week, like don't say I'm going to change this forever. Just one, like next time you go to Aldi, just buy the family pack of chicken breasts and don't buy, you know, the deli ham and see what happens. And so then I saw her a month later, she's like, oh my gosh, Katie, I've been doing it. Like I put the chicken in the oven and he, you know, just baked it and sliced it. And that's what we ate on our sandwiches all week. And I couldn't believe how not difficult it was.

Speaker 1:
[21:46] Yeah, yeah. We do build things up in our heads and make them an insurmountable obstacle when so often if we would kind of just take the next step, it'd probably be okay. I do hear, I can hear the moms out here listening that are like, okay, but my child doesn't like, you know, chicken. My child doesn't, and you just address that to some extent because you said that your taste buds turn over. And so if you've got a child that's averse to something now, it doesn't mean that they always will be. I mean, I personally know this to be true because there are so many things I eat as an adult that I did not want as a child. And so I know one of your specialties is picky eaters. And so I'd love to go that direction because that is, like I said, probably one of the biggest questions I get asked on social media, Q&A, like, what do you do? Do you just force them to eat it? Do you make a separate meal? And I know friends who, yes, no, I agree. I know friends who had four kids and they literally made a baked potato for one, a Frito pie for another, an enchilada for one. And the, to me, exhausting. I was about to say, you talk about too much and insurmountable obstacle. That's what it feels like to me. I don't know that I would ever get food on the table if I had to make 12 different meals, you know?

Speaker 2:
[23:09] No, no, no. So eating is actually the hardest skill our kids have to learn. And that may sound like, oh no, I don't believe you. But you just mentioned like, well, okay, you know, you told us, Katie, that our taste buds turn over in 14 days. That's great. So it should be easy just to, you know, hold fast for 14 days and then the kid will like the thing they didn't like. Problem, the bad news, is that eating doesn't just use the sense of taste. One of the reasons eating is the hardest skill that kids have to learn is that it uses all eight of our senses at the same time. And so it's a very, very complex and multifaceted task. And there are 32 steps to eating. If you talk to the eating experts and kids, some kids will easily move through all 32 steps in the right order, naturally without any problem. But if a child misses a step or two, it can be really difficult to go back and fill in those steps. Some of the steps, in case you're wondering, include where the food touches your body. So imagine a toddler eating and they get food everywhere, right? Literally, if you get through your life, if you get to become a two-year-old or three-year-old, and your food has never touched your elbow, or has never touched the top of your head, or has never touched your forehead, you're missing a step in the eating process. And so no blame, no shame, no guilt. But there are moms who are wipers, right? They're constantly wiping the kid's face, and not allowing them to engage with their food. Maybe they're food pouch people, and the food comes out of the pouch, under the spoon, into the child's mouth, and the child is not experiencing that food with all eight senses. They miss some steps, and then it just breaks down this really complex system called eating, and they aren't able to engage with food in a natural, normal way. They present like a picky eater. Similarly, there's functional issues that play into eating. The child's chewing muscles, the way the child swallows, the way the child's tongue moves food around in their mouth. There's dozens of places that can go wrong. It's kind of like a car. You know, your car makes a bad noise, you take it into the mechanic, and you're like, any ideas on this noise? It's very similar with a child. You can go, well, my kid's a picky eater, bummer. And there's dozens of potential root causes from the functionality of the mouth and the tongue, to their senses being engaged, to the taste or texture of the food. But generally, it's not about the food itself. That's my whole, I have a TEDx talk called Picky Eating is Not About the Food, where I dive pretty deep into that. So I won't repeat that here, but go look that up. You know, if you really have a picky eater, it's a great foundation for just understanding like how you can look at your child and go, oh, like I need to really put my mom detective hat on and figure out why my child's having such a struggle encountering food and building a good relationship with food because although it can come naturally, it also can need a little help and a little nudge. So that's step one is for parents to understand how complex eating is. And then step two is to understand that it's a lot about the environment we create for our kids. So you said some of your audience will ask questions like, oh, should I make a separate meal for them? Should I just force them to eat? No and no, because the environment needs to be that of which the food that you want them to eat is the food that's in front of them. So the very first time you think, oh, my kid won't eat anything but mac and cheese. And then you feed them mac and cheese. You're sort of, you're playing into the problem, really, because you're allowing the child to have control over you and make their own food choices and they're not old enough to do that. That's not their job. That's the adult's job.

Speaker 1:
[26:44] Right, yes, exactly. I love the way you're going at this, but again, I'm always, every time I have a, people, when they hear my interviews, they're like, you're always thinking of the objections. And it's because with, I've been online since 2010, I think.

Speaker 2:
[27:02] OG too.

Speaker 1:
[27:02] So, also a dinosaur. And those objections are, a lot of times, just very legitimate, like whoever's expressing them, there's probably a thousand other people that thought the same thing. And so, I can hear them saying, like, well, shoot. Okay, so I've got a kid that I just thought was obstinate, but maybe he has some functional issues. I'm not a myofascial therapist, for example, which is all about like mouth and tongue and swallowing and muscles in your face. Like it's way beyond my pay grade. And we're actually doing some of that now because I have a child who is a little bit of a stubborn personality. That is actually legitimate. There's some of that in there. And as you say, is a child who is not ready yet to know which foods are the ones he should eat. So that's my job to help him with, but also actually has an issue where his tongue is not sweeping his food correctly from side to side, which I mean, raise your hand if you didn't even know that your tongue did that because it's not something that we actively register, right? And so like, for example, scrambled eggs feel scary to him to eat. That sounds like a really weird statement to say, but like he feels like he can't swallow them is what I've come to understand because when his tongue's not doing it correctly to take them side to side, he's not chewing them correctly. And then they feel like they're going down his throat without his control. So he panics and gags. And it could just be like, scrambled eggs are good for you, bud. Come on, get it together. Or it could be like, oh, I also wouldn't like to swallow something that felt like it was choking me.

Speaker 2:
[28:43] It feels like it's attacking you. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[28:45] Yes. Okay. So the mom that's like, all right, how would I know the difference? Do you have some practical starting steps for how to, like maybe the first three things you would do if you suspected that your child was having some functional difficulties?

Speaker 2:
[29:00] It's always about looking for patterns. So we want to look at, are there certain textures that kids can't eat? Scrambled eggs is a great example. You know, some kids just will not access like the mashed potato, refried beans texture. A lot of kids have trouble with real meats and crunchy vegetables. Real meats like chicken, steak. If we think about processed meats, chicken nuggets, hot dogs, sausages, they're sort of pre-chewed.

Speaker 1:
[29:25] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[29:26] And so if you can, if you realize, oh my gosh, I see the pattern. Raw veggies and tough to chew meats are a real struggle. That could just be a chomper problem and like facial muscles. And that also, I mean, looking for patterns is the same answer if we're thinking, what if my kid has a food sensitivity? What if their tummy feels terrible almost every time they eat because gluten and dairy are in just about every meal here in America. And gluten and dairy are really highly sensitive for kids. And so there are a lot of kids with undiagnosed food sensitivities or even something like constipation. 10% of kids are constipated that we know of, but tons of other kids are probably constipated. And it just makes them feel like full up to their neck every time they eat. And they think it's normal, you know, if they were to process it, that's the thing. A lot of this is happening at the subconscious level. But if a child were to process, oh, like I hurt after every time I eat, they don't process it. They just, the body sort of, you know, when you walk into a room and there's a big scent and you go, oh, I can't, like, I really smell the bacon or I can really smell the plugin. But after you've been in the room for half an hour, it sort of, it dissipates, your body gets used to it and it acclimates, right? It's the same thing with chronic daily pain. Our bodies sort of acclimate and we assume at the physical level that this is our normal. And if you were to ask a kid, they would probably, if they could articulate it, they would say, oh, I just figured everyone felt that way. That's like what our brain does to keep us safe. So it's up to us to be the detective mom or the detective dad and think what kind of patterns might I see. And ultimately, we probably won't be able to diagnose the sweeping of the tongue or the lack of tongue muscles to push food to the top of your mouth or the lack of chewing muscles. But if you can at least see some patterns, then you can have a guess as to what professional to ask. The good news, though, is that even kids who need professional help, whether it's physiological or whether it's more of an occupational therapy type of thing, the same foundations are needed for all children to be able to access that healthy relationship with food. And it's all about the environment, which is one thing that we adults can control or can at least manage to a very large extent. I actually heard from, so I have this picky eating challenge that I do, and we'll share, well, I think raisinghealthyfamilies.com/m Is for Mama, we can send people to that free picky eating challenge, and it's a five day, one action step a day challenge that really helps you set up the routines in the safe environment for kids to build a healthy relationship with food. But I had a mom from Australia who, five years ago, took this challenge, joined my picky eating membership, worked with me for about a year, and her child was beyond a picky eater. It's called a problem feeder. He had fewer than 20 foods. In the world, that he would let pass his lips, yeah. And by the way, like a Ritz cracker and a Cheez-It cracker, those count as different foods when you're talking kids. So fewer than 20. And she and her husband were wonderful. They implemented so many great routines and a really positive environment for their little guy. And he started bringing foods back that he had dropped. He started tasting some new foods that he had previously rejected through his entire life. And they hit a point where they thought, OK, like I think we've done everything we can. We're going to try some food therapy. And they went to the food therapist and she said, he's a really interesting case. Like he really does. He definitely needs help. He definitely needs therapy. But I've never quite seen a kid who doesn't fit in any of my normal boxes. And and then she gave them this was like the parent therapist meeting before the child met with a therapist. So she was giving the parents some homework for the next three weeks before she met with the child. She had observed the child. And every piece of homework she gave them was something they'd been doing for years that they learned from me. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's awesome. That's why he didn't fit in the box because he wasn't as severe as usual because he was okay with trying some new foods. He had more of an openness than most kids who are problem feeders who come to feeding therapy. And I was like, I knew it. I was like, I knew it's what, so for kids who are truly on the struggle bus to kids who are like the parents are like, I just wish they would eat some vegetables. You know, like they eat lots of stuff, but they seem to have an aversion to vegetables or whatever. All those kids do strangely need the same foundation. And then they go crazy lots of different directions. But everybody needs a safe environment where they can build a healthy relationship with food. Right.

Speaker 1:
[34:07] So screaming at your kid about what they're not eating is probably not on that list.

Speaker 2:
[34:12] I'm gonna go with that. Yes.

Speaker 1:
[34:15] And so we do something. And this has helped me to actually discern what is a preference, which I'm not going to indulge. Like if it's just like, I just would rather have sweet things than this, you know, good for me thing, then obviously that's not an option. Versus a seeming, like you were saying, paying attention to patterns. So we do something called thankful bites. So it's like, well, you had had this before. You don't know whether you like it. Someone made food for you. So you're going to take a bite out of gratitude and thankfulness that someone would make you food. You know, at least give me a thankful bite. And then sometimes, you know, it's like you can tell they like stuck their teeth on it were immediately like, oh, that's terrible. And they didn't even try it. So you kind of have to coach with that. And then some other times, I've been able to tell, especially with my mom that struggles with the, struggles with the scrambled eggs, that it seems consistent with the texture problem versus he doesn't like the flavor of it because it's not sweet or not salty enough or you know, chips or whatever. So it's not always that evident, but sometimes when you can have those little practices in place where it's like, at least try it as a thank you to mama for spending all this time in the kitchen, you'll at least be able to see if there's some similarity. Do you feel like that's a good practice or what would your thought be on that?

Speaker 2:
[35:44] I used to teach that, called it a no thank you bite, which I like thankful bite much better because of course, no thank you is setting up for the negative. So I used to teach that and then when I encountered Dr. K Tumi, who's one of the world's foremost picky eating experts, she was gracious enough to let me take her training that's usually only for therapists, but she's like, you're teaching this, you can do this. So I got trained by her and the trouble with that is, if we follow that through to a child who says no, so your kids must be accepting this and they say, okay, mom, I'll take the gratitude bite or the grateful bite. If a child says no, what option does the parent have? You can beg, you can cajole, you can threaten, you can bribe, none of those build a healthy relationship between them and the food they're about to eat, and it comes down to either you have to recant and say, oh, I didn't mean it. I didn't mean what I said I meant, which is like parenting sin number one, right? You gotta say what you mean when you say. Or you have to force feed them. I don't know about you, but once I realized that if we follow that all the way through to the end for a very stubborn child or a child who can't access that food for whatever physiological reason, it gets kind of ugly. And it's like you should never say something to a child that you can't follow through on or you're not willing to follow through on. So it's like, oh man, that doesn't technically that doesn't actually work. We can never require a bite to pass the lips. So the way that I adapt that is your grateful bite could go on their plate. You can say you need to take a grateful bite. You need to try to make friends with this food. It has to go on your plate because you could enforce that. I mean, that could be kind of ugly. We don't wanna go to go to blows or anything. That's what I'm saying, but you can enforce the bite going on the plate. And then they can choose if they just touch it, which is an encounter, and it counts for exposure. They might be smelling it. That's a good thing, especially for extreme problem feeders. Just to get the aroma in their nose is an exposure point, and that's gonna help. Ideally, I mean, most kids, most kids who would take the grateful bite anyway are going to try it on their plate. And you can make it kind of fun. You can be like, all right, I have anyone who's eating their taster bite, call it a taster bite or an experienced bite. Anyone who's eating their taster bite, let's cheers them, yay, woo, or whatever. But it's the requirement, and I know I feel almost weird saying it, but when we think about force feeding our kid and go, oh, that's the logical end to requiring a bite to pass their lips. We go, I guess that doesn't really work, does it?

Speaker 1:
[38:23] So I'm assuming that since, because again, I think the follow-up question would be, okay, so I hope there's some strategies for eventually getting the willingness to try the bites, because I can't just put taster bites on a plate every night and they never, and they eat air, you know, right?

Speaker 2:
[38:45] Well, I mean, if you're dealing with a picky eater and you're really trying to work on it, you do need to make sure there's a safe food in every meal, meaning at least one food that you know they'll accept. Now, if they're a mind changer and they change your mind and they just won't eat it that night, air it is. And we tell them breakfast is going to be delicious, let's go to bed because you seem hungry, right? Like these are legitimate parenting strategies. But yeah, there's never a requirement. The idea is if the environment is safe, no one's threatening bribing or cajoling, you know, we're not arguing about food. Hopefully we're not arguing about anything at the table. Then eventually most kids will encounter that food and give it a shot. Again, when we're not talking problem feeders, when we're not talking kids who have 20 or fewer foods, they're going to have something that they can eat in that meal.

Speaker 1:
[39:36] And I would say like as my own little tiny microcosm of like a eating, kids eating experience or experiment because I have 10 kids, my one that I've referenced several times is my only one that I would really say has a genuine block to being able to. So that's 10%, you know? I don't know if that's consistent with research at all because I'm just doing my little, like I said, personal research experience here, but if a parent listening is like, oh, well, it kind of sounds like they're all gonna have some other issue. We are actually currently working with a myofascial therapist and quite a few of my kids have things to work on. And I would say that in our current environment of nutrition and very soft foods, which maybe people know this and maybe they don't, but like what you chew affects your, you know, it makes sense. It affects your jaw muscles. It affects your strength, your teeth, all these things. And so in our current environment of so many processed soft foods, it's easy for the majority of kids to have something off in the way they swallow or their tongue posture or their chewing and swallowing, all that. And so I have multiple kids who have things they need to work on with tongue posture, suctioning their tongue to the roof of their mouths or the way they swallow or some teeth correction or things like that. But not all of them have food aversions as a result. So I guess I share that as if the panic is ticking up inside a parent's heart that, oh, so if I have three kids, all of them were going to be, you know, failing at this. This is a universal problem. I really don't find that to be the case. Do you?

Speaker 2:
[41:22] No, I mean, statistically, half to two thirds of two to three year olds are going to present with some picky eating tendencies. But given the right environment, most of them will turn it around on its own. I think what we're seeing right now in America, and it's just sort of parenting styles that have come into vogue, is a lot of parents are feeding into the picky eating problem. You know, they say, oh, my kid won't eat anything but mac and cheese, therefore I guess I will make mac and cheese. And you almost help build your child into that picky eater, because at two or three, it's very developmentally common. That's when they're starting to realize, I am a separate being from my parent, and I can say things that are different than my parent, therefore I shall experiment with this. Like it is their job to figure out where the boundaries are. And so if the parent allows the child to set the boundaries, that's gonna really change the way they eat. If we stop serving them real fruits and real vegetables and real meats and whole grains, they won't eat real fruits, professionals, whole meats and whole grains, right? Like, because they don't know that they exist anymore. And so it's really, really important to keep serving the foods you want your kids to eat, to keep expecting them that their taste buds will change. We use growth language a lot in my programs where we add yet to the end of a lot of things. Oh, you don't like that yet? Okay. You know, and just make sure that that's the mindset that we're building in our kids. The good news is even if you are someone who, like I just described, uh-oh, and you're thinking, I have built my child into a picky eater, that's okay. Like it's all fixable, it's all reversible, whether it's physiological or psychological, it's absolutely reversible. It just takes intentionality and it takes time. And the good news is that for all kids, you can supercharge the process by getting them exposure away from the table where they don't feel any pressure to eat, which is the kitchen coming back to kind of where we started. So it's a wonderful side benefit of getting kids involved in the kitchen and teaching them to cook and teaching them some skills of food preparation, that they're getting this massive exposure with many of their senses to a variety of foods, whether they eat them or not. And when kids might feel a little pressure at the table, even if you have unintentionally done some threatening or some bribing, it's very common to say, just eat three bites of your broccoli and you can have dessert. But that is setting up an external locus of control for our kids, we really want our kids to listen to their bodies and figure out what they want to eat within reason. Like I'm not saying put out a bowl of broccoli next to a bowl of M&M's. You know what I mean? Like our taste buds are designed to be drawn towards sugar, because sugar used to be rare, used to be hard to get. And so if you found a watermelon, you know, you're a bush woman and you found a watermelon, you're going to eat the whole watermelon because that was an amazing source of energy that was very, very rare. Now, sugar is not rare. Don't know if you've all noticed that, you know? But our taste buds are still the same, you know, we're still sort of created in the same way as the cave men and the cave women. And so we do need to, again, manage that environment. Desserts is a whole, I don't even want to get into desserts, it's a whole, like two chapters of my book. But, but we want kids to listen to their bodies and not three bites of this horrible thing called broccoli. Which, if you say three bites of broccoli to earn your dessert, you've made the dessert the trophy, and you've made the broccoli the drudgery. And that is not the mindset we want our kids to have. So, so don't do that. Cut doing that if you're doing it. So there's, I mean, there's a lot of little facets to maintaining this environment and creating the environment. It's not, the thing is, it's not that hard. Like it's really not that hard. You have to make a couple of decisions. I will serve my child what I want them to eat. I will not force them to eat anything and I will keep the stress low at the table. If you're doing nothing else and you do those three things, your child's gonna grow in leaps and bounds in their openness to new foods.

Speaker 1:
[45:20] Yeah, I think that the fortitude as parents to hold the line when we have children who are whining and pleading and convincing us that they will actually starve if we do not give them other options than the ones that we want them to eat. That's where we are the authority in their lives to be the adult with the fully developed prefrontal cortex that knows that this is what's gonna help them to grow, even if it makes our life harder. I think that that is a huge point that I just wanted to throw in there really quick is that you might have your life be harder before it gets better or easier in this scenario. And persevering through that in lots of parenting scenarios, including this one, is so rewarding when you realize you can do hard things and your kid can't do.

Speaker 2:
[46:09] Fortitude is a great word to use for this, Abbie. And I mean, it applies very similarly to food, to screens, to doing your homework, to going to bed on time, you know, like I don't think any of us got into this parenting game thinking it would be easy. Sometimes it's harder than we expected. But, but if you choose the short hard, you earn the long easy. And if you choose the short easy, you give your kids unfortunately, and yourself the long hard. Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 1:
[46:37] So well put. Absolutely does. Katie, thank you so much for taking the time to share your expertise with us. I know you have a lot of other resources. You mentioned the one that they can access with the picky eating challenge, and we'll put that in the show notes, but share with us where we can find you, what else you have to offer. Because I think a lot of parents are going to be really excited to have such practical resources at their fingertips.

Speaker 2:
[46:58] We have our kids cooking class, we have a teens cooking class, we have a life skills, we put together about 100 life skills workshops every year. We're on season five here in 2026, so we've got over 400 life skills that if you're thinking, oh, I could just delegate, if I could delegate some of this teaching and then I can just manage the household, I am here for it guys. So yeah, definitely go to raisinghealthyfamilies.com/m Is for Mama. If you are interested in that picky eating challenge or just raisinghealthyfamilies.com, we've got something free in all of our sort of verticals where you can start your kids cooking or your teens cooking and get a little taste of what we do.

Speaker 1:
[47:36] That is absolutely fantastic. Thank you, Katie.

Speaker 2:
[47:38] Thank you so much, Abbie.

Speaker 1:
[47:42] If you enjoyed the M Is for Mama Podcast, I would be so honored if you would subscribe and follow along, maybe share with friends or even leave a review. And if you want more content on motherhood and biblical responses to cultural issues, be sure to follow along on Instagram at m.is.for.mama.