3 // Is your anxiety around food hurting your kid’s appetite?
Is your anxiety around food hurting your kid’s appetite?
How to overcome underlying anxiety so your kid is free from the bribing, body shame, dieting, and other issues with food (that you’ve felt)
In today's episode, we take a deep dive into discussing some of the more personal aspects of feeding and:
How filling in the blank is holding you back, "I have my own stuff, but for my kid I just want _______________."
The unaddressed insecurities you may face in your own relationship with food (and how they may be impacting your child)
The anxieties about feeding you feel, your child experiences, and the ineffective interplay you may be experiencing when worry and anxiety impact appetite
What you can do to move forward (without getting ahead of yourself)
This isn't the easiest episode to listen to nor apply, but tuning in with your head and your heart can be one of the biggest impetus to change if you're ready to go there with Ashley in this episode.
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, welcome back to the show. I'm excited. You're here today and I'm excited to dive into something that I think is way too commonly overlooked, and yet something that is a major barrier to you being able to make progress with your feeding relationship. So today what we're gonna dive into is some of the mental blocks and the barriers that we bring to the table when we want to raise healthy eaters and we're maybe doing quote unquote, the right things, and yet we're not seeing the success that we hope for or expect. And so I wanna dive into those with you today and get real up close and personal and probably probe a little more than you want me to so that you can ultimately make some progress.
00:46 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 meal times messes moments and ministry of motherhood.
01:25 Okay. Diving right into today's episode. I am not gonna take it easy on you. I'm gonna just say that right up front. So if you're wanting a lighthearted one that asks very little of you, skip and listen to another episode of mine, or just click on some of the show notes. So you can read some information at your leisure when you're maybe ready to digest it, but I'm gonna just tee that up because today, if you know me well, you know that I'm a person who wears my heart on my sleeve. And I like to go deep with people as fast as they're comfortable. And so today's episode, we are going to go there because something I see time and time again with families is that they are doing all the right things, and yet they're still really struggling in establishing a division of responsibility.
02:07 And I think there's a few reasons for that. And I think honestly, the reasons are harder to own and address than they are to just act over or around. We try and think that we can just do the right thing and we'll get the right result. But ultimately if we don't address what these mental blocks and these barriers are in this feeding relationship. It becomes very challenging. And I think that some of the hiccups that will happen in feeding your kid, there is no perfect feeding journey. Some of those hiccups that happen and some of those challenges that you run into, they're going to be that much harder to overcome because your insecurities and your anxieties and the issues you have with feeding your child are going to get in the way of the progress that you could be making with this feeding approach. And so the way that you answer how to address some of these issues and these challenges that come up is going to be skewed based off your vantage point of kind of where these mental blocks enter in the picture.
03:01 And so I'm gonna dive into those now and kind of help you understand how to evaluate the impact that these have so that you can be as successful as possible moving forward. So when we break down the mental blocks that we're bringing to the table, we're gonna bring it down into two main categories. That's our insecurities and our anxieties. And when I say our I'm saying collectively, because this could be the parents or it could be the childs. And so there's a lot of interplay here that we need to factor in to what's going on at the table that may be unspoken. Those are the mental blocks that are creating barriers for either us in being really effective with our child and how we feed them or for our child in being effective in how they eat and how they approach the table and the time that we have there together.
03:50 And so the first one that we're gonna dive into is talking about insecurities, because I think one of the most common things I see is, you know, I'll give a presentation to a group of moms and a mom will come up to me afterwards and be like, you know, I have, I have my own stuff that like, I need to work through, but like for my kid, what I really want is fill in the blank. Did you do it, did you intuitively just fill in the blank on your own because you could hear yourself saying that sentence. Yeah. I have my own stuff. Meaning like I have my own insecurities, my own maybe issues with food, maybe my own past history with dieting or binge eating or an eating disorder or distorted body image or whatever it might be like, we all have our stuff and our history that we have to work through.
04:39 And for a lot of us, we maybe haven't worked through it before becoming a mom and motherhood for better and worse forces us to address those insecurities. Because if, and when we don't, they're going to be triggered again. And again, that's just the natural aspect of feeding our kids all day long. It's unavoidable that those sensitivities and those insecurities that we have are going to be triggered. So one of the things that I really want to encourage you to identify and to evaluate the impact of is where are your insecurity showing up in your feeding relationship? Do you even know which ones you have, if you were to take a snapshot of the past year, past five years, the past 10 years, the past 20 years, past 30 years of your life, what were some of the messages you got about your body image, about how you fueled your body about nourishing the body that God has given you to grow in the size and the way and in the shape and the form that he has chosen for you?
05:38 What is the message that has been told to you? And is that one that is good and pure and something that you want to pass along to your child, or is that one that has been tainted and broken and has a lot of scars that honestly haven't healed and you're carrying those into your feeding relationship? Not because you would ever want to project those on your kid, but just because you haven't had a chance to maybe address them or work through them apart from having a child or children. And again, this is, we're doing a deep dive really quick, but I want you to think about what are some of those unexamined insecurities, and maybe they have been examined. And hopefully, you know, there are things that you've begu to identify. Like these were insecurities that I previously faced that I don't wanna pass along to my kids, and this is how I'm going to combat it.
06:24 And part of the reason I address this is because with a division of responsibility, there is a tremendous amount of research to support it being the gold standard approach, not just for getting our kids to eat vegetables and, you know, have a healthier dietary profile. And while that's true, the reality that's maybe equally, if not more important is that it's the feeding approach that helps support our children to become adolescents and adults who have healthier relationships with food. When most of you, I know listening probably have little kids. And so right now it's seems like we're just in the phase of, you know, them needing us so much. But when you take a step back and look at the big picture of the child, you're trying to raise into the adult you hope that they become. Don't we all want them to be free from these insecurities that we maybe have faced or still wrestle with.
07:18 We don't want that for our kid. And so when we're feeding our kid, it's not just about the plate in front of them. It is about positioning them and giving them a posture at the table that is confident, that is calm, that is competent to eat and nourish their bodies in a way that is a beautiful, great thing that is untainted by some of the insecurities that maybe we have struggled with and ultimately need to overcome. And so when we think about how we want our kids to you know, cultivate a healthy body image, as they move, as their bodies grow and develop and move through adolescents into adulthood, as we think about our kids being you know, young adults on their own feeding themselves, they're not at our table anymore. And I know right now that might be like, oh my gosh, that sounds amazing.
08:05 Ultimately, don't we all want them to know how to fuel their bodies for wherever in life God has them, you know, whatever profession they're in, whatever hobbies that they have you know, whatever seasons of life and stages of life that they can adapt and that they can have that food freedom that I know so many moms crave. And it's one of those things that moms are like, I have my stuff. I wish I had that food freedom, but I hope for my kid that they can. And the division of responsibility is one of the ways that you can equip your kid for this early on. And if you haven't started early on, you can start at any point. And I wanna encourage you the same. You know, I, I work primarily with families and children, and there's amazing dietitians out there that can really help you as a mom on this journey that I'll link to some of them in the show notes as resources.
08:51 If that's a journey that you feel like you need to go on, but for today, I really want you to think about what are some of the mental blocks that you're bringing to the table that are your own insecurities, that are creating issues and ultimately, may be impacting your kid and the way that they hear you talk about yourself, the way they hear you speak about food or feeding yourself, and ultimately without you even intending to can project some subtle but implied and unspoken barriers for the feeding relationship that you're forming for your family. The other mental block that I wanna dive into. And again, each one of these is really an umbrella for so many things that can fall under this category. But the other mental block that you might be bringing to the table is your anxieties around how your child feeds. And some of these can be known issues, and they're a little more obvious and say like the subtle and implied insecurities you may face instead, these might be things like when your child was an infant.
09:47 Maybe they had a really hard time gaining adequate weight, maybe a doctor, you know, termed your child failure to thrive. Even that can be a super hard diagnosis for parents to kind of wrap their head around because of the terminology and just, you know, watching that growth curve plummet instead of follow the projected trend. And so maybe you have some anxieties about getting your child to gain weight, because that was such a struggle early on. And again, that was a true issue. That was a true thing that you, a true feeding and challenge that you faced. And as any of us could relate to as a first time mom, or even if this is a subsequent child, that's a feeding challenge that's going to absolutely escalate your worry and your concern, and have you have a heightened need for, you know, increased information, increased support, and ultimately being more, maybe more invested in feeling a little bit more involved in your child's feeding journey than say maybe a parent who didn't have as hard of a road with their child in infancy and, you know, had a simpler journey.
10:49 And there wasn't any real known issue, but that same parent could then later on in toddlerhood, you know, there's maybe no medical reason. There's maybe no know sensory concern at hand, but maybe that's when they start to see their kid just exhibit some age appropriate pickiness, but the parent doesn't necessarily know how to handle it. And they start to worry because they see that their kid maybe only wants to eat carbs or completely avoids veggies, or, you know, only ever wants snacks. And depending on the advice that you've received, whether it be from, you know, medical professionals, your child's pediatrician, or from family and friends and well intended, people who want to support you, but may or may not have misguided you, this can really perpetuate what is often referred to as a worry cycle in the feeding relationship. And that's when, instead of just kind of feeding challenge again, whether this is one that's been diagnosed or a perceived problem from the parent, it can start to perpetuate this cycle and this downward spiral where one simple concern, and again, it may have been one that started an infancy and hopefully resolved, but it might have just kind of perpetuated the cycle forever forward for the parent and the child and the feeding relationship.
11:56 Or it might have been one that, you know, the child or excuse me, the parent just perceived being a problem. And then moving forward as the parent pushed harder, what we see in the feeding relationship is when the parent pushes harder and that comes out in the form of like pressuring their child to eat more. And the parent feels like more and more that the responsibility and the job of eating is on them. They project this on their child and the hope and the intent of course, is that their child is going to eat more and better. But what we know to be true is that this really tends to increase the resistance from the child and increase the anxiety of the child. So now we don't only have the parents' anxiety around, you know, is their child growing properly? Is their child eating adequately?
12:40 Are they properly nourished everything? There's so many different aspects of anxiety that I'd be happy to link. You know, more information to here. If you wanna kind of go into this and dive into maybe what some of your anxieties are in the feeding relationship, but then it also perpetuates the anxieties of the child at the table, because now they're maybe anxious about what kind of response they're gonna have from their parent at their table. Is the parent gonna force them to eat, or how much are they gonna be forced to eat? Are they going to be expected to eat in either a way that maybe they physically can't, whether it, it is a true sensory issue, whether it's just an oral motor developmental standpoint that they're at versus where maybe the parent expects them to be at, but if the child is being expected to eat and that's a really uncomfortable process, something else we know to be true for the child is that when their anxiety peaks their appetite decreases.
13:36 And so now as parents, this, this worry cycle is perpetuating this really negative feedback where not only is the parent's anxiety increasing, but also the child's anxiety is increasing and that's shutting down their appetite. So you can see how this quickly spirals and how this cycle quickly repeats itself again. And again, day after day each eating opportunity, because if a child's facing anxiety around eating, that's shutting down their appetite, when their child doesn't have an appetite, they're not eating. And then when the child doesn't eat, the parent is having anxiety that the child isn't eating. And when the parent has anxiety around not eating they're forcing the child or using some sort of maladaptive response, whether it be consistently or just here and there to try and get their child to eat, which is just further escalating their child's anxiety. And so this cycle repeats itself again and again, and again, and part of the reason I want you to hone in on why this is just truly so important, especially early on in adopting a division of responsibility is because we're looking at what is an internal motivation to eat and to self-regulate a child's intake, something that they have a God-given ability to assuming that it hasn't, you know, been broken at some point based off of, you know, feeding behaviors you know, kind of teaching them otherwise, or are they learning external motivations to eating and the amount that they need to eat.
14:54 And that's often what happens when we use feeding approaches that are inconsistent with the division of responsibility. We are externally motivating our child to eat often through forms of pressure and force and bribery and coercion, and a lot of approaches that are not consistent with best practices for feeding.
15:14 So with this, I want you to just begin considering not, is this a failure, not, you know, if you need to feel guilt or shame about any of this, because this deep dive is, is truly to help uncover some of the wounds that may be there and also prevent future wounds from forming, especially at, and around the table. When we do bring some of these things to the table, and it's perpetuating some of the problems that we're experiencing at meal times, you know, when we're having these battles. And when we're facing just kind of this standoff with our child over what's being eaten, or more likely not, it's really hard to reinforce and foster this healthy feeding relationship consistent with the division of responsibility when we've given into some of these missed opportunities over time. But the good news is, is we can gain these back.
16:02 We can continue to promote the internal motivators to eat and for our child to recognize hunger and fullness and, you know, to regain appetite and to understand when they're full based off what their body says and, you know, to enjoy the eating experience and the time around the table together without needing to use pressure or force. And I know that this can feel maybe like a long way away, depending on where you're at on this journey, but I wanna encourage you to start the process because it is never too late, but you also truly can't start doing this work early enough, not only for your own benefit and your own good, but also that of your child. So I encourage you this week to be doing this work, to evaluate where some of these insecurities and where some of these anxieties may be coming up for you, your child also have a conversation with your spouse, see where you both are contributing in maybe less than productive ways to the problems that you may be facing at the table so that you can begin making more progress forward.
17:04 And that this won't stand in the way of getting your child to eat. So if it's okay with you, I'm gonna go ahead and say grace and pause for a quick prayer Lord, thank you so much that, you know, our innermost being thank you that you know, our deepest insecurities that maybe we've never even addressed or wanted to bring forward. God. And I just pray that for every mom listening here, God, that they will come before you, and that they will feel a safety and a security and just a pasture to meet in and to do this hard work in. And God we know it's hard work. We know it hard work on top of the hard job that we have to feed our little ones, but God, I pray that you help encourage the moms that this is good and valuable work.
17:52 God, I pray that you will bring forth the things that are most important, not all the things at once, if it's not your desire to do so, God, but I pray that you will shift the mindset in these moms so that they can support their children. Yes, but also just grow more fully into the women that you have them to be. And Lord, I pray that you will shape their family's feeding relationships. Lord, I ask that their husbands will come alongside them and support system in this journey. I pray that you will open up conversations for them to come together as a couple together raising their child or their children, and ultimately that you will unite their family. And that food will be a blessing to them. And that any of the anxieties that they have faced or still feel, God, we just pray that they will bring those to you, that they will know that they can cast those anxieties on you and that you are near and that you love them so very much and are helping them in each of the steps forward. Lord, thank you so much for this time today. And we pray for our next time to meet. In Jesus name, Amen.
18:57 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.
