Episode 205: Chaya Stern, OT. Let’s Play with Our Food!

Hi and welcome to episode 205 of the Untethered Podcast. Today we have Chaya Stern joining us. Chaya is an occupational therapist and feeding specialist. She is a picky eater turned food adventurer. She's married to a foodie and she's mom to three mini food explorers. One who's picky just like her. She took the sensory oral sequential feeding training after three years working in early intervention and has loved the feeding niche ever since. She coaches parents through mealtime struggles so they can raise well nurtured and nourished children. You can find her at Eaters and Feeders on Instagram. Quick disclaimer. All information, content and material of this podcast are the opinions of the speakers and is for the informational purpose only and not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis and or medical treatment of a qualified healthcare provider. Welcome to the Untethered Podcast. I am your host, Hallie Balkan. I'm a certified orofacial myologist, feeding specialist and mentor. This podcast is all about getting your questions answered and collaborating with colleagues to bring you the most up to date information in the orofacial myofunctional therapy, tethered oral tissue and airway space. I challenge you to keep an open mind and join my mission to get this information out to the masses. Let's get started. Hi and welcome to the show today. I'm so excited to chat with you.

This is very exciting for me. I mean, you're basically like a legend in the feeding room, so I'm honored by this invitation. Please stop, stop, stop.

It's funny, people say things like that and I just, I'm like, it's very humbling, but also I'm like just another Instagram account and somebody who decided to, you know, put a course out there. And now I just feel like I'm known and it's fun. But also I'm like, there's so many amazing therapists like yourself, right, who have these fabulous educational accounts. And I just get so much joy out of following you and seeing like, what you're sharing. And I'm like, even as a mom of a picky, you know, a child who's got picky eating as a result of sensory, oral, motor, you know, delays and tongue tie and all the things. It's fun to just have like, so someone else pop up in my Instagram and be like, oh, oh, that's a, that's a great point. Or, oh yeah, let's try that today. Or it's, you know, get out of my own head. So I love your account for that. I know that you were a picky eater, turned what you call food adventurer. Is that one of the reasons why you got into this space?

Yeah, so it's. It's a little funny. So some of my story is that mealtimes were an absolute, like, nightmare as a kid. They were a constant, like, battle, you know, a power struggle between the way my mother wanted to feed me, the way I wanted to eat. So a lot of my mealtime memories, on the one hand, are nice because, like, family mealtimes were a thing growing up, so I did have that. But once we got to the table, it wasn't necessarily enjoyable to stay there, of course, depending on what was being served. And there was a lot of, like, you know, eat it or leave it or not even really that, because the leave it didn't tend to end up really being an option. You know, my mother couldn't let go to that extent. So it was basically eat it or eat it really is how I would say it forward a bunch of years professionally. So I actually got into the OT world because I have a brother with severe developmental delays, like global delays. He's a child in an adult's body at this point. But he stayed home with us until he was about 18, 19 years old. And I was very primarily involved in his care and really drawn to the world of disabilities and treating in the world of disabilities. And then I have a background also as being a lifeguard for many years and an aquatics teacher. So I was certain that aquatics therapy was going to be my niche. And then, you know, all those plans kind of flew out the window. When I worked at an aquatics pool. It was like, this is like doing therapy in the toilet bowl.

I was like.

And then I kind of just fell into pediatrics, which was sort of my other go to and very, you know, known in the field. And then through the pediatrics, I was like, whatever these kids are getting registered for therapy for, they all have issues with food. And the parents, Goodness, do they have issues with food and feeding and meal times and expectations. And I was like, this is just not okay. So I related to that personally, professionally. I had this amazing opportunity to take the sequential oral sensory feeding training, which is also pretty well known. Yours is next on my list. They were offering it locally during the week. I mean, it was just all set up for me to take it. And it was an eye opener into myself as a child, into my mealtime experiences, into the children I work with, and most especially into the parents would help me get into their heads and be like, wow, this is how it's all coming together. And then along comes my own little mini me who literally eats like me wants to eat the way I did as a kid. And, you know, I found that to actually be so challenging, you know, to raise a child who's just like me, especially around food and meal times. So bringing that all together really helped me discover this niche of, you know, parent coaching through mealtime struggles. And I love it. Like, it's not work for me. For me, it's fun, it's play, it's joy. And it's an honor for me, really, to know that, like, I can help parents get started on a path that they can then continue to travel on their own. And that's really my goal. You know, I want them to be empowered. Like, I don't want them in therapy or needing my assistance forever. I want them to feel successful, and I want them to bring that success to their children and their family meal times.

I love that. I love everything about it. Because I think one of the most stressful things around food for so many families is just that, you know, it's like that innate feeling as, like, a parent that you need to give your. Your children nutrition, you need to feed them. And when we don't know how to do that because our child is not responding the way we thought or anticipated it would go, you know, then I think parents kind of start to fall apart, and rightly so, because we don't have this tool in our toolkit to know, like, what do we do if a child can't actually chew their food or if they don't. You know, most parents don't know that it's a texture or a color or a smell or, you know, there's like a whole sensory and an oral motor component. And so, yeah, I mean, that's one of the biggest things that I was so keyed into, like, back when I got into this space was that dynamic with the family. And, you know, you make such great. You know, you kind of alluded to, like, the generational impact on children just from sharing your story. And, you know, we. We joked. Joked that in, like, my dad's family, it was like the clean plate club, like, who could clean their plate the fastest? And, you know, this is. My grandparents are, like, you know, late 80s, into their 90s now. Right. So think about generationally, where we're talking. It was like food was on the, you know, table at this time every night, and you cleaned your plate within seven minutes, and by 10 minutes, you know, with the 10 minute mark, like, the plates were in the dish, we're ready in the sink to be cleaned. And even, like, my kids will be like, why does Zadie eat so fast? Like, why is he gonna come before the rest of us? And like, the family's like, clean plate club. Like, it's just how he was trained.

Yeah.

You know, and so it really is interesting, I think, when we look back at like, like what you mentioned, just what do we grow up around? What was expected of us? What are we projecting on our children in a sense, you know, and then how are they responding? And if it's not going the way we think, you know, that's just. It's such a major stressful situation. And I try to keep into that when working with families. Like, where are our nervous systems functioning today? How are we all feeling? Because if we can't get back into what, you know, like that rest and digest and out of that whole fight or flight, like, yeah, none of this is going to go well. So how do you approach that? You know, I know you talk about like, intuitive eating, and there's you mentioned, like, the division of responsibility and a lot of that that comes through that SOS course. Can you speak a little bit first to like, what is intuitive eating?

Yeah, so. So I'll start there. So the general concept of intuitive eating is we're really all born intuitive eaters. And our early feeding habits are driven by reflexes. Those reflexes, you know, that lead us to seek a bottle or a breath. Now our food source eventually become learned behaviors. But what could happen from early infancy is that feeding can become very parent driven. I would say there's a tendency, a stronger tendency with bottle feeding over breastfeeding. But really that worry to nourish our child starts from that first moment. And then there's a lot of pressure from pediatricians or charts to feed children a certain way for them to eat, a certain way for them to grow a certain way that we can so easily start to override their natural ability to tune. So that's the intuitive. Right. So they're tuning into their bodies and recognizing their own hunger and satiation signals. And they're born really knowing how to let us know, I'm hungry, I need food, I've had enough, I need to stop. But we can easily override that because of our fears, our what ifs, our, you know, information, our expectations, exactly like you said. So then it becomes a mismatch between how the parent wants the child to eat and how the child's body is guiding them to eat. And that's when we start to enter into a lot of, I won't say eating disorders, but disordered eating or, you know, even on a lower level, dysfunctional eating patterns. We are basically the parents. Prompting or forcing or bribing is overriding the child's natural, inherent, intuitive body cues that signal to them hunger and satiation. Now, on the deeper level, that ties into nervous system, it ties into hormones. It's a whole. I always say eating is the most complex activity that we do the most frequently throughout the day. So when we think it should be simple, we're wrong. It's so evolved, and it really touches on every body system, from internal to external, from digestive to mental, emotional, sensory, the things we've touched on in the introduction. So to move away from how complex and stressful meal times can become, really going back to supporting our children's intuitive eating, right, setting them up to tune into their bodies, eat according to the needs that their body is signaling them is really where we need to start. Like, that's kind of. Let's go back to the basics. Let's take the parent and the parent's desires and expectations out of the picture for a moment. Let the child eat according to their needs. Recognize when they express hunger, recognize when they demonstrate fullness, and stop trying to override those signals. That's really the most basic concept than what it looks like in children. Then it goes into bigger principles that also tie into, like, you know, working against diet culture and also understanding how different foods impact our bodies, understanding our food choices, our food preferences, how to balance, you know, the foods that we want and enjoy and make them work for our body. I feel like that's a lot more nuanced and generally doesn't come up as much when we're talking about intuitive eating for children. So to summarize, I would say to parents who are ready to introduce this, like, the job on the parent is to step back, and the job on the child is to step up. Like, start understanding what does hunger feel like. Start recognizing, acknowledging, and listening to fullness signals. Start letting your child be in charge of their food intake. And let the parent stick to their role and the child stick to their role, which then can be defined by the division of responsibility so that there's, like, really clear guidelines of what that looks like.

I love this. So I'm like, I'm sitting here thinking of my own kids and, like, I've taken this course, so it's like, you know, taking me back A little bit too. So, you know, what do you do when a parent says, okay, well, but I have a kid who really just doesn't care about food. And like, they'll go all day without eating. So how do you like, obviously without, you know, knowing the rest of the history. Like, I could use my own daughter. For example, my seven year old, Lily, you know, she'll be like, I'm not hungry, I'm fine. And she'll just happily continue playing or doing whatever she's doing. And we have to be like, you haven't eaten in like five hours. Like it is time for a meal. What would you like? Like, oh, I don't know what we have. And like it's, you know, that's always her default. It's like, I don't know what I want, I don't know what we have. And we'll list things and she'll just kind of like, she'll ignore you until you basically go away. Which we don't. But you know, occasionally, depending on the adult who's addressing it, sometimes they, they do. And I'm like, why haven't we eaten lunch? It's two o'.

Clock.

What's going on? You know, she's definitely a kiddo. Where it was interesting this weekend, for the first time, I said to her, well, like, are you hungry? You know, it's like one o', clock, you haven't eaten in like five hours. And she was like, well, I am hungry, but I don't feel like eating lunch. And I was like, okay, but how do you think you're, you know, we had this whole conversation about like, what fuels our body and if we want to have later and like, you know, if we are hungry, let's figure out what we want to eat and we'll, we'll do like, let's do this together. And she did and it was fine. And it's like, that's not usually a struggle per se in our house. But she's a kid who left to her own. Like, she would just not eat all day, right?

So, so this really, a lot of it comes from like, what is the background, right? What has been going on? It could be what's been going on that day, what's been going on that week, what's been going on in this child's lifetime. If we put all of that on the side for a moment and just address like a typical daily, you know, scenario, that's not like a chronic issue. I would say a lot of it comes down to what opportunity within boundary Are we offering our child? Right? Because otherwise, you're right, kids will just run their own little show. And even children who have a good understanding of hunger and satiation and do enjoy typically the foods that are served could much rather just play all day because that's what they truly live off of. Play. I say. Sometimes I put up a post about this. There are some days my kids just live off of life, love and laughter and food is not in the equation. But going back to the division of responsibility to tie that in, it is the parent's responsibility to set a meal time. The division of responsibility says that the parent chooses where food will be served. So we're creating that boundary. This is where food is available for you to come and get what foods will be served. So these are the available options. So we're moving away from that. What do you want? I don't know. Nothing. Not interested. Just a snack. Right. So the parent takes that responsibility for what they serve with a very important nuance over there, which I'll get to. And the final thing is where, what and when. Right? So a mealtime schedule and meals include snacks. I consider the word snack to incorporate any small foods that are being eaten in between bigger official meals. So going back now to the very important nuance which is what is served because that also tends to be parents biggest struggle between them and their child. It needs to include a preferred food. And the preferred food part is important not just nutritionally, but emotionally. Right. On a regulation level. Because if I was invited out to a dinner where I knew they were only going to serve super exotic foods that I have never seen before in my life and I'm not such a food explorer just yet, how much am I going to want to hang out around that meal? What's drawing me there? What's keeping me there? What do I want out of that? Nothing. So then I want to leave. So that sets my nervous system into some responsive fight, flight or freeze, right? I'm just going to stand there and do nothing. I'm going to want to leave or I'm going to maybe make a comment about no thanks, I'm not going to be having any of that, you know, which might be like offensive let's say. So something is going to come up in me as a response. So when we ensure that a preferred food is made available at every snack and mealtime, we say to the child, come with your calm body to the table. There is something here for you now alongside the something that is preferred currently that you're happy with that you're ready to accept. Here's also whatever other variety of foods I, as the parent, am choosing to serve, here's when I'm serving it, and here's where I'm serving it. And that boundary around the parent's role is. Helps the parent make a lot of these advanced decisions. So you don't even fall into a lot of these power struggle cycles. And then there's the child's role, which follows and which really ties even stronger into the intuitive eating. And it sets the structure around how parents can support their children's intuitive eating by letting the child fulfill their role, which is if they eat. So giving them that choice. Yes, especially occasionally children will choose to skip a meal, just like we might what they choose to eat again with that detail of from what's available, including that preferred food, and then how much. So if they want to have a nibble, if they want to have a bite, a spoonful, it's up to them. This. We want parents to step away from using these measurements as prompts. Right. It helps us feel like my child ate something, whatever. She had a bite. Okay. At least she tasted it. At least she tried it. At least, you know, there was an attempt. We really want to leave all those choices to the child. And what I could say also from like a general OT perspective, and this would be like a big takeaway, I would want parents to get out of this, is give it time. You know, give yourself as the parent time and space to work these boundaries, to work these strategies, to really implement this philosophy and give your child time and space to accept it. And in that time, which is typically about two weeks, I would say for a minimum, you can also anticipate that things might just get worse before they get better. It's just a big, big change.

Yeah, it can be a roller coaster, really. And I use Lily as an example because I know if anybody's listening to the podcast, they've heard me about her endlessly. But it is interesting because she's definitely become more of a food explorer. But I have, you know, certain rules that I share with other adults in the household that I, you know, we don't force anything.

Right.

Have to take a bite. If she wants to, it's there.

And.

And it's interesting too, because I do notice that she'll be. She'll want to sit next to me. She's more drawn to me. You know, she gets. Sometimes there are some, you can tell her some anxiety if there are certain people who are expecting her. Well, just try it. You haven't tried it before. How do you know you don't like it? You know, and I'm like, that's, that's not your, that's not your role.

It's here.

And you know, and I do, I always try to make sure that there's like a vegetable and a protein that I know is in her realm of something that she'll eat on the table for dinner and for lunch. You know, one of the things that I've learned is like breakfast, I want her to have some protein, I want her to have some, you know, nutrition to get her going through her school day and lunch. It's a mix, right? There's some nutrition, but there's also some fun because I'd rather her just have some energy to like and you know, we're were pasture raised, organic, you know, all that stuff. But like my kids, sugar, they still eat carbs, they still eat dairy, you know, they're still eating a lot of different food groups. And I think that part of that too is just them having that wider range and the experience and it's, it's fascinating like looking at her versus my second, who also tongue tied, released at five days, you know, had some other stuff gross motor delay wise. But feeding has never really been an issue, right. Watched her from afar with like learning what her hunger cues are to learning when she associated because she would overeat at a certain point when she was like a younger, you know, she's a preschooler and she was a toddler, she would just keep eating and eating and eating. And I'm like, okay, we probably have to limit how much food we're putting on the table or in her reach, right. In order to inverse is like having a conversation about it. Like that falls on me. But then it's, it's so fascinating to see. Like you said, some days they may eat a lot, some days they may not eat very much at all. And some meals it kind of waxes and wanes. And I think that's a big important message for parents and I love that you share that because the expectation, right, of what we are told in society is that like so many meals a day and so many snacks and they need this and they need that. But at the end of the day, as an adult, you said we may skip a meal if like we were busy, maybe we don't feel hunger right now. It's just not, you know, front of mind. We're doing something fun, our meal gets delayed, you know, things happen. And, and I think that we expect Children to be more of an adult than we are ourselves sometimes.

Yes, yes, yes.

So I love that whole, you know, the division of responsibility. And it's a good refresher for me, too, because I think while I know it deep down in my brain and I think I approach things a very specific way, it's sometimes even, like, within my own family, harder to explain how they need to.

Yes, yes. Yeah.

So do you run into a lot of families who have these, like, generational patterns that you do help them, like, work through those?

Yes. So I wanted to say, actually, you just touched on, like, probably enough, like, information to, like, probably make three or four podcasts out of it. But one of the words before we talk about generational patterns, you've probably already heard me mention it. It's become one of my favorite words in the feeding realm. And it's nuanced. And because of, like, what you described about different family dynamics, dynamics with different family members, different children, their personalities, their life experience, their age and stage, you know, and place in the family. I mean, all of those things also impact exactly what implementing the division of responsibility and supporting intuitive eating would look like. And within every, like, point that I shared, I just also want to add that there's a lot of nuance. So parents are listening to this and feeling like. Or other therapists, you know, like, okay, that sounds like a good general idea, but, like, now, what would that look like? If, if, if. And then. But then. So I just want to say, like, that's the kind of stuff that. Where people get stuck, they kind of need to, like, break it down a little bit more to what would this look like, you know, for my child, for my family. But a big key point is to consider the dynamics of the family, which includes all members who are present at this mealtime, family members who have come before us, generations before us, and what have they passed down to us? The mealtime structure and what would work for your family and then very, very key is the mealtime environment. So mealtime structure is, like, what is actually happening during this mealtime? And the mealtime environment is, how is everybody feeling during this mealtime? And every player present in the present or present from the past is going to impact that mealtime. So that's what we commonly refer to as generational patterns or very popular to talk about today's generational traumas, how they filter down to us. And I am no exception to experiencing this. And, like, what you shared about your grandparents, the clean plate club, the eat as fast as you can so you can Be finished club. A lot of those patterns, you know, played out in my childhood. And obviously I had zero awareness that this is what's going on until I literally delved into this world, you know, of both parenting and feeding. I actually want to share something really funny about parenting. So one of the parenting books I love as like a general and totally applies to mealtime as well, is how to listen to kids, how to talk to kids so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk. Now, my mom picked this book up at a giveaway sale. She used to do, like, yard sales, and then she got so cheap it became giveaway sales. So she had it in her bathroom and I would just like, always see it sitting there. Never picked it up. Then I find myself, like, expecting my first visiting my mom, and I pick up the book and I'm like, oh, my God, this is, like, funny and great and makes sense. And I was not raised like this, but I want to raise my kids like this. Whoa, whoa. New world. I literally come out of the bathroom with the book in my head. I'm like, mom, did you ever read this book? Me read a parenting book, but my kids are perfect. And I was like, oh, my gosh, of course. Right? Okay. There's like, nothing to talk about here. Fast forward. And, you know, I write an article for like a grade magazine and it's about feeding. And my mother actually calls me and shockingly starts the conversation with a huge compliment. I love how you wrote. I love what you wrote. And I'm also realizing that you basically wrote that parents should do everything I did not and should not do everything I did. And I was like, am I finally getting, like, the admission my inner child has been waiting for forever? That's probably like the highlight of my career so far. So going back to those patterns, I would say that I can now identify, you know, a lot of pressure around nurturing, not nurturing, nourishing children. Right. So making sure that they're well fed. I was also raised in a pretty crunchy home before crunchy was a word. So there was a lot of restriction with that because, like, everything's chemicals, everything's a carcinogenic, everything has pesticides on it, you know, and then there was a lot, a lot of push to eat those nutrient dense foods, but not prepared in any kind of tasty way or offered along any alternative whatsoever. My biggest food trauma till today, and anyone who knows me knows about this, is blended vegetable soups. I won't touch them. They were served once to twice a week. A mix of the most bland, random vegetables every week. And I would gag. I was nauseated. And that was supper. Supper was a blended vegetable soup. Now I would have friends and family who came over that thrilled in it. A hearty, warm, like big bowl of blended soup. Yum. And I couldn't. I would spit it out in napkins. I would like drop spoonfuls under the table, pass it to my siblings bowls. But I also would sometimes force myself to eat it because along with the pressure to eat, the lack of other options came the threat that dessert would be withheld if I didn't eat my dinner. So there's a lot of this overriding of how much children should eat, of what food choices they want to make, of making choices available to them, of serving, you know, more preferred foods alongside those new foods you want to expose them to. These concepts just didn't exist in, in my childhood. It was bribing, it was pressuring, it was forcing, it was guilt. So much guilt. Like, oh, you know, your grandmother was a war refugee and they had no food and like, how could you waste food, throw out food, refuse food? And even outside of mealtimes, even in my mom's generation, you know, they grew up where access to kosher food or var of kosher food was very limited. So for her, it was impossible to believe that there could be such abundance available to us children and that we could still be so picky. She was like, if I had it, I would eat it so happily, like this didn't exist for me. You have it and you still are so ready to refuse and request alternatives and put the nutrient dense foods to the side and eat snacks all day. So the understanding and the desires around food were so different for my mother and me. And then my grandmother was a whole nother story. I mean, like, I can't even think of how many times she offered me if I wanted a boiled potato or like some cottage cheese, you know, and how like she would go on and on how I'm going to be malnourished and no one's going to want to marry me because I look starved. And you know, all of that coming, you know, in for her and like her endless. I mean, I probably would say in like a 20 minute visit, I'd be offered food like six or seven.

Yeah.

So it's the generational patterns, it's the expectations, you know, from the grandparents to the parents to the children, to how we're raising our children. And the takeaway here is that I feel like parents are starting to have an Awareness that they want to do things differently, and now they just might not know how. So that's really where people like you and I and relate, you know, workers come in.

Yeah, No, I mean, there's the cultural aspect of it, too. You know, Like, I grew up in a kosher household. It's food was available. It was not, you know, an issue. But there were, like, little things that I didn't like that my mom would mix up sometimes, and I'd be like, no, mom. I'm the one who doesn't like cooked carrots. And she's like, I thought that was your brother. And I'm like, no, that's me. You know, it's like, those. Which was, like, not a big deal. Like, that's, I think, a normal parenting thing where, like, maybe you don't like a little nuance like that. I wasn't necessarily a picky eater, per se. Neither was my brother. So I think that, you know, we were very lucky in that sense. When I was growing up, and I don't really. I don't remember, like, having food, like, pushed on me. Like, you have to clean your plate. Right. That was not necessarily a requirement. So, like, looking back, I think for me, my biggest issue was, like, digestive things that I struggled with, like, dairy and other things like that. But that wasn't like my. My parent, you know, I know that also, just like my grandparents at the time were living when I was growing up in Erie, Pennsylvania, and finding kosher food in Erie, Pennsylvania, like, they would have to drive to Cleveland to, you know, fill up, you know, a whole big cooler with kosher meat. And, you know, and we really. I think our lives also revolved so much around food. You know, it was like, holidays and the meals that came with those holidays and the family time together. And I know when I started working with children who are on the spectrum, like, very early on in my career, and I started to notice a lot of these food patterns. I also started to notice how, you know, isolated I think a lot of these parents would feel because they would be like, I can't take my kid to someone else's house. They're gonna be offended. They're not gonna understand. And that's across, like, all, you know, that's not necessarily in, you know, the Jewish religion or culture per se. It was any family that. That crossed paths with me. And I. I wrote, like, an article once upon a time about, like, hey, like, send this letter to families before you go to their house and lay it all out there. Because if we are not educating them, then who is? And if you want to go and enjoy yourself and you want your child to go and enjoy themselves, they don't have anything the whole time they're there, or you bring them a roll because you know they're going to eat a roll and the person won't be offended because they'll never have expected that your child was going to eat anything on their table anyways, you know, And I think just like that whole shift in, you know, like, you're talking about the division of responsibility and then the expectations, but then even beyond outside the family unit, I think it's also just super stressful. And, you know, I know whenever I look at a restaurant menu, I look to make sure that there's something that I can offer my child that she, you know, she has at least two choices that she'll typically eat so that we're not sitting there like, okay, what fancy thing are we going to ask them to whip up in the kitchen? Because, you know, I don't want her. You know, it's also, I think, a feeling of being able to eat off the menu and not feeling like, you know, the odd one out, because I know for some children that can also be very isolating. So it's. The whole thing is it's such a delicate, I think, topic, but I love how you make it so approachable. I think you make it really approachable for a lot of families. And I think that when parents have this information and can kind of take a deep breath. Right. And our nervous systems are not through the roof, then, you know, we're not going to raise the anxiety in our kids and they may be more open to trying new. Do you talk about that with families, too? About, like, the anxiety they carry and like, the impact it can have on children?

Yeah, I actually have, like, my last slew of parents, which, by the way, funny enough, or maybe not includes typically speech therapists and other feeding therapists who are exactly like you. They're like, I need a perspective of someone who lives outside my head. I find for the most part, I get a lot of parents who are therapists. I'm nutritionists, I'm play therapists, you know, a lot more in the professional world, I'm reaching out. And often they start the conversation by being like, it's me. I need the therapy. It's me. So when the weirdness comes from them, it's great because we're ready one step ahead. And when it doesn't, generally when we do, like, our full initial session, where I get like, a lot of, like, the background information, so I always address the whole family because children don't live in a vacuum. They live in families of some sort of. So the family dynamics, you know, really do play in. And I find, especially as is typical in most households, between, you know, mother to child, sometimes the one with the need for more regulation and information and strategies is the father, you know, because they may not be around as much and therefore not pick up on as much of what is going on and why the situation is so challenging, you know, and then when they're not seeing it, it's hard for them to appreciate it. But I would say typically, you know, now there's like a lot of talk about, like when we talk about breastfeeding or, you know, lactation, you know, the mother, baby diet, right. You have to treat them both. So I don't think it stops after breastfeeding or bottle feeding. I mean, that interaction, the interplay, the dynamics, the relationship between the parent and the child is a huge part of it. So we absolutely address that. I like it. When I ask the parents to tell me their children's personality, I can tell you a typical picky eater will be described by their parent as rigid, stubborn, controlling, and then smart. So you have this whole, like, whippersnapper package of, like, what could very well be a child who. I won't say a challenging child, but a child who could be very challenging to their parent, who just wants an easy life, you know. So we do. We do a lot of hearing, a lot of validating, a lot of recognizing, like you said, also a lot of letting them know that they're actually not. Not alone, that these tendencies in children and reactions and parents are actually very common. And then we'll touch on that. This is something we will address continuously as it comes up. And then the generational trauma, the generational parents. Parents are either parenting exactly the way they were raised or as a very strong reaction to the way they were raised. And then at something, they're realizing that this is not where they want to be. They don't want to be on either end of this spectrum. You know, on these intense ends of the spectrum. They want to find their balance. They want to parent in a way that, like, pulls them good that they may have gotten, brings a new good that they're learning about now and then practically learning to implement it without just losing their minds. So, yeah, definitely, we are treating whole families. If couples are both interested in joining sessions, we're working with both the parents and we're taking into account other siblings in the house as well, any other caregivers. School will come up a lot, and that's literally its own separate podcast. I mean, mealtimes and food approaches in schools is a whole nother story. So, yeah, we're definitely working with the whole family and all the different factors that are impacting their meal times.

Something that popped into my brain before, and then I totally forgot to bring it up, was the language and how we define things. And so, like, in my household, you know, I've experienced explain to my kids, well, breakfast is just what we call the meal that happens in the morning. Lunch is the meal that happens halfway through the day, and dinner is the meal that happens at night. Snacks are usually like, just smaller meals that happen in between in our house. And dessert, like, because everybody just assumes dessert means sugar sweet, you know, And I'm over here and I'm always like. Because my husband will say, well, you're not going to get dessert if you don't eat this. And, you know, and I'm like, wait, no, no, no, let's not do that. But in my household, they'll usually have, like, a date for dessert during the week. We kind of have like, this, like, you know, if we're gonna have some sweets for fun, we usually do it on the weekends because I don't like to do it before bedtime, you know, so my reasoning for having things in certain places is really timing and children needing, you know, sleep and school the next day kind of thing. So they kind of know there's, like, certain boundaries and rules that I've set around that. And then, you know, so people be like, you can't have dessert. And I'm like, dessert could be green beans. I mean, it's just another smaller meal after dinner, which seems to happen five minutes after we finish it. So it's, you know, really an extension of dinner. So how do you. Do you approach that topic with parents and, like, how they use certain language around just this whole experience?

Yes. So it's funny that you said about breakfast just being a morning meal. So there's language and then there's also, like, what I would call our narratives or our stories right around, like, when certain foods can be eaten, what foods belong in which meals, what food along with other foods. And it comes up a lot for me, actually, with my daughter, who is my picky eater, like me. So growing up, like, I could have lived on cereal and milk for my entire life and been happy to eat just that. And it is one of her Absolute go to foods. And she will constantly request it as an alternative. And especially if she didn't have cereal for breakfast, she'll tell me, but I didn't have cereal for breakfast today, so I need to have it now. And like, there's no rule that we have to have cereal at some point during the day. There's also no rule that we can only have cereal for breakfast, you know, or that if we didn't have cereal for breakfast, we're not having it that day. But, like, what you do, you know, I try to look at my boundaries and try to think, like, why am I setting this boundary? And then how can I explain it to my children? And I think it's really important. And this will also look different for different children and especially at different ages. So, like, my daughter's going through a big stage right now. Like, is it healthy? But is it healthy? Because in her head here too, you know, as much of it, whenever, as long as you know it's healthy. And sometimes I even get a little stumped and I like, always redirect to kind of like, let's talk about the nutritional value of the food. And sometimes I'll get stuck because there are foods that really are devoid of nutrition. And she'll suddenly pop up and be like, but doesn't it have eggs, like graham crackers? And I'll be, you know, I actually wonder if graham crackers have eggs. I'll be like, well, I'll actually look at the nutrition panel. Let's see what ingredients are in this food. So, yes, for language around food, I do encourage parents, and we'll talk about this often a lot, you know, to move away from black and white terms like healthy and unhealthy, because that so means something different for everybody. Even a food that most people would consider healthy. For example, you mentioned dairy, right? There are so many people struggling with digesting dairy. It is most definitely not healthy for them if it's creating inflammation or constipation. But that doesn't mean dairy or milk is an unhealthy food, because for the people who do well on it, it can give them, you know, fat and protein. So I always like to break down to, like, kind of, what can this food provide a body? And then is this food providing your body with the best that it can in a way that your body can handle it? And I would even say the same for those nutrient deficient or completely nutrient free foods. I would say, like, sometimes the joy of a food is taste, right? Sometimes it's the sensory Impact. Sometimes it is that quick burst of energy that we might, you know, want or need or be able to utilize. But then we have to think about, like, how is it working for us? And helping children answer those questions on their own or recognize the answers on their own also ties into their intuitive eating. Because, right. They might just want to eat tons of candy, but given the opportunity, they might also realize that eventually their teeth will hurt or eventually their tummy will hurt or they'll have a super hard time falling asleep at night. And I feel like I do still sometimes tell my children and I'd like to move away from that, but more and more I'm realizing that they say it to me and it's not necessarily only about candy. They could have simply eaten too much of any food. They could have eaten a food before a car ride that then didn't sit well in their stomach. And now they're learning, oh, this food can make me feel nauseous if I eat it close to a car ride. So we want to help them learn boundaries that they might be able to set for themselves, obviously with some guidance from us. And then we also want to think as the parent in our role and responsibility, really, we do get to choose what foods are we comfortable for sure. Having in the house, you know, what are we comfortable offering them, when, in what combinations, in what amounts. I think all of these questions, questions we do have the right and responsibility to answer for our children as we also support them as they get older, to be able to answer these things for themselves.

Yeah, it's amazing even to see in my, for almost five year old, she'll bring home like a lollipop from school and she'll be like, oh, my teachers gave me this. And I'm like, it's a dumb, dumb, okay. You know, she'll look at me like, oh, does it have food dies? I'll be like.

And she'll be like, oh, well, mom.

Is not going to let me have it, okay? And she'll go put it in like the pile of candy or like that we don't eat because I have like a little bag in our, that we don't eat basically. And you know, I'll donate it or something to other people who do eat it. So I try not to like victimize the food in a sense because I try to explain to my children that different people eat different things and our house, like, this is what I have available. And I say, look, 80, 20, we go out to restaurants, right out to eat. You're going to go to birthday parties. Like, I never want you to feel badly about it. If someone gives you pizza and candy and ice cream and, you know, juice at a birthday party, that's fine, you know, and I've note and they will engage and sometimes they'll be like, I don't want pizza or I don't, but that's because they don't want it. It's not because they don't, you know, think they can eat it. And so I'm like, there's one thing I've done well around, around the whole food thing, but, you know, I also offer alternatives. Like we have free candy in my house and, you know, the different candies that are, you know, maybe a little bit more expensive, but they're available. And, you know, growing up, I think too, around someone who had very interesting relationships with food that was not in my family, I noticed as an adult, I noticed that there was always, like, candy available. There are always like, everything was always available. And being around it also took that excitement away from it because it wasn't withheld. And it was like, oh, it's there. So, like, if I want it, sometimes I can, I can have it. But, like, I don't need to because it's still going to be there later or another time. And I think that also really plays into the experience with foods and our response to like, you know, feeling like we need to either overindulge or not at times. And like, my hope for them is that they understand that, like, yes, sugar is allowed in our house, but also, like, let's make sure that we're also getting what we need to get. And that's not the first thing we eat in the day. That's not how we start our morning. Because the other thing too, you know, like, with talking about the whole breakfast thing, I know, like, in the United States, there's this whole categorization of, like, this is what we eat for breakfast and this is what we eat for dinner. And, you know, it's like, it was mind blowing to my kids at one point that we could have eggs for dinner and a bagel. And they're like, wait, what do you mean? That's like a brunch breakfast food. Like, why would I eat that for dinner? And like, well, you live in America, so that makes sense. You probably see this on, like, TV that, you know, they, this is what people call breakfast. Or they, you know, advertise breakfast all day. I'm like, and then you go to different countries where, yeah, different countries, they have a steak and Potatoes for breakfast and they have, you know, other things for dinner. And so I tried to also just explain to him, I'm like, you can, you can eat like any protein, veggie, car, whatever, you know, like anything at any time of day. It's not like a restricted time frame based on like what we call that meal, which I think is mind blowing. Sometimes like when we talk to families about some of this, they're like, oh yeah, that's, that's a good idea around just, you know, being able to offer different foods at any time. So, so in terms of getting kids to try new foods, obviously I know like there's probably no like one perfect way, but if you have like a tip or two for parents who are like, well, how can they even just, you know, aside from having that preferred food and exposing them, having foods available on the table, do you have like a tip or two for parents to other professionals who are listening to encourage children to try new foods, like take that pressure off, but help them move towards that?

Yes, so, absolutely. So lots of tips. But if I would start like at kind of like a baseline that I also think would be like easy enough for parents to do, I would really narrow it down to two strategies. The first one is to really, really just focus on exposure. So it's like a, it's like a, a process, right? So like step by step, you know, if the parent doesn't have a variety in the house, then their children are most definitely not going to eat it. If they have variety in the house, but they're not offering it to their children, usually out of fears, their children are definitely not going to eat it. If they're offering it, but it's not getting into their children's personal space, then their children are not going to eat it. So basically the more we bring more variety into children's existence and the more we make it optional and available for them to actually have it, you know, in their space and then to taste and then to try and then to eat, the more chances we give them to learn about the food, to be exposed to it, to consider it. So I would really say that's like number one and that's key. You know, have the foods available and just offer them just neutrally without that pressure. Just put it out there, you know, see if you're pre plating or if you can encourage your child to serve themselves or others. Just get it into their personal space. Beyond that, the next big thing really is once we have exposure, is we want to give them opportunities for interaction Right. So to actually do something with the food, generally using their senses, the highest level of sense that we want to get them to before we can have any expectation of taste, is touch. So the best way to get kids to touch foods is play. You know, like we said, play is children's learning, Play is children's life. It's. It's their best way to experience the world. So when we can give children food to play, which is another thing that generationally, like, I don't know who didn't grow up with, we don't play with food, right? That's wasteful, that's distasteful. And now I'm all like, hi, everybody, let's get playing with our food. And I know my kids go all out with it. And sometimes I do have to set boundaries around it. The other day, my son ate quite nicely and then dumped the rest of his plate on the table while no one was looking and, like, covered it. Like, he created a whole, like, cave over his pile of pasta with meat sauce. And when I finally noticed that, I was like, did you like Dumbledore's pasta on the table? And I should have known not to ask a three year old outright if he did something wrong.

And he's like, I didn't do it.

So I was like, okay, I'm not gonna say he did.

I didn't see him.

And also, I hate for him to, like, dig himself deeper into lying. So I said, oh, but do you know anything about how this happened? And he said, yeah, my baby tuna did it. He's. Everything's a tuna, so that's like, whatever. So I was like, okay, so your baby did it. So I was like, oh, but you're the baby's mommy, so you have to teach the baby that food stays on our plates when we're finished eating. So he, like, turns to some toy or whatever and he, like, mumbles to it. And then he tells me I did, and my baby said he's not gonna do it again.

I love that.

My God. Whoa. Like, parenting win, you know? Mealtime, parenting win. I really should have, like, invited him to clean it up with me so we could fix it together. But I was at my capacity limits at that point. I cleaned it up, we moved on. It was all good. But. Yeah, but in general, I do give my children, even when it nauseates me and creates a mess for me, opportunities to play with their food, especially when it's foods they're not already eating or not typically eating. Because I see it so clearly mealtime by Meal time, that this is what brings them closer to trying a new food or a food that they dropped or a food that was never preferred. So I really want to use those opportunities to support and encourage that. One of the questions I get around this is often from parents who have lost all concept of play. Their inner child has kind of run away from them and doesn't know how to play anymore. So they say, how? What could I do? So I actually have a prepared handout. It's about four pages worth of play ideas, actions, songs, storylines, themes, gestures, activities that I'd actually to offer any listeners who want to email me. I think you'll have my email and Instagram in the. In the podcast. So you'll have contact information from that. Anyone, just reach out to me. Hey, I heard you on Halle's podcast and I'd love to get the handout. I will send that right over to you. So I find that to be a great resource because it literally feeds pun intended parents ideas of how to play with food. And then parents can either like suggest it to their children, narrate the idea for their children, or the most ideal is model. If we model play for children across the board, they will join in on some level and more and more as they get used to this being like something that we now do in our house. So that's a huge thing. So I would say the exposure, the availability of the new foods without the pressure, and then the play to really bring in the fun.

Yeah, that, that play in getting messy. I have always educated that it's so key for our sensory system or our nervous system. Like, the kids need to get messy, they need to get dirty, they need to play it. That's how they explore their world. Like starting, you know, as an infant. And my husband, love him dearly, is like highly anxious when there's a mess. And he like you know, the wipe the face in between every baby food bite. Like, that was like a struggle in my house. And I was like, nope, we don't do that. We don't. Like, at the end of the meal, if you would like to take a wet napkin or washcloth and you know, dab her face and kind of help clean at the end of the meal. Like, we are not doing that during the meal, but, you know, fast. Well, and my first is very much a flown of my husband with a lot of like the feeding, the, you know, all that stuff. And then my second is the one who had like, I have the best photos, like a bowl of yogurt across her Face. She takes the bowl, she'll put it on her head. Like a hat would be like, okay, he has got to go in the bathtub again. Like, she's just right now. And it's so interesting because, like, in the past couple of months she has started playing with her food again. She's going to be five and like two weeks. And she will take it. She thinks it's so funny. And she, like, puts it on her nose and start drawing on her face from her plate. And I'm like, what are you doing? But it's, you know, it just, it's kind of a good reminder that she has a healthy relationship with food and.

Right.

I think she, she's a preschooler. She's in pre K. Like, she wants to do that a little bit when she's at home and okay, whatever, you know, I'm like, please don't just like go market all over the walls that were just painted. Like, if you want to put it on your face, just, you know, go to the sink and wash it off when you're done, see your father's and.

Have a heart attack.

But yes, it's so important. And I think we run into that oftentimes. Even in my own practice, like one. One of the caregivers in a key, like key caregiver in. In that, you know, experience is highly anxious over just messes in general. And I think it does make it challenging. And, you know, I would always say to my husband, look, if you want to pay for therapy later, like, by all means, keep wiping her face, but if you prefer not to spend all the money on that, then, like, you know, just wipe her face at the end. Because I just was like, how do I get 39?

It's such a great line.

Can you, as the parent, take a.

Little bit more trauma that like, you.

Should be able to manage or can learn to manage and like, let's not put it upon the child and then also pay the price as the parents later. Yeah, it's huge. And you were talking about ages. I just want to add, like, again, you know, for parents listening, they're like, oh, my kids are older, they're already mature. They're already like, serious. They're not going to do these things. It's not necessarily true. You just have to find the right way to engage them. My daughter is nine, so, yeah, she's not going to put bowls of yogurt on her head. I don't think she wants a bowl of yogurt on her head. But she loves animals for Example, so she will create, you know, little play animal scenes out of her food, or different foods turn into different animals. And then, you know, with their carnivores, they're going to go eat another animal. They're herbivores. They're going to go eat some plants from the plate. So there's so many ways, I think parents just need to get back into that, like. Like, creative and playful mode and also, like, just get that connection back. You know, connecting over food and meal times is also so important. It's. It's important for children. Staying calm by the table, feeling wanted at the table, feeling also like the focus is on them as a child and not just on them as a child. And what food is this child eating? So I think play really brings so many aspects of mealtimes and, you know, a healthy relationship with food and joy around food and trying foods, you know, all together. So that's definitely a big one that I, you know, would guide parents through.

It just kind of popped this memory into my mind when we were. Everything was shut down during the pandemic, and I was homeschooling my daughter because 23 hours in a zoom was, like, not going to be a thing for us in kindergarten. So I was like, okay, well, what creative ways can I get some, like, math in here and get some other stuff? And I find her up for virtual cooking classes with somebody. She happened to be local to us. I feel, like, so much stuff online now. And she was, you know, much more limited at that point than she, you know, a couple. This is a couple of years ago, but she. I guess this was in 2020, but she loved cooking. And, like, occasionally there are some things where she was like, mama, like, I don't really want to touch that. Can you help me with this and be like, yeah, sure, like, we do it together. But I kind of let her drive the ship. And she was learning how to use a knife. So, like, there were things that, you know, I had to help with, but she was so much more willing to try things that she made. And she was like, she was proud of it. And, you know, sometimes she would try it and just be like, okay. You know, and she'll say, she's. This line where she goes, I mean, I like it, but, like, I don't want any more of it. And I'm like, okay, yeah, you know, that's like, that's a big one in our house.

Like, it's.

It's okay, you know, but I'm. I'm done with it for now. I'M like, that's a win for me. I didn't ask you to try it. You tried it on your own. You didn't say you hated it.

So.

And to me it's just like we just keep exposing, like you said, like more exposure. And so over time, you know, we've expanded some of her foods and she definitely has her like patterns. But now I like looking back now I'm like, oh, okay, this makes sense. I probably should have, you know, brought some of these things in earlier. But she's a salty, salty cold, like, like smoked salmon. You know, she loves smoked salmon. She'll eat turkey lunch meat but will not eat regular turkey. She'll eat, you know, she won't eat regular fish. Like, you know, she might have like a chicken nugget or a fish stick but like not her favorite thing. Like she'll eat it if she like.

Right.

That's basically, you know, what's available tonight. So there it's, it's very interesting to see the patterns that have played out. And you know, I think over time, I think a lot of that also came from a lot of what you've said and just letting her explore, letting her trust herself, giving her those opportunities. And even as a feeding therapist who runs a business where I have feeding horses and do mayo and all these things, like I'm still over here like racking my brain every week, like, okay, what foods are we putting on the grocery list? What are we going to offer her? Like, I mean, and yeah, it's like same thing she had last week.

That's just, what are we.

So, you know, it's, it's, you know, I tell parents all the time, I'm like, do what you can do because like I am no exception to the rule. But I do think that so much of what you shared about like the parents responsibility to at least have the preferred item, how we present things, how we talk about it, you know, what the expectations are, kind of fixing some of that generational trauma, letting things go and changing how we approach it with our kids. It goes such a long way. So I mean this is, this, this has been amazing and so helpful even for me. It's such a great conversation for me to kind of be like, okay, pause in your crazy day to day life and like, what can I change? Like how can I help her this week versus like kind of the rut that we've gotten into. So thank you for that. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you want to share?

Everything. There is so much I'll, I'll end off just on one thing. You brought up another really key point that I find. Another big struggle with parents is literally thinking of food ideas. First of all, parents are not feeding themselves. Like, let's just start over there. Like, if the parents I worked with had the like, time and energy and finances to do sessions, literally to focus just on them, like, I know that many of them would. And I have had some reach out, you know, as that being their, their income into the, into the process, you know, starting to make changes for themselves, like literally feeding themselves, expanding their own variety, knowing what to buy in the grocery store, what to have on hand, and then for the kids, of course. So I actually going to be running sometime soon another group called Food Finders, where we will literally map out specific food ideas for families, for children, you know, using templates and like a process of knowing like, what foods to pick, how to pick those foods, how to serve them, how to help the children accept them into their diets. So finding foods and offering them is like literally in its own topic and its own step by step process. So that's definitely something I help with and that there is a lot of need for. And then, yeah, just menu planning. And that all also ties into like the parent being prepared in advance because, like, you also can't offer variety if you don't have it. You can't choose what to serve if you didn't plan what you're gonna serve. So there is a level of like, advanced organization. And I also just want to share empathy to all the parents out there who are like, I'm like barely surviving my day. Like, this sounds like a lot of work. It is, but it will also make things easier. So it's like a little investment. Now again, like you said, doing what you can with the tools that you have and the information and resources that you have, and then building on that. And then as the start gets easier, you'll be able to build more into, you know, other areas and see more progress. But like, just don't overwhelm yourselves. You know, we all have a lot going on and every new thing needs to find. You know, it's time and its space and its energy and its money and it will come. You know, we start where we can and then we like need to reassess. Like, am I ready to like, do more now? So that's really what I would end off with. I mean, the world of feeding is huge. We touched on a lot of topics. Each of these have more what to share. There are topics we haven't gotten to. So, yeah, anyone who wants to hear more, learn more, you know, feel free, of course, to follow me. Eaters and Feeders on Instagram, same on Facebook. A little less active over there. You'll have my contact information in the podcast blurb, and I'm happy for anyone to reach out to me to follow me. And of course, you know, if you want to hear more about services and courses, that's what I'm here for. And I really love it. Like, I really do bring all of my personal and professional passion to this field because I enjoy it. So I enjoyed this. It was great.

I know. We could talk all day now. You shared your Instagram, share your email just in case we have any of those, like, audible learners who are probably not going to go and read the stuff just so they know where to find it.

Absolutely.

Yeah. We want to reach everyone in the way that works best for them. It's C H a Y a h@eaters feeders.com.

Perfect.

And we will definitely put that into the show notes as well. For anybody who is like, ah, I'm driving. I can't get that. It's always in the show notes.

And.

And they know if they reach out to you at Eaters and Feeders on Instagram, you can always, you know, forward your email to them there too. So thank you so much by it. This was so amazing. I know, like I said, we could talk all day long. Such good information. And I, you know, I'm like, sitting here going like, okay, maybe I need to sign up for this next. Like, it would be like, it's the bane of my existence as like an adult with adhd. Right. Is like, I don't. I don't like to plan food. Like, it's. I just wanted to hear magically before me in a very healthy, nutritious way. And the way. Exactly. I need it, like, right now in this moment.

Exactly.

Causes a lot of tension in my household because I'm like, once upon a time, I enjoyed cooking and then I had kids and ran businesses. And I'm like, I like food. I just don't want to make it anymore.

Yeah, I hear you.

I hear you.

It's like, what's for dinner is becoming like a curse word. It's like, no, don't say that.

It happens, like, in my house in the morning, where it's like. It's like, well, what are we having for dinner? And I'm like, I haven't had lunch yet.

Why are we talking about dinner?

I need to get to 3pm before I can think about that. That's on the later shift of the day. Oh goodness.

Yeah, I hear you. Yep.

Thank you again. This was amazing and I know our listeners are going to love it.

Thank you. I enjoyed it and I'd love to hear from anyone that gets a chance to listen and has something to share. I love the feedback. I love hearing what people have taken from this and how that's working for them. So I will be looking out and I will be sharing when this podcast drops.

Perfect.

Yes. So definitely reach out at Eaters and Feeders on Instagram and yeah, maybe I'll see some of you on in Kaya's next course.

Yeah, I'm welcoming you all.

Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you want to hear more of these Myo Tots, Airway and and Feeding related episodes, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or pledge a small amount on patreon.com forward/the untethered podcast. If you found value, others you know in this space will too. So be sure to share this episode on your social media platforms and join us over on Facebook on my Facebook page at halliebulcan biz on Instagram @halliebulcan and you can head over to theuntetheredpodcast.com to grab a couple copy of the Show Notes where you can also subscribe to be kept up to date on the latest podcast episodes.