2 // When is it time to relearn how to feed your child all over again?
When is it time to relearn how to feed your child all over again?
These are the top things you may have mixed up the first time (or two) around
In today's episode, we are going to be talking about the blueprint for feeding your family and:
How to create a firm foundation for feeding your family and raising a child who has a healthy relationship with food
The roles you and your child each have at and around the table
Establishing healthy boundaries for more peaceful mealtimes (instead of living with the stress that comes from switching roles)
Creating consistency with a big picture approach amidst the minutia of meals and snack
This is an episode you will want to reference often, so be sure to subscribe to this podcast so that you can easily pull it up any time you need!
Connect with Ashley
On Instagram: @veggiesandvirtue
Online: www.veggiesandvirtue.com
By email: info@veggiesandvirtue.com
Listen to this episode of The Veggies & Virtue Podcast now!
Full Episode Transcription
Please note this a raw transcription. If something doesn’t read correctly, toggle to that timestamp in the show so that you can listen in on what was actually being said!
00:00 Hey friend, welcome back to the show. I am excited that you're here today and I'm excited to dive into probably what will become one of my most commonly referenced podcast episodes moving forward. And that is because we are going to cover a high level overview of how to feed your family. And I know that's a really tall order, but I also know that, you know, the time of this episode launching is right at the beginning of the year. And a lot of parents are just looking at their feeding dynamics in their family and ready for a shift, ready for a refresh with the new year and to do a new approach. And so I know a lot of you, you know, are reaching out saying like, how do I end the mealtime battle? Or my kid is so picky, how do I just get them to try something new or my child grazes all the time and literally barely touches dinner. How do I get 'em to take some bites without it being such a battleground for every bite. And I hear these questions one after another, year after year, and that's why I want to dive in today to help you with this and to give you the blueprint for feeding your family.
01:09 Hey mama, I'm Ashley, and welcome to the Veggies and Virtue podcast. In this podcast, you will find simple menu ideas, kitchen organizational systems spelled out for mom life and feeding tips and tricks that are both evidence-based and grace-laced. I believe that you can find flexibility when it comes to feeding your family so that you can feel calm, capable, and connected in the kitchen. As a registered dietitian and Christian mom of three myself, I want you to break free from the mealtime battles and to feel equipped while feeding your kids all day long. Pull up a stool at my kitchen counter, and let me pour you a cup of coffee and say a quick prayer for you. It's time to chat about the mealtimes, messes, moments and ministry of motherhood.
01:48 So today's episode, we are going to be talking about what the blueprint for feeding your family is. And really what I want us to focus on is making sure that we have a firm foundation to build on for feeding your family and ultimately raising a child who is going to have a really healthy relationship with food for all the years to come. But I know, particularly in the questions I get from parents, you know, I'm getting asked about the challenges and the pain points and, you know, the picky eaters and the kids that won't try the new foods or the carbivores who only wanna eat crackers, pasta, and bread. And you know, we're pinpointing this problem without looking at what is the foundation that has brought a child to this point. And so what I want you to walk away with today is a blueprint so that, you know, when you face a hiccup moving forward, or that when you're in a phase of just feeling like you're laying brick after brick, after brick, and you're not really seeing the big picture that you have a blueprint that you can go back to, that helps you to see and operate out of having a big picture in mind, and also to create some consistency with what your approach is because in the minutia of meals and snacks, every single day, it is so easy to lose track of what we're doing and ultimately why we're doing it for our kids and our family.
03:14 If we don't have a blueprint to help kind of guide us through and give us some reassurance when we do face those moments of uncertainty or those struggles in the feeding relationship along the way. And so today I want you to understand what it all comes back to, what the foundation for your feeding relationship needs to be based off of. I know everyone who's listening is coming at this from a different place. I know everyone's feeding journey has been really different, and this is of course, something we'll continue to address in all the episodes to come. But for today, I want you to be looking at your family's feeding foundation and to evaluate if and where there are holes and gaps, and also where you can adopt some of the aspects that I'm gonna be talking about so that you know you have the best plan moving forward.
04:07 So if you were to ask me, what is the best way to go about feeding your family with the big picture in mind and kind of what is that overall blueprint as we call it here, or the design or the pattern or the feeding philosophy or the approach you're going to take for feeding your family as a dietitian? The term that's often used is the division of responsibility, or sometimes you'll see it shared as responsive feeding, or you might hear it referred to as the parent provides, the child, decides. And really what this is intended to do is to give you as the parent a plan that you can build your family's feeding environment around. But I know that for a lot of families, the division of responsibility sounds like a very odd term and it doesn't necessarily help parents understand how they divide the responsibility in the feeding relationship.
05:01 And so that's really what I wanna break down for you today. And I want you to either screenshot right here, so you can come back to this spot in the episode and take notes when you maybe have your hands free, if you're out and about or unable to write this down now. Otherwise if you can grab a pen and a sheet of paper, I want you to very simply walk through this T graph with me and draw a very simple T graph at the top of a piece of paper. And as you do this, I want you on the left to write my job is at the top of the T graph. And then underneath that, I want you to write what your job in the feeding relationship is. And I want you to pause real quick, pause me and write down what you think your role in the feeding relationship is.
05:46 So pause, write it down and then come on back. Okay. And before I go ahead and give you the answer to that, I want you to do the same, the same thing on the other side of your T graph. I want you to write at the top my child's job, and this is their job in the feeding relationship is, and then underneath that, on the other side of the T graph from where you wrote what your job is, I want you to write what you think your child's job and the feeding relationship is. So pause me again, write it down and then come on back.
06:21 Okay. Now, if you've followed me or any other pediatric dietitian, for any amount of time, you may already know the answers to this. And if so, that's great because you're already a step ahead of where some other families will be that maybe have never heard of the division of responsibility, and don't have necessarily the starting place that you have in terms of what your roles or what we could say here is what your job in the feeding relationship is. And so, even as a pediatric dietitian, I wanna be clear and say that I understand it is a job to feed our kids. This is not something that just happens on its own. And honestly a lot of times the reason we mix up whose job it is is because we just don't wanna do the job. It's a lot of work. It is. And I will say whether you have one kid, three kids, 10 kids, however many kids you have, it is a lot of work, especially when we don't have a blueprint to bounce our ideas off of, or ultimately to refer back to. And so now below where you have written what you assume to be your job and your child's job in the feeding relationship, I want you to write down what the best practice approach and what I was referring to as the division of responsibility is for how we divide the responsibility in the feeding relationship between you and your child.
07:42 So when we use the term, a parent provides, a child decides when we're talking about the division of responsibility, what I mean by that is that your job as the parent is to provide, write these three things down: what food is offered, when food is offered and where food is offered. So those are your three jobs within the feeding relationship. And now under where it says my child's job is I want you to write this. They get to decide if, whether they eat and how much they eat. And that means how much they eat of any of the given foods that have been offered by you. And so, again, going back to parent provides, child decides, you as the parent, get to choose what you are providing for a meal or a snack, you get to provide what is going to consist of that meal snack in terms of the food and/or the beverages offered.
08:38 You get to decide when you are providing that food and you get to decide where you're providing it. You also get to decide when and so something we will talk about at length and upcoming episodes is the meal and snack structure and routine where this can often get out of whack and how this can often create some really big problems within the feeding relationship. When the parent has not assumed the responsibility of when meals and snacks are offered. And then another thing we'll be talking about in a deeper dive again today is just the blueprint. So we're not going into all the intricacies, but what, what are you offering at meals at snack? Is that a role that you are owning? Is that a job that you are doing, or is it a job that you have deferred to your child? Because often what happens is because our child's job is if/whether they want to eat and how much they want to eat of it, but very quickly we can let our child do our job, and we can think we should do our child's job.
09:37 And we have a role reversal in the feeding relationship. And so as you write this down and you look at it in terms of what I have recommended to you as being your job and your child's job, I want you to compare and contrast that with what you thought your job was and what you thought your child's job was, because I would bet that there has been some of you that are now looking at this and seeing, I have really had a role reversal with my child. I had been assuming the job of deciding if they ate and how much they ate by pressuring bites or requiring a certain number of bites, or, you know, having such a quantity measure of success on a meal that I didn't really care what they ate when they ate or where they ate it. I just wanted them to eat and in doing so, we often let our child decide what they eat when they eat and where they eat.
10:30 And so you can very quickly see how this gets very twisted up and tangled. And so that the boundaries are not well defined in a feeding relationship. One of my most favorite quotes about parenting, I heard on a parenting podcast with Janet Lansbury, if you've ever heard of her before. And it, it's just one that stuck with me. And it's one that honestly I have to go back to really often. It's something that has given me a lot of when it comes to boundary setting with my children. And obviously we have to boundary set with our children in a million everyday applications outside of just feeding. But I think there is such an obvious parallel with feeding. And so I wanna share that quote with you, and then we'll dive into it a little bit more before we wrap up for today. So the quote is by Janet Gonzalez Mina, I believe you say her name.
11:17 It says, imagine driving over a bridge in the dark, if the bridge has no railings, we will drive across it slowly and tentatively. But if we see railings on either side of us, we can drive over the bridge with ease and confidence. This is how a young child feels in regard to limits in his environment, seeking the railings that he needs to feel secure, a child will continue to test a caregiver until boundaries are clearly stated. Power struggles are a necessary part of the development of self for the child. However, the outcome must be that the child knows that the adult is in charge. Children do not usually admit this, but they do not wish to be all powerful. And the possibility that they might be is most frightening, indeed. Children raised without firm, consistent boundaries are insecure and world wary burdened with too many decisions and too much power.
12:05 They miss out on the joyful freedom every child deserves. My goodness. I don't know if that quote hits you the way it does me not just as a pediatric dietitian, but as a mom, I think I could reread, or in this case, re-listen to that quote every single day to just be reminded of what my role is and what is my job in keeping my child not just safe from harm. I think that's what we think of, you know, boundaries and the basics of the boundaries we put in place to keep our kids safe. But I think there's so many elements of this, that parallel so much to how we see our kids' interactions at the table and their experiences and exposures with new foods. And when we think of some of the timidity that they have some of the lack of freedom that they have to just explore new foods or the things that maybe come across as kind of frightening to our kids, it gives us a whole new insight into how these boundaries that we establish by doing our job of determining what, when and where food are offered actually helps set our, our well ourselves, but especially our kids up for success in the feeding dynamic.
13:12 But most importantly, just in finding the freedom and the autonomy and the independence that they're intended to develop and cultivate over time with the age and stage that they're at, but in an appropriate way, that is not burdening them with decisions that are not theirs to make. What, when and where food is offered is too much of a decision. And it gives as much as they're going to protest and pretend like they know better, and they know what they want. These are not decisions that are intended for our kids to make. There are a lot of decisions and a lot of boundaries that as parents, we need to put in place that are not appropriate boundaries for our children to be in charge of. And so I really wanna encourage you today. As we wrap up the episode for today, not so much to just dive into this feeding approach, again, I'm giving you the blueprint today, but I'm gonna ask you, please give me one week, do not go build a house off this blueprint, not today because whatever you've been doing so far in your feeding relationship, my guess is you've been doing it for longer than a day.
14:12 So if you could just give me one week, I want you to take as your homework to take the next week to just observe and assess the situation of what's going on at your home, observe and assess where are there boundaries that are very clear and in place. And you might see that there are boundaries that I have already decided what is being offered. We're already, you know, only offering one meal to the whole family. What is a job that I already own. That's not a boundary that, you know, I need to reestablish. I've clearly done that consistent with what my job is supposed to be, but you also might start observing and assessing over the next week where you haven't been doing your job or where your child's been doing your job, and you've been doing your child's job. And so what I want you to do for your homework in the coming week is at the bottom of this page, write down where those inconsistencies happen, write down.
15:00 When you see you operating out of a job, that's not yours, or when you see you allowing your child to do a job that's yours and start to identify where those scenarios are playing out. Because I think what you'll see if it's not obvious from the T graph above where you wrote, what you thought your role was and what you thought, what your child's role was versus what it actually is. I think you'll begin to see in real life applications where some of those inconsistencies are happening so that you know, what some of your starting places are in order to better align your family and your feeding environment with a division of responsibility. So again, if it's not broken and you're already doing something that aligns the division of responsibility, that is awesome. And hopefully that's one less thing that you need to address moving forward.
15:45 But what I hope is that you will see a clear starting place that seems like, yeah, this is something that we've been doing that just really doesn't support us following this type of feeding philosophy. And so this is something that we could use as our starting place to make progress on moving forward. So with that, I'm gonna wrap us up, say a quick prayer, and I will see you guys back here next week. Dear Lord. Thank you so much that you give us the opportunity to train our children in the ways that they should go, God, we come before you asking you to train us, train us in what those ways are. God, there are so many ways that we can mix up what our job is as a parent and God, we just we defer to you. We come before you knowing that, you know, our child, you know, them inside out, you know, their intricacies and their idiosyncrasies and to the insecurities that we have in knowing how to meet their needs and knowing how to love them to the best of our abilities.
16:43 And so God, we just bring, before you, the information that's been discussed today, we pray that you make known the areas or the issues that are opportunities for us to grow and to learn and ultimately to nourish and develop our families better than maybe we have been. And God, we pray that you not overwhelm us with a job that we don't feel capable of doing, but that God, you will equip us and that you will sustain us and that you will ultimately give us the knowledge and the ability that we need, not in our own doing, but in your doing through us to love our families well, to feed them well and to come alongside them in each of the days ahead, Lord, thank you so much for this time in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
17:33 It has been a joy having you on podcast today. And if you've enjoyed it as well, I have a quick favor to ask. Do you mind hopping over to apple podcast and leaving me a written review? This will only take you a hot second, but it truly blesses me every time I get to read what one of you write over there. And it allows me to bless others through this podcast and the episodes to come. The other thing that you can do is to take a screenshot of this episode and tag me over on Instagram at Veggies and Virtue, I would love to see what action steps that you're taking from this episode and also to support your family in the journey moving forward until next time. Thanks for coming over to chat at my kitchen counter. Remember that you will always have a seat and a snack waiting for you here.
