Debunking Myths and Managing Guilt Around Your Child's Picky Eating [Part 1]

Welcome back, mamas, to another episode where we challenge the myths of diet culture and the standards imposed on our children. As a mama of five and an intuitive eating dietitian, I've seen first-hand the impact of these standards, especially with two of my own kiddos who are selective eaters. We're going to debunk some common misconceptions about picky eating that often lead to stress and guilt. It's time we redefine the narrative around our children's eating habits. 

We start off by breaking down the myths that can make meal times more of a struggle than they need to be. Understanding the factors that influence a child's eating preferences, such as biology, genetics and sensory profiles, can help us feel less responsible and more understanding. Remember, there's no need to 'fix' a selective eater. Exposing our little ones to new foods is crucial but so is acknowledging and accepting their individual preferences. 

In our final chat, we tackle guilt – a common emotion that many of us parents feel when dealing with a picky eater. This guilt often leads to power struggles, creating a vicious cycle that benefits no one. We're going to talk about how to change the dialogue around selective eating and stop using labels like 'picky eater'. It's crucial to remember that the language our kids hear from us can become their inner dialogue. So let's end the shaming, embrace acceptance, and remind ourselves that we're doing the best we can. Join me on this journey to a more relaxed and enjoyable mealtime!

Questions about today's episode or do you have topic requests for future episodes? Please send your feedback via email to hello@crystalkarges.com or connect with Crystal on Instagram.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hey there, mama, you're listening to the Lift the Shame podcast. I'm your host, crystal, mama of Five and your family's intuitive eating dietitian, here to help you cut through the diet culture clutter so you can enjoy feeding with food as a family. I'm on a mission to help you end the generational legacy of diet culture in your home so you can experience motherhood free from food guilt and body shame. Listen in weekly for guidance on how you can ditch diet culture, heal your relationship with food in your body and confidently raise intuitive eaters. Let's dive in and lift the shame together. Hey Mama, welcome back to the show. I'm so excited that you're here. We are actually embarking on a new mini series here about picky eating, which I've been wanting to do for a long time, so I'm excited to finally carve out some space on the show to address and talk about this topic. I am really passionate about this for multiple reasons, one being that I have found, as a professional who works with families who are navigating picky eating, but also as a mom with a couple of picky eaters myself, that there can be so much shame around this, which can make it really challenging to support your child with their innate intuitive eating abilities and to just be able to enjoy food as a family when there is so much stress and tension and inherent shame built in around picky eating or around how your child is eating or how you think they should be eating. There is a lot here, and so I am hoping that over the next few weeks I can speak to some of your questions or concerns. I have received different thoughts and questions from many of you, which I'm grateful for, so thank you, and if this topic is something that is setting off a bell in your head and you're curious about any different aspects related to picky eating, I would love to hear from you. So just a reminder that you can always connect with me via email, which is the best way in this season, and that is hello at CrystalCargiscom. If you are on the weekly email that's going out, you can always reply to any of those as well and say hello, share any questions. I'm always so happy to hear from you and just know how I can better serve you on this show.

Speaker 1: 2:18

I wanted to kick things off by just addressing some of the common myths around picky eating. There are so many I found it hard to narrow it to a few for today's episode. But many of these myths, I find, are what can make feeding our kids a struggle just from the onset, and these are things that are often perpetuated by diet culture, and there is often this narrative of there being normative standards for eating, and oftentimes, if you have a child who is picky or selective, they don't meet those arbitrary standards. And those standards for eating which are portrayed as being the most optimal for health and well-being are rooted in diet culture, and when we are taking these standards and comparing them to our kids, who maybe can't eat, in a way that we see food being portrayed on Instagram or we see other families eating, it can be really challenging. And, again, this can be such a trigger for shame, and we're all about challenging the shame and moving away from narratives that perpetuate shame around food and around bodies, and, ultimately, what our kids need is us being able to accept them where they're at, when it comes to their appetite and when it comes to their food preferences, and so I thought we could start out today by just tackling some of these really common myths that are circulating. You likely have heard many of these, and I thought we could just start by talking through some of these and really challenging them, and we will definitely be moving into different strategies as well as common scenarios that can come up with picky eating. And I also just want to acknowledge that this is a very big topic and it's a very nuanced topic, and there are many different facets about picky eating that would just be difficult to cover in its entirety on this show, as much as I wish I could. And I also want to acknowledge, too, that every different child in every different family has unique situations, and so I am by no means trying to lump everything into a box and will be talking more generally and, of course, if you have any questions, I'd love to hear from you too. As we're going through this series.

Speaker 1: 4:30

You might also hear me use the word selective eating, and I prefer that terminology, although it's more of a mouthful to say as opposed to picky eating. But I just feel like the term picky eating, there's a lot of negative connotation to it, and sometimes it can be said in a derogatory way no-transcript for my kiddos, who are more selective, that they have been labeled in that way by well-meaning family members or friends or even practitioners or providers, who called them picky eaters, and I could see how that affected them. And so I think, in effort to shift the narrative and really challenge a lot of the shame and the stigma that can be formed around picky eating, I think looking at our terminology and just the word that we're using can be helpful. But I like to use the word selective eating and so you might hear me using that and I'm using that interchangeably with picky eating.

Speaker 1: 5:24

So let's start by diving into these common myths and again, a lot of this is coming from my lived experience as a mother. I have five kiddos, as many of you know, and two of them are what I would consider selective eaters, and a lot of that is shaped by many different factors, including sensory sensitivities. We have some neurodivergence going on. These are also my ADHD kiddos and there are very interesting things that I've observed as being a parent on this side of things and also, like I said, from professional work experience, and a lot of the things I'm sharing are coming from my lived experience as a mother and navigating just the many different challenges that come with parenting a child who has these sensory sensitivities and more selectiveness when it comes to food and eating, and this is in contrast to. I have other kids who also have higher interest and love and food and will eat everything and so that has made for just interesting dynamic in feeding a family, especially children who have varied interests and preferences with food.

Speaker 1: 6:30

So I really do understand from a parent perspective the shame that can come with how your child eats and the fear of judgment around your child and the comments that you might get. And even just recently I took my son in for his wall check and received a lot of shame and negativity from the pediatrician during our wall check visit and I had not said to her that I was a dietician and I typically don't reveal that information and I just couldn't get over how shaming that she was during our visit because of my son's growth chart and where he was on the growth chart and he's always been on the lower end of the growth chart for weight and she really brought a lot of shame around that, even though I understand that he's growing on his individual growth curve and maintaining steady growth. For him there was so much shame and she was really like digging in and wanting to know what am I feeding him, what is he eating, and I walked away from that appointment just really having even more compassion and empathy for families that are going through this, because it can be so hard in so many different ways. It can really bring up a lot, and in fact, I'm going to be talking in the upcoming weeks about why picky eating can be so triggering and how our fears around our child's growth or nutrition can often play a role in how we engage with them when it comes to food. So all that is coming down the queue and I hope you'll tune in if that's something that is interesting to you. But, all to say, I just want you to know that I understand if you're navigating picky eating. It can be so tough for so many reasons, and I want you to know that you're not alone.

Speaker 1: 8:07

Number one, and many of these things are myths that I've encountered myself as I've navigated this with my children, or things that I've heard, and so I just wanted to tackle them, and so the first one that I wanted to share here is this idea that baby lead weaning prevents picky eating. I feel like there's so much that I want to say just about this one myth, because there's so much to unpack here and baby lead weaning. I will likely do a whole mini series on feeding babies, because there's a lot there and it's really wild how diet culture permeates feeding kids from such an early age, like starting solids. There's already so many embedded rules stemming from diet culture that can influence how we think we need to feed our kids. But, if you're unaware, baby lead weaning is an approach to feeding babies where solids are introduced, basically by integrating foods for your baby that you are eating as a family. So it tends to forego purees and spoon feeding in favor of finger foods that your baby self feeds. And again, there's a lot to talk about and speak of when it comes to baby lead weaning versus spoon feeding and ultimately we want to do what is best for our child and there are many different factors that can influence what that might be.

Speaker 1: 9:30

But the bottom line here is that baby lead weaning is often promoted as an approach that can prevent picky eating. If you theoretically this is the idea behind it allow your child to self feed and you're giving them solid foods in the form of finger foods and you're exposing them to different flavors and textures and giving them things that you're eating so again that exposure at a young age then they won't be picky. It's a very interesting idea and many parents will take this bait because it sounds very enticing. It sounds very promising. However, there is no research to support that baby lead weaning somehow prevents pickiness or a child from being selective.

Speaker 1: 10:15

My own anecdotal evidence I did do a baby lead weaning approach with a baby lead weaning. All my children, all my five kiddos, and I still have two that are selective, selective eaters. And so this idea, I think, puts the onus on parents to have to be the ones to do all these things in order to prevent your child from becoming picky. And there's a lot of problems with this, the first being that it's creating picky eating as something that should be prevented, therefore making it a really negative thing right, like if your child's picky, that's really bad and you need to do everything in your power to prevent it. But again, the other problem with this idea is that it creates a lot of shame if you have a picky eater, right.

Speaker 1: 10:58

I know so many parents who have told me that they tried baby lead weaning and they still ended up with their child being picky or selective and felt like I did something wrong, like what did I do wrong? I must have screwed this up, I must have messed up somewhere, because I did all the things I was supposed to do and told that I should do, and yet I still ended up with a child who is highly selective. So, again, this narrative where it's setting parents up to believe if I do X and Y, this is the outcome, this is what will happen in result of my hard work and labor, when the reality is that there are so many factors that influence how our child eats and their palate and their food preferences and how they engage with food and their appetites. They have nothing to do with what we are doing as parents. And again, I think it's really important to challenge this narrative that it's all on your shoulders and 100% your responsibility to prevent picky eating. And I know as a parent myself who tried the baby lead weaning approach with all my babies and still had picky eaters I know the shame that this myth can cause and it's very toxic and very damaging and it can really create just fear and anxiety and the feeding relationship between you and your child from an early age.

Speaker 1: 12:17

It can create feelings of mistrust, it can create doubt in yourself. You may not feel confident in approaching food or navigating feeding with your child, and so I really think it's time that we put this myth to rest because it's so harmful. And that leads me to my second myth here, which is that picky eating is a problem that needs to be fixed, or that your child is somehow engaging in bad behavior if they are a picky eater. Now you're going to notice a lot of overlap here, but a lot of mainstream advice about picky eating is coming with an attached outcome, meaning it's being promoted with this idea that if you do these things, your child will no longer be picky. And again, there's a lot of nuance here where there are some elements of selective eating that may make it challenging for our child to engage in, let's say, social situations or eating at school or going to a friend's house. However, those challenges are not a result of our child. It's not our child's fault that those situations are challenging or difficult, and so this is something that I really struggle with on kid food Instagram land, where there's a lot of different accounts out there that really promote this idea or their programs or different methods Like if you try these things, then you will fix your child's picky eating problem, and again characterizing picky eating as a problem that needs to be fixed.

Speaker 1: 13:45

And I'm telling you I know that, as parents, we internalize that, as this is something that I've created, this is my fault, and getting comments from different people or family members doesn't help either. When we're asked questions or we're told comments or we're hearing remarks about how our kid eats or what they don't eat or oh, your kid eats like a bird, or I wish I could eat like that and all those things just cause us, as parents and caregivers, to internalize this damaging narrative that I've ruined my child and picky eating is almost characterized as a disease of sorts, when the reality is that there are so many factors again that will influence how a child eats, their preferences, their palates, and a lot of these things are not the result of what a parent has done or hasn't done. There are a lot of these things are the result of their biology, their genetics, their sensory profile, and this idea that if we just follow a certain protocol or do this strategy or try this thing, that we can fix this problem is very misleading. And just as an example with this and this is a story I've told before, but I remember as a young mom with my first, she loved everything. We offered her everything, and she was very excited and open to eating. She was a very adventurous eater.

Speaker 1: 15:01

And then my second came along and she is one of my pickier eaters and hardly liked any of the things that we introduced and it was very challenging. And I just remember feeling as a mom like what did I do different? What did I do wrong between my first and my second, where my second isn't liking the same things that my first is? And this is a very common trap that we can fall in when we have multiple kids is that we compare them to each other, even though they are completely different people with different personalities and temperaments and, again, sensory profiles. And to compare them to each other and expect them to eat in similar manners is unfair, but we can't help it sometimes because that's all we know. My first was all I knew, and doing the same things.

Speaker 1: 15:41

With my second, I expected similar outcomes, but she was a completely different kid and I remember coming across some advice I can't remember if it was a book or something that said you just need to expose your child multiple times. And this was in my early education years of becoming a dietician. So I was still learning and just kind of taking in all this information and I was so desperate. I just wanted to figure out how I could get my daughter to eat and eat different foods. And I heard that increasing variety and getting them to eat different kinds of foods and getting them to be more adventurous was what would help raise a healthy child. And I was sold on that narrative and I was motivated to figure out how to help my daughter eat outside of her safe few foods that she was eating. And I just remember reading if you continue exposing them, kids need anywhere from eight to 15 exposures and they will start to like new foods. So I was game.

Speaker 1: 16:40

I remember thinking, okay, I am going to offer I think it was vegetable different kinds of vegetables to my daughter multiple times. She was a toddler at this time and I'm just gonna keep offering and exposing her and making sure they're part of our meals and not pressuring her to eat. And little did I know that, no matter how many times I exposed her that there was just certain things that she wasn't going to eat and this is going to sound so ridiculous, but I remember actually keeping a little tally count of how many times I offered her I think it was green veggies and she wouldn't eat them. I think I literally got over a hundred times before. I was like this is so ridiculous, I'm gonna stop doing this, because I'm literally just making myself crazy, I'm losing my sanity over this, and I gave up on it. I let it go and I said we will keep exposing, but not in a way that is going to attach an outcome to it. And I finally came to a point of realization where I thought you know what she may never like these things. I might expose them to her because these are things that I enjoy eating, or my husband enjoys eating, or other kids in the family enjoy eating, but she doesn't, and that's okay. And the funny thing is that to this day, she is 11 now and there are still certain foods that she's been exposed to multiple times and won't eat. And she's a healthy, amazing kid and her not eating certain foods has not dampened that in any way.

Speaker 1: 18:04

And I think this is again a narrative that we get trapped in is that if your child is not an adventurous eater, or if they're not eating a variety of different foods, or if they're picky, then something is going to be inherently wrong with them, or something is inherently wrong with them, and this is a problem that you need to fix, and I know this can be really challenging, and I am not by any means dogging all the advice that's out there. I think there is really great, well-meaning, well-intended advice. However, I do think it's important to understand that, despite our best efforts and despite all the different tricks and strategies that we might try and engage in, you might just have a kiddo who, no matter what you do, won't try or eat certain things, and that's okay. And that's why I really think it's important to challenge this myth that if you have a picky eater, your goal is to try to fix them. They are broken. This is a problem, this needs to be addressed, and it's not to say that there aren't elements involved with that that need some additional support. But I really think it's important to move away from this idea that just because your child might be more selective means that they're broken and now you have to make it your life's work to try to fix them or try to get them to eat things that maybe they're not ready for. And this is the problem, this is the trap that we fall into is that now, as parents, we put this pressure on ourselves to try to get our kids to eat things that, again, they may not have the skills for or may not be ready for, and that can be very damaging over the long run. So I really wanted to make sure that we crushed that myth.

Speaker 1: 19:35

Okay, as I'm looking at my list here, I think what I'm going to do is split up this episode into two, because there's no way I'm gonna be able to get through my list here. So I hope you'll hang with me and thank you for your patience as I get through this information and I'm realizing there's a lot to talk about. So we will split this up. I will end this episode on one more myth and then I will do a part two coming out for you soon. So I will end with this last one here, and it's right in line with the previous myths that we were talking about and really there's a lot of overlap here, but really just a reiterate and the myth here is that parents or caregivers are to blame for picky eating.

Speaker 1: 20:17

But again, because picky eating is not a fault per se, there's no one or person or thing to blame for it, and this is really really crucial to understand, to remove any unnecessary judgment and shame on caregivers, who really are truly doing their best to care for and feed their children, and I can attest to this, and I know that one of the biggest sources of shame for me as a parent in my earlier parenting years was around having a child who was a pig ear or selective eater, especially compared to another kid who loved eating everything and trying all the different kinds of foods, and that stark difference really felt like it was being reflected on me as a parent and that creates so much judgment. And I think, as parents too, we are taking in everyone's perception of us, and the way we feed our kids and the way our children eat often feel like a direct reflection of us as parents. And so because we're constantly bombarded with this negative that if your kid is an adventurous eater, if they're eating a ton of variety, then that is what will make them healthy, we are constantly, by nature, alienating a large percentage of kids who don't naturally eat in that way, and that creates a lot of judgment towards their parents and caregivers, who are just doing the best they can and navigating all sorts of different challenges around this. And parents are no more to blame for picky eating in a child than any other inherent characteristic about that child, and so we want to remember that a child's eating temperament is the result of many different factors, a lot of which is influenced by genetics and biology, and these are things that are not within our realm of control, and so it's really important to separate parents as being the culprit or again even creating this idea that, oh, this child's picky, again something's wrong and who's to blame for this? Who's to blame for this way of interacting with food? And we really want to remove and challenge the stigma and the blame around this, because what parent isn't doing the best that they can with the resources and capacities that they have?

Speaker 1: 22:35

And anytime a parent feels that shame from causing something in their child, it only creates more stress and tension and difficulty, and this can be a huge source of power struggles between a parent and a child, especially when we have a parent who feels like this is my fault, I am the reason why my child doesn't want to eat or doesn't want to try different foods, and you can really take that heat on yourself, especially when your child is old enough to start going to social functions or being involved in school and you're directly comparing maybe not on purpose, but you're seeing how your child eats compared to other kids, and that can create this feeling of I didn't do enough or I screwed up or I failed, I somehow got this wrong because my child doesn't eat like other kids will, and that's really stressful. And then again that can cause us to project our emotions and our fears on our kids, which can create stress and power struggles around the feeding relationship, where we might be pressuring our child and subtle or more direct ways to get them to eat or try to eat in a different way that maybe they're just not ready for. And, as you can see, this can become a really vicious cycle and we want to avoid these labels that our kids get smacked with at really young ages, like picky eating, you're a picky eater, or however that comes across. I think that can really stay with our kids for years to come and affect how they feel about themselves, and we have to remember that the dialogue that our children hear becomes their inner dialogue that they have with themselves, or becomes a narrative that informs how they think about themselves or their bodies or the relationship with food, and we don't want to cause our children to feel like their bodies can't be trusted any less because they're more selective or because they have sensory sensitivities or because they have a harder time eating different foods. We want them to feel our unconditional love and acceptance, however they eat, and that can only come from a place when we can accept ourselves really as parents, when we're having a hard time maybe accepting ourselves and the things that we do and the things that maybe we've done as parents, and realizing that we really are doing the best that we can and certain aspects about our child, or our children again, are not necessarily problems that need to be fixed or issues that we have caused from different things that we've done throughout our child's upbringing.

Speaker 1: 24:55

So I just want to emphasize that, because I know a lot of parents really do carry guilt and shame around having a picky eater, having a child who's a selective eater and all that comes with that. I know there's a lot involved. There's a lot of planning and thinking and there's this invisible mental load that we carry when we're not sure is my kid going to eat today, are they going to eat this, or what do I have to make or how do I prep this meal to include something that they will eat. I know it's hard. I truly understand and I'm excited to delve more into this series with you and just talk through some of these strategies and approaches and things that can help alleviate some of the stress and shame that you might be carrying, because, mama, you are doing an amazing job.

Speaker 1: 25:37

So next episode, I will make sure that we finish off these myths and really just challenge a lot of these picky eating beliefs, and then we will delve into some other topics around picky eating that are hopefully helpful to you if this is something that's relevant in your life right now. So, again, if you have any questions or thoughts that you'd like to share, I'd love to hear from you, or if you have myths that you'd like to see me tackle about picky eating, please feel free to send those my way, and I'm just sending you so much love and gratefulness for your time being here with me and cannot wait to connect with you next week. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Lift the Shame podcast. For more tips and guidance on your motherhood journey, come connect with me on Instagram at CrystalCarGaze. Until next week, mama, I'll be cheering you on. Bye for now.