Season 02 Episode 05
💬 Show Notes
Navigating the dinner table with a picky eater can feel like a culinary obstacle course. In this insightful episode, Will and CarrieAnn Stanfest delve into the personal nature of food preferences and the challenges that arise when children turn up their noses at their meals. They share their own experiences and practical strategies for dealing with picky eaters, emphasizing the importance of understanding that food issues are deeply personal and can be tied to past experiences or strong emotional reactions.
Join the Stanfests as they discuss the value of involving kids in meal preparation to increase their willingness to try new foods, and the importance of having fallback meal options that satisfy both parent and child. They also touch on the delicate balance of respecting a child’s food preferences while encouraging them to explore and expand their palate. This episode is a must-listen for any parent who’s ever faced a standoff over spaghetti or a meltdown over meatloaf. Tune in for an episode filled with empathy, actionable advice, and the comforting reminder that while we may not be perfect, we can all improve our parenting approach—one Connected Parenting Minute at a time.
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Season 2 Episode 5 of the Connected Parenting Minute Podcast
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Music by https://lesfm.net/
? Episode Keywords
Picky Eaters, Parenting Challenges, Food Preferences, Empathy, Mealtime Strategies, Family Meals, Kid-Friendly Recipes, Positive Parenting, Understanding Kids, Parenting Podcast, Parenting Tips, Family Dynamics, Food Issues, Trauma-Informed Parenting, Connection-Based Parenting
#connectedparenting #pickykids #mealtime #familydinner #parentingtips #healthyhabits #childhoodnutrition #parentingminute #podcast #familylife #parentingstruggles #empatheticparenting #traumainformed #connectionfirst
Show notes created by https://headliner.app
📋 Episode Chapters
(00:00) Connected parenting minute is a conversation about parenting using connection first
(01:55) Tonight’s subject is picky eaters
(03:31) Food and smells can invoke positive and negative memories, Mike says
(09:59) In light of food issues being personal, we have to find solutions that work
(15:03) We have to realize that our children are people, too
(15:37) Taste buds can change as you age, according to research
(17:15) Give them a fallback meal that you as a parent are okay with
(19:32) You have to take into account that every person’s relationship with food is different
Show Transcript:
Connected parenting minute is a conversation about parenting using connection first
CarrieAnn: Well, I worked really hard. And now you’re not even going to try this? Who do you think you are? I mean, it can really trigger some people very quickly, and I know I can be one of those people sometimes.
Intro/Outro: You’re listening to the connected parenting minute with Will and CarrieAnn Ann Sanfus. This podcast, is a conversation about parenting using connection first, trauma informed principles. Because when you lead with connection, everyone feels will see which is the foundation to a more peaceful home. This podcast reminds you that you don’t have to be a perfect parent, but we can all get a little better. One connected parenting minute at a time.
Will: Hello and welcome back to the podcast. So excited you’re here. My name is Will Standfest, and joining me this evening is the lovely CarrieAnn Ann Standfest.
CarrieAnn: That’s me.
Will: And, what a lovely evening it is.
CarrieAnn: That it is. It’s starting to be a little, fallish here in Minnesota.
Will: It is. It’s kind of nice. Except for the pumpkin spice.
CarrieAnn: Yeah, I tried. I did. I tried it. It didn’t go well.
Will: No, you don’t know. Were you the one that said it’s like drinking a pumpkin pie or something?
CarrieAnn: I think it was something like that. And I wanted to like it. I genuinely did. I was like, I need to find something to look forward to in fall.
Will: The answer is apple crisp. Yeah, we look forward to apple crisp. And that’s the highlight of the fall. Anybody who disagrees with me is clearly wrong. Oh, boy, we’re good.
CarrieAnn: Yeah. Well, I tried, and I realized I really don’t like apple pie or pumpkin pie, and so pumpkin spice stuff just doesn’t do it for me.
Will: It’s a little out of control this year. Did we see pumpkin spice pretzels earlier yesterday?
CarrieAnn: pumpkin spice, frosty from wendy’s. we saw that in the airport.
Will: Even sound a little bit good.
CarrieAnn: Okay, anyway, we digress.
Tonight’s subject is picky eaters
Well, actually, this is perfect because we’re talking about picky eaters tonight.
Will: That’s right. Tonight’s subject is picky eaters. Because I don’t know about you, honey, but I feel like I have a few things when our kids turn up their nose at something or spit it out after taking two bites or devour it one week, and then the next week swear up and down that they’ve never eaten it ever in their life, and it’s the worst thing ever. Some of that, I don’t know, bugs me.
CarrieAnn: That would be one way, I would say there’s a level of unsettling, that it causes.
Will: Maybe it’s very frustrating. Let’s be honest here. I mean, it can really drive a parent up the wall, because all of us that are parents have experienced a picky eater in some way or form. I mean, it happens. It’s a big deal. Like, we parents talk about this all the time of like, oh, my kid devoured spaghetti last week, and this week they threw it on the floor and.
CarrieAnn: Pretended to gag and pretended they were dying or something. Well, and here’s the other piece I was just thinking about. We’ve been kind of pre talking about this episode, but you have to do it every day. Like, sometimes, multiple times a day. So when you start talking about food issues, it’s not like you don’t experience that.
Will: It’s not like it’s something that comes up once a week.
CarrieAnn: Yeah, it can be a lot.
Will: Feeding ten people three times a day, you’re saying, is a lot.
CarrieAnn: I’m thinking our average listener probably does not feed ten people several times a day.
Will: Sure, I guess.
CarrieAnn: But that’s our life right now.
Food and smells can invoke positive and negative memories, Mike says
Will: All right, so in light of that, in light of that, picky eaters point number one.
CarrieAnn: Point number one is that food issues, they’re personal.
Will: To give it a good example of that, as we were talking about this earlier, I was thinking back to. I was thinking about fall and Christmas and all these other things, and we’re talking about food. And all I can picture, like, my grandma used to make the most amazing Christmas cookies. I don’t even know what they’re called. They’re like little round balls, and they like powdered sugar on the outside of them. They might have had nuts in them, I think. But I can picture them. And anytime I have one, like, at somebody’s house, and they have, like, an assortment of Christmas cookies. All of a sudden, I’m a little kid, and I’m back at my grandma’s house, and I can smell the smells and the taste and whatever. I see her little three tiered cookie dish thing, and it just brings me back to my happy place.
CarrieAnn: That’s a really good example of food smell. Really invoking positive feelings.
Will: Yeah, it was that and lemon bars. I think my grandma made lemon bars, too, and I love lemon bars.
CarrieAnn: I would say you do love lemon bars a lot. I need to put that in the rotation back to Mike again, because now I’m getting hungry. Yeah. So that’s one way that food and smells can invoke positive and good feelings. You think back to those times when something was really good, or it hits you a certain way, and it’s like, aha. That is so. Brings back such good memories. I think the opposite can be true. And now we tend to think about this sometimes in our trauma informed ways as a foster and adoptive family. And a lot of families consider this too, is that sometimes when children come to us, maybe a little bit older or they weren’t born to us, there’s a lot we don’t know about them, about their experiences, what has happened in their lives. As much as you get a file and a report and stuff like that, it doesn’t tell the whole story by any stretch of the imagination. We tend to sometimes look for things or be aware that maybe our kid has a bad reaction when we’re making cookies, but we can kind of go, all right, well, there might be something in that child’s history that has a negative association with that, because you think of like maybe a kid comes home from school and mom or someone just baked chocolate chip cookies, but then maybe there’s a domestic violence incident or something really bad happened. Yeah, something really bad happens. And that invokes fear and that invokes uncertainty and all these negative feelings. And when you have that smell, that strong smell, and then these negative feelings, it’s going to be really hard to.
Will: Separate those, your brain really hard encodes all of that together as a package deal. This is what I smelled when this thing happened. And it’s like hardwired into your brain. When you get into the brain science of how we process inputs in our world goes through our survival brain first, and then through our emotional brain, kind of our emotional part of our brain, and then up into the kind of logical reasoning part of our brain, which is good because it keeps us alive, because there are things that happen in your life where you need to react in a split second. You don’t have time to think and logically reason through what you should do.
Will: When you’re in a dangerous situation. But, when you experience a situation like that, that is traumatic, where it’s a very strongly negative experience. Those smells kind of get hard coded in there. There’s scientific research that talks about this idea that even more so than the sound or the situation that you viewed, if you smell something that’s associated with a traumatic memory, it will send you back like that. It’s a really kind of like a hardwired into your survival brain trigger.
CarrieAnn: I think to take that step because that’s obviously more. I mean, for foster and adoptive parents, we’ve dealt with a lot of that. But when you take it down, even to neurotypical kids are born to us, biological children that may have never experienced something to that extreme extent. There are also situations where that smells or taste or certain foods can invoke those feelings, but then our children can’t necessarily articulate them because I think back to a story when I was, gosh, I must have been like seven or eight, and it was big roller skating era. I mean, back in the. Gosh, it was. Don’t remember. Anyway, I was really into roller skating and I brought it to our whole neighborhood and it was a big deal.
Will: Nice trendsetter.
CarrieAnn: Yeah, that’s me. But we were out one day. I was hanging out with friends and stuff like that and totally felt fine. And then I remember puking up tuna fish sandwich and, oh my goodness, I know you don’t like tuna fish in the first place.
Will: Yeah.
CarrieAnn: But I very vividly remember how it felt. Just the ickiness of that and getting on my roller skates, which made me really sad. I mean, there was just this whole thing. I would not eat tuna fish forever after that. And I think my parents kind of got frustrated with me because they were, hey, what’s going on? You were eating this every day.
Will: You ate forever last week and now.
CarrieAnn: You don’t want, and now you’re not doing it. And I mean, it turned out that it wasn’t because of the tuna fish, it was because I ended up with the stomach virus. But, my brain did not compute that and I couldn’t articulate to my parents, I ate this and it made me sick and so I’m never eating it again.
Will: Right? That’s what I was going to say. I’m like, I bet you at seven or eight you struggled to articulate that you don’t put those things together really quite at that age. I mean, heck, there’s adults that would struggle to put that together if we’re being honest with ourselves. Right? And that’s really like an advanced level of reasoning to be able to kind of make those connections of, boy, the last time I smelled this, my body remembers getting sick. And so me smelling it makes me feel a little nauseous and kind of grossed out. And so I don’t want to eat it anymore. Like, A 710 twelve year old might struggle to say that.
CarrieAnn: Exactly. And so as we, as being parents, if we take that into account when we’re interacting with our kids, especially in food issues, we might have a little bit more empathy and compassion for maybe what’s going on that we don’t understand yet.
Will: Yeah, for sure.
In light of food issues being personal, we have to find solutions that work
All right. Point number one, food issues are personal.
Will: What is point number two, baby?
CarrieAnn: Point number two is that in light of all these food issues being personal, we have to find something, solutions that work for our child.
Will: Kind of like, there’s not a rubber stamp that’s just going to fix it. Right?
CarrieAnn: Exactly. So some of the things that we’ve come up with is. And, this one’s a hard one for me because I’m not the foodie. Like really not in our family. But it has come to my attention that having so many children, I don’t have a good memory when it comes to people’s likes and dislikes.
Will: Oh, yeah, sure.
CarrieAnn: Let’s just put it this way. If we do go out to eat and I make will do all the ordering, I’m just like, here you go, sweetheart. Because my response would be like, okay, we’re having tacos. Everyone gets two tacos. And they’ll be like, well, I don’t.
Will: Want this lettuce on my. I don’t want my cheese.
CarrieAnn: I’ll say, okay, you can pick it off. So you have a little bit more of a kind heart with that. And you will.
Will: You want to know why?
CarrieAnn: You really want me to? well, I know why, but go ahead.
Will: I was a pick eater when I was a kid.
CarrieAnn: And it all comes.
Will: Back around and I got shut down several times. Like, just eat what we bought for you. No, baby, I know that picky eaters are important, too. I’ll take your order in detail. Get it for exactly where you want it.
CarrieAnn: Oh, my gosh. My life just makes so much more sense now.
Will: All right, I’m not saying you have to do that as a parent.
CarrieAnn: No, but it’s just funny that we’re talking about this and I’m in hysterics right now because this is really funny. My point being that I am working on stretching myself and taking notes of things that certain kids don’t like, things that is not their favorite. We try to give them a vocabulary of saying that’s not my favorite.
Will: I hate that. Or this is the worst thing ever.
CarrieAnn: Exactly. Kind of like manners and food stuff all tied up in one. Yeah. I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes. But when we take into account what our children particularly care for or don’t care for, it shows them that we’re paying attention, even if we have to use notes, cheater notes, to do it. And we can anticipate when there might be food issues. So in a family as large as ours, I don’t always make food that, everyone likes.
Will: So, like, for example, a finished pancake is a dish that you like to make that most of our kids love.
CarrieAnn: Most of our kids love.
Will: There’s a few children that do not love it.
CarrieAnn: That is true.
Will: And you and me talking about that ahead of time, saying, remember so and so doesn’t like it, can mentally kind of set us up and put us in a place where I’m not going to be frustrated when that person comes in and says, I don’t want to eat that.
CarrieAnn: yeah, and pretty much exactly like that.
Will: I may have heard it more than once. I don’t know.
CarrieAnn: That’s true. And so that’s important to take into consideration when we are thinking about solutions that work for our children. Another thing we can do is offer to help, have them help cook the food. A lot of times when, kids have interaction with food, I mean, that’s a great way to connect. Anyway, when they have a steak in it, they’re more likely to give it a try.
Will: Yes. And for those of you that have not tried, this does actually work. I mean, not 100% of the time.
CarrieAnn: That’s true.
Will: But there is more than once where we’ve had a kid who hates a dish and we’re like, hey, baby, why don’t you help me come make cooked dinner tonight? And they bake it up and whatever, and then they’re so proud of it, they’re bursting at the seams, and they walk out to the dinner table and they devour it. You’re like, score one.
CarrieAnn: High five to mom and dad. Yeah. So it’s really important to brainstorm solutions that are going to work for your child. And on the flip side of that, it’s so that you can find solutions that work for you as well.
Will: Yes.
CarrieAnn: And I’ll tell you why this is important. When we are engaging in conflict over food or conflict on a regular basis over something, we as the adult can come into that prepared, especially when it’s a repetitive thing. And when we come into it calm with solutions that work for us, that we’re not going to be bitter or angry or frustrated about, that shows our child that we’re willing to work and we’re willing to work on that connection piece in our relationships.
Will: Well, you’re showing the child that they matter, what they think, how they feel, their opinions are important. You’re giving them a voice in eating, which is a very personal thing.
CarrieAnn: It is.
Will: I mean, honestly, forcing a child to eat something as much as in the moment. As parents, we feel justified in it. If you unpack that a little bit, I mean, that’s not really great.
CarrieAnn: It’s not great in the moment. Sometimes it feels like the right thing to do.
Will: It does.
CarrieAnn: We’ve done it so many times, I.
Will: Would say I’ve done it, but I’m, outside the moment and I’m calm right now.
We have to realize that our children are people, too
I’m trying to picture forcing some adult to eat something that they’re kind of grossed out by or they really don’t want, and that wouldn’t be okay.
CarrieAnn: Right.
Will: And we have to realize that our children are people, too.
CarrieAnn: Yeah.
Will: as obvious as that is to say out loud, it’s so hard to remember in the moment that their feelings really do matter. Like, they really do remember these things.
CarrieAnn: Right.
Will: Not that we have to be perfect, not, that we’re trying to put some crushing weight of responsibility on you, but just taking a deep breath and helping them feel like they have a voice and that the things that they like or dislike, you do care about it.
CarrieAnn: Right.
Taste buds can change as you age, according to research
Will: And so what are some other things we can do to find food solutions that work for us as the parents?
CarrieAnn: So one of the things that we kind of developed early on, especially with repetitive meals that someone likes and then someone may not like, there’s a little bit of reasoning sometimes in our family will be like, hey, taste buds can change. If you can try just a little tiny bit of it, we’ll be good. Now, I would say genuinely, we don’t force that.
Will: No, we don’t. we encourage it.
CarrieAnn: We encourage it, but it’s more. There is a research. I don’t know, I feel like there should be.
Will: The taste buds change as you age.
CarrieAnn: Yes. Okay. I just couldn’t pull it off the top of my head. It is a thing, and I know my taste buds have changed. So, yes, there is research. I can personally verify that taste buds can change. You’re laughing at m me?
Will: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
CarrieAnn: All right, so taste buds can change. And so if your kid is willing to give it a shot, that is a thing that can work for as a parent. Hey, just try a little tiny bite. You don’t like it? All right, we’ve got another plan.
Will: And I would encourage you to keep that light and playful, because if that becomes a power struggle, I guarantee you, you have just cemented in their mind that they will never like this food ever for the rest of their life.
CarrieAnn: Yeah, we have some kids that do that.
Will: And so keep it playful. Keep it light. Just say, hey, baby. Sometimes our taste buds change. You haven’t tasted it in a while. Could you just take a bite of it for me? Maybe we could put a little salt on it. Maybe we could put a little pepper on it.
CarrieAnn: Or ranch.
Will: So much ranch. Just dump a bucket of thing of ranch on it.
CarrieAnn: Always eat stuff with ranch. All right.
Give them a fallback meal that you as a parent are okay with
But then it comes to the next part of this, which is really important as me. Something that I’ve been able to go to is coming up with meal ideas that after I’ve cooked in the kitchen for several hours and they turn their nose up at the food for whatever reason, they have things. I can go, okay, baby, well, you can make this, this or this. And we’re talking about like older kids, we’re talking about ten and up. I mean, I guess our seven year.
Will: Old can do that, our seven year old could do that. But simple things like peanut butter sandwich, toast, ramen ramen, just something really easy and simple that doesn’t create a lot of mess, doesn’t need a lot of prep, something the child can make themselves. They don’t need help from us to make a different meal for them.
Will: But giving them a kind of bailout fallback meal that you as a parent are okay with, you feel like is reasonably nutritious, it has enough protein or the type of nutrients they are trying to get into your child at this point in time that they need.
Will: Just have something you can fall back on that you as a parent get to choose. You can say I am okay if they eat this instead, as long as they make it and.
Will: Just kind of leave it at that.
CarrieAnn: You just make it light and easy because it’s so easy to get wrapped up in those food issues because it becomes personal to us. Well, I worked really hard and now you’re not even going to try this. Who do you think you are? I mean, it can really trigger some people very quickly. And I know I can be one of those people. Sometimes we just want to evaluate what are we going to be okay with and try to be flexible in that, in the sense that maybe go a little bit beyond where you’re comfortable and say, well, is it really that big of a deal? If I know that they don’t like this meal, that I go ahead and fry up some m eggs for them because I know they’ll eat the eggs and I know they won’t eat this, but I could be really nice to them while I’m waiting for this meal to finish.
Will: And if you’ve got a foster adoptive kid, and you go out of your way to kind of prepare them a little food. You know, they like, you’re really expressing love and value. They feel very seen. Wow. They knew I didn’t like that, and they made me my favorite type of eggs. That feels really good. That’s really good for connection. That’s really good for building those relationships with your kiddos.
CarrieAnn: It really is.
You have to take into account that every person’s relationship with food is different
Will: I think we’ve given you a lot of stuff today, so let’s back up and run through our three main points here, and, we’ll head out of here.
CarrieAnn: So the first point is that food issues are personal. You have to take into account that every person’s relationship with food is different.
Will: And everybody has experiences or situations they’ve been in. And that smell is really hardwired into your fear response. So we got to take that into account when we’re talking about food issues.
CarrieAnn: And being the parent, we get to be the detective in our kids lives to kind of uncover some of that stuff.
Will: Yes, absolutely. And point number two, find solutions that work for your child.
CarrieAnn: It’s important to consider where they’re at and find ways to incorporate them into preparing food and other things that will work for them. And then our third point is, find solutions that work for you.
Will: And I think the fallback meals is one that really connects with me on that part of the discussion. And so I really encourage you guys to really think through these things. And the one little thing you said at the end there.
Will: It can really trigger me when they don’t like the food that I prepared, I work so hard on. It’s like, well, we should unpack that, right? I mean, if that’s you as a parent, you should spend some time reflecting on that. Why does it bother me so much? Because I know that I’ve gotten chewed on as a child when I didn’t eat like I wanted to, and then that’s kind of my natural reaction if I don’t take the time to calm down and parent the way I want to.
CarrieAnn: Exactly.
Will: It’s something to think about, something to help. So, again, thank you so much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate each one of our listeners. If you want to get in contact with us, reach out at our email address, check out our website. There’s lots of different ways we want to interact. and before we go, we want to remind you,
CarrieAnn: You don’t have to be a perfect parent,
Will: but we can all get a little bit better. One connected parenting minute at a time.
Outro: Thanks for listening to my mom and dad’s podcast. Make sure you hit the subscribe button and hit the like button like 10 billion times. Yeah.
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