The Art of Feeding Picky Eaters with Solid Starts

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Parenthood transforms mealtimes from moments of nourishment and connection into battlegrounds of tears, tantrums, and untouched plates. In this raw, honest, and solution-focused episode, we dive deep with Kim and Kary, the occupational feeding therapists behind Solid Starts, to unravel the mysteries of picky eating and toddler food refusal.

The experts reveal a truth most parents desperately need to hear: that sudden food rejection around age two isn't personal or pathological—it's developmental. Your child who once happily devoured curry and now gags at the sight of bread isn't broken; they're evolving. "That toddler selectivity that kicks in really doesn't have to do with the food," Kary explains. "It has to do with their brain development and learning to say no."

Beyond the science of selective eating, we explore the emotional landscape of parenting through these challenges. The conversation ventures into territory rarely discussed: how different children have different eating personalities regardless of parenting approach, the socioeconomic realities of expanding food horizons, and the liberating truth that you only need to get parenting "right" about 20% of the time.

Perhaps most powerfully, Kim reminds us that "your kid doesn't want to be an asshole." When we recognize our children aren't purposefully trying to drive us mad—they're learning, making mistakes, and developing skills—we can approach the table with more patience and perspective.

Whether you're currently in the trenches of mealtime battles or looking ahead to smoother family dinners, this episode offers both practical strategies and emotional relief. Listen in for expert guidance on navigating the challenging waters of picky eating without losing your sanity—or your sense of self along the way.

Chapters

• 0:00 Struggling with Picky Eating
• 12:11 Understanding Toddler Food Selectivity
• 23:22 Sensitive Eaters vs. Food Motivated Kids
• 33:36 Parenting Grief and Only Child Dynamics
• 44:30 Building Community and Finding Balance
• 55:54 Setting Boundaries and Enjoying Parenthood
• 1:04:57 Unexpected Parenting Joys and Growth

Transcript

Sam: 0:29

I first found solid starts when my son was little and I was spending most meals silently or maybe not so silently screaming into a fork. He went from loving tiki masala to gagging on bread yeah, bread crackers, everything and dinner went from a super fun activity to one that was just so tense and unenjoyable. So in this episode we sit down with Kim and Carrie of Solid Starts. They are occupational feeding therapists and developmental experts. Behind the evidence-based magic of Solid Starts, we talk picky eating, arfid, why toddlers suddenly act like food is poison, and how to keep your sanity when all they want is dino nuggets or, in my case, when they won't even try the dino nuggets.

Sam: 1:10

We go deep on parenting grief, being an only child, building community and trying to hold on to the person you were before you became a parent. And if you're wondering if I ended up delivering that sandwich to my son because I overcooked the nuggets, I did, but he was on a field trip, so I sat in the car and ate the sandwich myself. Welcome to parenting. We hope you love the episode, carrie and Kim. Welcome to Do? You Want the Truth? Thank you so much for having us.

Kim: 1:34

We're so excited to be here.

Zara: 1:35

We're so excited to have both of you.

Sam: 1:37

I used your app when my son was young. He is still the pickiest eater in the world, and so I know this is something that so many parents can relate to is having a child who is picky or goes through different phases, and I've heard I was talking to a twin mom the other day and she said that she went to an OT for her twins and now they eat literally everything, and so I'm so curious to hear how did you both get into this line of work?

Kary: 2:04

Yeah, I actually started my career working at an outpatient clinic with children who had severe picky eating. So well.

Kary: 2:11

I guess I started working with children with developmental delays but then almost immediately had a few kids get placed on my caseload who were picky eaters or who had experienced picky eating and the owner of the clinic at the time wasn't really picking up patients but that was her specialty and she was like oh, I'll train you. And so I was completely interested in the topic because I was a picky eater as a kid, pretty severe picky eater to the point of throwing up at the dinner table. So I had a lot of empathy for those kids and for those families and so I got started with the owner of the clinic training me at first, and then just was so enthralled with the topic that I kept taking continuing education courses, and that was 20 years ago. It has become the entire focus of my career, that and starting solids and how we help raise happy eaters from the start.

Sam: 3:01

Wait, sorry, I have to ask another question. You used to throw up at the dinner table because you didn't like the taste or the texture, or I haven't heard of this before. So yeah, my aunt wasn't it? What?

Kim: 3:09

am I remembering that right?

Sam: 3:09

Wasn't it egg plant.

Kim: 3:11

Am I remembering that right, wasn't it eggplant?

Kary: 3:13

parmesan or something. I love eggplant now, but at the time I thought eggplant was disgusting and my parents would pressure me to take a certain number of bites. So it'd be like you have to take three bites before you can end the meal or before you can move on and say you don't want that food. And I took a bite of eggplant and gagged and they were like stop, you know that's, you're doing that on purpose. And then second bite, I gagged and third bite, I just puked all over the table and I would gag really severely on foods that I didn't like and basically it was any vegetable. So after that my family was like, okay, I guess she really doesn't like it and if she says she doesn't want it, they didn't force me after that, but at first it was sort of a requirement and it didn't it backfired.

Sam: 3:57

I mean, they learned their lesson right.

Kim: 3:58

Yeah, and you can still live to tell the tale today. Well, on my end, carrie was my first mentor when I started my career at Children's LA back 15 years ago. Carrie took me on as a mentee. For some weird reason, and when Carrie's your mentor, feeding just kind of gets thrown in your lap. So I started my career there and we took you know she was very well trained in picky eating and was starting to get you know, was working with younger and younger kids and I was really interested in working with babies and younger kids and so we were learning a lot together.

Kim: 4:35

And it was actually working with kids that gagged and vomited with food, specifically ones that were going through cancer treatments and bone marrow transplants, and babies that were really sick and they would gag and they were really uncomfortable with food around them and nurses were like why that? You know the nurse comes in and opens up a jar of baby food and the baby just like gags and throws up. What's wrong with these kids? How can you help them? And we would get consulted to come in on these cases and Carrie and I would problem solve and do all of our OT magic stuff and it just didn't really work for these kids and at the time Carrie's niece I, I think was starting solids and getting exposed to food, kind of in a more baby led. She was just doing it, she was picking up food, feeding herself, and it kind of clicked to us that we were like you know what this is about? More than just the sensory properties of this, this is more about a control thing, it's about an anxiety thing. These babies need to feel comfortable, they need to feel in. So let's bring those ideas into the hospital and give it a try. And it was mind-blowing the changes that we saw with these really sick kids.

Kim: 5:42

So when we saw this working so well with really sick kids, we're like why doesn't everybody know about this? There's something here. It clicks so well with everything that we know to be true about kids and about development and even just about meal times. All of the happy moments in our life are revolved around food. Right, like weddings you think about what was on the menu. Holidays you think about the special thing that your grandma makes for whatever holiday it is.

Kim: 6:07

Special events in our life revolve around food, and so how can we help kids feel engaged and want to show up for these really special, connecting events, and so that kind of led us down this rabbit hole of digging into this research. And one thing led to another and we started teaching other therapists about this and in teaching at the time we needed some way to get our information out there about the fact that we were teaching, and so that ended up being social media and Solid Starts found us, or Jenny Best found us, and we were kind of a match made in heaven. And five, almost six years later now here we are and we're really happy to be the evidence-based behind Solid Starts and to work on a really great multidisciplinary team and bring this info to parents. That's awesome.

Zara: 6:54

And you're both parents, yourselves correct.

Kim: 6:56

Yep Carrie's out of the muck at this point. Her kids are past the, you know, pooping all over everything. I'm currently potty training my two and a half year old.

Kary: 7:09

So I think everything in my life right now is just poop and poop and poop, and poop, yep, that wasn't the most fun.

Kim: 7:14

Nine and 12. Yeah, that wasn't. Nine and twelve. Carrie says it gets easier she says it gets better.

Kary: 7:17

That's what we really does, I promise. I don't know if you're, yours are younger, but uh, sometime when they both go to school, like five and up, they it becomes so much easier, although I haven't gotten to the teenage phase yet, so I'll let you know you're in the sweet spot.

Kim: 7:29

Yeah, I have. I have two girls, so I know when they hit teenagehood and they're both, you know, pmsing and going through all that stuff. It's going to be a really fun place in my house.

Sam: 7:41

Yeah, so do you all work with kids who have ARFID?

Kary: 7:45

Yeah, I've definitely worked with kids who have ARFID. That's its own subspecialty, so it's not something I've done in a while, but I'm familiar with it and definitely like that population.

Sam: 7:56

And it's a real thing oh sorry Go Sorry.

Zara: 7:58

I was just going to say can you explain what ARFID is for people who haven't heard of it before?

Kary: 8:03

Yeah, arfid is avoidant. Restrictive feeding disorder, food disorder.

Kary: 8:07

Intake disorder, Intake disorder. It's basically a diagnostic code that was created to catch a bucket of children eaters that were struggling but didn't fit under. There was sort of this feeding disorder NOS for a while, not otherwise specified, and then there was pediatric feeding disorder that they sort of struggled to identify and categorize different types of eating disorders. So ARFID was a diagnosis that came about several years ago to capture children who were severe picky eaters, really struggling with food, but didn't fall into the bucket necessarily of having a physical issue that was impairing their eating. So they did not. They didn't have like an oral motor deficit necessarily and they didn't fall into the bucket of anorexia or bulimia where they had a body image issue that was leading them to have this eating disorder, this severe picky eating. So it sort of created its own. They created this own bucket that was about children who had a lot of anxiety around food and who were struggling to eat but didn't have that sort of physical issue or the psychological issue of wanting to control their body image.

Sam: 9:12

And it can often, from what I've seen online obviously no expert here, but isn't there also because kids who are on the spectrum also can have ARFID? They can be related, is that? And people on the spectrum can also be really picky eaters too, is that?

Kary: 9:27

true? Yeah, absolutely exactly. So a lot of times, children who are on the spectrum, autistic kids, will have sensory processing issues, and so that can. You can have sensory processing issues that cause ARFID or that are related to your ARFID, without having oral motor issues and without having necessarily again that body issue, the body image issue.

Kim: 9:51

Yeah and just and it's important, I think, for everyone to know that ARFID is not what like if you're thinking about your kid that eats you know a handful of foods, or is that really pokey at the table? That's ARFID. Takes it to a whole other, a whole other level. When I worked at Stanford Children's, we actually had an inpatient unit where young adults and children would get admitted and stay in the hospital for treatment for ARFID. So it's not for those of you that are sitting here thinking about your pokey kids, which we get it. We know how tough it is. This has definitely been a humongous part of our career. Arfid is a more intense issue when it comes to feeding.

Sam: 10:28

Can you give an example of it, just so people who haven't heard of it might have an idea?

Kary: 10:33

Usually there's a severe restriction in the types of food you eat or the amount of food that a child eats, so it can affect their weight. They may not be growing appropriately, or they may be growing appropriately, but again they have a very, very narrow amount of foods that they eat, for they completely avoid certain food types or food groups.

Zara: 10:53

I'm sure you've both seen. There's a little girl on the internet who has ARFID and she posts a lot and the comments on her videos are always just one ignorant and two just incredibly cruel and dismissive of what she's going through. And people will call her a brat and they'll say she's just giving her parents a hard time and it's yeah. We just have such a little awareness of this issue, so I'm glad you are both talking about it here.

Kary: 11:19

Yeah, and it's like anything else. These are skills that she's learning and which are, again, it's not oral motor skills, but it's anxiety management, coping it's how to explore something that you're not interested in or, again, deciding is it worth exploring these foods or is it worth finding strategies that allow you to work around your limitations, and so there's lots of different ways you can address ARFID and deal with it. But, yeah, she posts some very fun, interesting content. It's really exciting to see her deal with it and put it out there and create a voice for something that oftentimes is behind the scenes.

Sam: 11:56

So, OK, I was not a picky child. I ate everything like raw fish out of the ocean, everything like that. That's just how I grew up and then I became a picky eater as I became an adult, and I am still a picky eater. I mean, I just I've restricted my, you know, like I was a vegetarian and a vegan and all these different things, and I think you can kind of start developing pickiness as you grow up.

Sam: 12:17

But my son is the pickiest eater. Meal time is me and my husband's like the bane of our existence. And when he was little, when he so he is almost five and when he was little he would eat. Indian food was like his favorite thing. Tikki masala loved all of that, and then he hit two and he basically stopped eating. He hates meat. He will eat chicken nuggets, but that's the only meat he'll eat and it all just like grosses him out. Is this something you see often? And I know this is why Solid Starts exists and I should probably revisit it again because he is so restrictive in what he eats. But is that something that you've heard of before? Like they're fine and then they hit two and then it's the worst.

Kim: 12:58

Not what we've heard before, that's just toddlerhood.

Kim: 13:00

That's almost every single kid will go through a selective phase when they somewhere in that second year of life some of them it's closer to one.

Kim: 13:08

But by 15 to 18 months almost all toddlers, no matter how adventurous they were, will probably go through a phase where they start to get funky around foods.

Kim: 13:19

And the next story and how that phase is managed and what happens during that phase kind of predicts what we see later on with the child's eating behaviors. But the toddler selectivity that kicks in really doesn't have to do with the food. A lot of times it more has to do with their brain development and they're learning to say no and they're learning cause and effect in the way of like what happens if I throw a tantrum right now? If I throw a tantrum, am I going to get the cookies that I know that I like, that are in the cabinet? It's more about a social interactive learning that happens during that toddlerhood and it happens to be around food because they can control what they put in their body or they can control what they choose to eat or not, and so it's very normal for that regular cognitive development that happens at that time to kind of show its irritation or show its challenges around food.

Kary: 14:12

So very, very normal for us to see. It's also a time where their growth is slowing down. So you have this infant who's growing at an incredible rate and in toddlerhood your growth rate starts to slow down. So the amount of hunger that they have can really vary from day to day. So you may have a child who eats more than everybody else in the household on certain days and then seems to absolutely run on fumes and eats two bites of toast and that's a drink of water and that seems to be all they need for the rest of the day, or maybe even two, three days at a time. So you get a lot of variability in how much they want to eat. They also are starting to develop disgust. So they have an understanding that certain things taste really good and certain things we shouldn't eat and certain things don't taste as good or might feel disgusting. They have a much higher understanding of what is out there. So they know again that certain things are preferable and that they'd rather have those things. So there's a lot more pushing back around I didn't want that, I wanted this and, like Kim said, a lot more emotional liability around like, oh, I didn't get what I wanted, that wasn't what I expected, that's not what I want. So they haven't yet developed the skills to stay self-regulated to say okay, that wasn't what I wanted, I'm not sure about that food. What are the steps I need to take to explore that food, to determine if I like it?

Kary: 15:37

Because we know that the more a child and an adult is exposed to a food, the more they taste that food, the more likely they are to learn to like that food. So a lot of times toddlers you described your son as he used to like this and now he doesn't. There's also a huge amount of toddlers who just won't taste it at all ever. So it's like they decide they don't like it. That's how he is now. Yeah, there's no point of entry. So they have no knowledge base to pull from to say they don't like that food. They just assume they won't like that food. And again, they haven't yet developed the skills to say I might see somebody playing polo and I've never played polo but I don't necessarily dislike it. I'd have to slowly figure out what's going on and take an assessment to make that informed decision. So that's where it's really common to have picky eating in toddlerhood. But oftentimes it is not the food. It's very much around the skills of how we approach food and it's about the control that Kim was talking about.

Kim: 16:35

And you said skills and it made me think too about the. There's a lot of talk out there too about, like every kid that's a that's having food issues has a sensory issue. You've probably heard it yourself, sam. Someone's probably mentioned like oh, does your, does your son, have a sensory issue? No, it's interesting. I feel like that's one of the like main go-tos when a kid's struggling with eating. They're like oh, it must be a sensory problem. And I think Carrie and I, like we're OTs, of course we look at the sensory system. This is very important to our entire career in our practice area.

Kim: 17:03

But when a kid will eat and touch and interact with all kinds of different sensory aspects of food up until a certain date, it's not like something just happened on that date that changed their sensory system and they now can't tolerate that thing. So when parents bring up to us like we're worried, like we think it's a sensory issue, there's a lot of questions that we can ask to more tease that out. Like, are they okay with brushing their teeth and I know toddlers hate brushing their teeth, but generally speaking, can we get something like that in their mouth? Are they okay with touching wet things grass, sand, paint? Do they tolerate having their hair washed? Are there other sensory experiences that we can relate and what was their sensory history like?

Kim: 17:44

So, like with your son, would he put all these textures in his mouth before? Yes, I would probably not lean on that being a sensory issue. Typically, we're going to see sensory things show up throughout their life. Or, yes, I would probably not lean on that being a sensory issue. Typically, we're going to see sensory things show up throughout their life. It's not as common that we're just going to suddenly see a sensory challenge.

Sam: 18:03

That makes sense. Yeah, he is very stubborn. It took him a year at daycare. Every single Friday they would offer him pizza. It took him a full year to ever try it, yeah, and then for chicken nuggets it took us two years to get him to try it. He's just stubborn, and then it'll be things like I'll make, like he's getting better now as he and hopefully it continues to get better, but where he'll try things and but it's very slow. I cooked carrots one time and I was like please try one, and I'm sure I bribed him because that's what we do, and he tried it and his eyes lit up and then he was like I don't like it and we're like okay, and so we're less frustrated by it now, because now we're like okay, this is just you being like this, and when he's with his friends he'll eat more. But I'm sure there are so many parents out there. Are your kids picky at all? Have they ever been picky?

Zara: 18:50

They're not picky, but it has. I mean, it's been up and down, and one I would say is a you know better quote, unquote, better eater than the other.

Sam: 19:00

Yeah, that it's. It's different because he eats. My son eats a lot, but it's always like yogurt and cheese and chicken nuggets and he has finally started eating bread. He wouldn't eat bread before. Like I'm telling you, this kid is like. I remember telling my husband I was like I think there's something wrong with him and now we've just realized he probably could use some OT. But he is just stubborn and it's what he can control to your point earlier and he'll do it when his friends are around, like he'll eat bread or whatever.

Kim: 19:27

I'm also wondering too, like a lot of the foods that you're thinking that you've mentioned are might be a little bit or might have been a little bit more challenging for him to chew earlier on Like bread. In an adult brain doesn't come off as challenging, but for a young eater it's kind of it's a little sticky, it's a little hard to manage.

Sam: 19:43

He used to throw up at the table a lot From gagging.

Zara: 19:47

All the time.

Kim: 19:48

You know, in this case I wonder if he just had a little bit of a tougher time figuring out how to move the food around and he got to a point where he's like I know how to chew or I know how to move around these five things. These are comfortable to me, they're not gonna make me throw up this, this works, I know how to do it, and maybe when he's around his friends he has a little bit more pure motivation to try it because he's like oh, they can do it, maybe I can do it too. And that might be a little piece of this.

Sam: 20:15

Even the pizza is mixed. Yeah, I totally forgot. He used to throw up at the table. He was like you don't care, he would throw up, but it was all the time. Okay, this is helpful. I'm taking some judgment away from my child right now.

Kim: 20:27

Good, I mean he may also just be a little bit more sensitive, and that Carrie and I both have one sensitive kid, so that's what I was going to say.

Kary: 20:33

There's different personalities and temperaments that lean towards pickier eating, and Kim and I have one of each. We each have the kid that we could have done everything wrong and they would still hoover down whatever we serve to them. They're just great eaters. They're also generally flexible kids. And then we have the sensitive souls who are easily disturbed, very emotional in their responses, who don't easily back down when you say no, who push boundaries and who are very stubborn and who tend towards longer stretches of picky eating and of time where they have to warm up to something.

Kary: 21:16

And still, kim and I have never described either of those kids as picky eaters, because we're like, we know they'll get there, we know that they're moving there and my son is that kid he's nine now, a phenomenal eater, loves all things. But my goodness, he went through a very prolonged and very challenging picky phase where I knew we were building skill, but he wasn't yet eating those foods and as a feeding therapist, it was easy enough for me to see the finish line. I knew what I was doing and I knew how to get there so I could maneuver him through that. But had I not known that he was a kid who very easily would have guided me towards more and more restrictive eating patterns over time.

Kim: 21:53

Yeah, and my Maeve, who's my older daughter, who's almost five, so same year as your son, sam, she was really challenging Lots of times would completely avoid to eat, would not eat dinner at all, would go to bed without dinner, would just want to nurse Everything that you can think of total meltdown, screaming, crying, have to take her upstairs away from the table because it was disturbing everybody. And now she's the kid that wants steamed vegetables because she likes the flavor of them better and she'll eat sushi like it's going out of style. And it's because of all of the work, like Carrie said, that we put in during those really excuse my French fucking awful times where things were really bad, like where things were really really hard. Can we say that on the podcast? Absolutely, yes, I did some research on the pod. I'd listened to some episodes before. I'm like these ladies are low key. It's good yeah.

Sam: 22:46

You can say whatever you want, but it is one of those things and if you're our family who likes to have dinner together and you have a picky eater, it can be the worst time of day I don't like to have. My husband hates it, me and my son when my husband goes away. We literally I set up a breakfast charcuterie board of breakfast foods and we eat on the floor and that's what we both like to do and that's our preference is we want to eat snacks and we want to sit on the floor. So it drives my husband crazy, because he grew up in a very traditional household where it's like no dinner is at six and it is a protein starch and a green. It needs to be that. And I remember we got into a fight about it and then I went to Solid Starts. He's like so what are you seeing on there that they include?

Kary: 23:27

And I was like, oh okay, you do have variety on there and they're but you're not wrong that everybody has a different style of eating and almost across the board, when I hear that somebody is a pickier eater, you find that they're not highly food motivated. So again, we talked about our kids. That are those great eaters. My daughter is food motivated. She knows it feels good to eat, she wants to eat, she goes for that food. It doesn't matter if it's new. She's like if I'm hungry I'm going to try it.

Kary: 23:53

My son is not as food motivated. He was always smaller, he was slower to gain weight. He just could like eat just enough and then be like I'm good, I'm going to do my thing now. Until so it's, and I'm that way. I'm not super food motivated. I will eat because I have to eat. If something looks delicious or is delicious, I will eat it. But I'm not one who's like waiting for that next meal and, like you know, prone to going for food that way. So I think there's something about our bodies and you mentioned this with your son, Sam that he was a vomiter. I think kids that have a more sensitive gag reflex or maybe have a little bit of reflux in their history, tend to have a little bit less food motivation in general. So again, you just have less drive to explore new things and to branch out beyond the things you know and you love.

Kim: 24:39

Yeah, the golden retrievers of food are the non-sensitive kids, right Like my two and a half year old. This morning had two eggs and a yogurt and a muffin. I was like, are you seriously still eating? I mean she must have been hungry, but she'll just shovel in whatever's in front of her. Then my older daughter, who's the more sensitive one, will have even if it's treats or something. She'll have a couple bites of cake and she's done. But me, or Blythe, we're like I'm going to finish all that cake on that plate. Eating out with Carrie is challenging because she'll have one bite of the dessert and move on, but I guess it's helpful because you get to finish it all.

Sam: 25:14

So that's the other thing, though my husband hates this because he is not a sweets person and me and my son are and he's like our kid will try a sweet anytime, has never seen it before. If it looks like it's a treat, he will just be like great and he'll eat it. What is that? How do they know? Because sometimes it doesn't even look like a treat.

Kary: 25:32

No, because sometimes it doesn't even look like a treat, but he'll just know that that is something to try. I love that so much because it shows you that he has the skills to try new things. The most severe picky eaters I've worked with would see a treat a cookie, things like that and be like no, I don't know what that is, I don't want it, I'm not going to eat it. Wow, okay, because they're that consumed by the anxiety or by the sensory properties or by whatever it is that's keeping them from it. So kids that will see treats and be like yep, I don't know what it is, but I'm going to explore it and eat it. That tells me they've got a lot of skills there. There's a lot of motivation when they want to, to overcome that fear of the new or that anxiety about trying something new. So helping them understand that those are skills and that that is a really strong benefit to them, and then helping them understand that they can use that same skillset.

Kary: 26:13

You saw it. You made an assumption about it. What did you think? What did you think it was going to taste like? What did you see in that food that reminded you of a different food, or smell about that food that reminded you of something else that you've had in the past. What did you do at first? Did you put the whole thing in your mouth, or did you take a little bite, or did you smell it? Usually there are steps and skills that the child is using to eat that new food that you can then help them see that, so they can apply those same skill sets to other foods that are not sweet treats.

Sam: 26:41

Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and it's hard when you're the parent, though, in the moment, because the way you're describing it is so patient and so kind. But when you're stressed after a day of work or whatever it is, and you're like just eat the fucking food, it's just just fucking eat it. It's not that big of a deal, just try it and you've.

Zara: 26:58

you went through all the trouble of making the food and then they're not eating it.

Kary: 27:01

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Kim: 27:03

Well, we all have short, we all have short game moments. We all have moments where we're number one. We lose our, lose our. It happens all the time. Right, we can't be perfect as every single parenting moment. And we repair after those moments and say I'm really sorry, I didn't want to react that way and I did and I can do better next time. And then you have other moments where you're perfectly calm and cool and you know exactly what to say and you have your little script planned out and you guide them through learning about the experience. But as long as you get it right, what is the research? They carry 20% of the time you're doing okay.

Zara: 27:36

Yeah exactly 20%.

Kim: 27:39

Yeah, they encourage you to get parenting right 20% of the time.

Sam: 27:43

Oh, okay. So I always thought it was like if you get 80%, like the 80-20 rule, but I was thinking you have to get 80%, right?

Kary: 27:50

No, it's so low guys. The bar is so much lower than you realize. It's 20% of the time. If you're getting it right, you're crushing it no-transcript.

Kim: 28:05

I think Carrie probably would have had like 10.

Kary: 28:07

Yeah, I always thought I wanted more kids. I got divorced a few years ago so and my, my second, was so hard he is still a challenging child in so many ways that I feel like he he put a little stamp and was like we're done. But I thought I would have more than I thought, maybe three and then, but also I think that was a different time. It just seems absurd. Now I have a partner who has a daughter, so there's five of us a lot of the times, and five the world is not set up for five. Like you can barely fit five in a car, let alone flying somewhere. You can't fit five in a hotel room. So two it seems like the max. I mean you got your third.

Sam: 28:43

You got your third with your bonus. Yeah, totally, you have a bonus.

Kary: 28:46

Yeah, totally, which I love. It's perfect. I didn't have to go through all the baby phase and the toddler phase. I have this wonderful third child who's 11.

Kim: 28:54

I was an only child growing up, you know, and both of my parents have passed and I feel like there was a lot that went through that. I went through alone because you just like, yes, you have your partner, you have your husband, your friends, but they don't know what it's like to go through certain family things when they just weren't your family, and so I always thought that I wanted more than one. And Maeve was born in 2020, which was already just a very weird time for a baby to be born and she was so hard. She still does not sleep, she'll probably take over the world, but she's just a really tough kid and so when we started kind of having the conversation about maybe having another, my brain wanted it, because I wanted her to have a sibling. I thought that would be good for her.

Kim: 29:37

I wanted that for them for the future. There were so many things I wanted, but at the same time, our life was still so hard and I guess logic or non-logic, whatever it was won out and life came along and hormones and, like Carrie said, she's just kind of the. I say that life happens to Maeve, but life just like lives through her life, she just like exists and it just. But everything in the world happens to Maeve, it's just wild.

Kary: 30:06

I always joke too that I think we're a little brain injured after you have a baby until that baby is around four. There's like something that happens at four where your brain injury starts to fade away and you do better. I agree.

Kary: 30:17

Up until four. You're like you know what I could have. Another Like yeah, that seems like a good idea, Even though your life is chaos, even though everything is so, so hard. And then they hit a round four and you're like you know what? That doesn't seem like a great idea. This is going to be so hard again, Although now, once they're past that, I suppose everything is much easier, because a four-year-old can do a lot for themselves and a new baby needs a lot of attention.

Kim: 30:40

So I think people who have them really spaced out maybe feel differently about this and we were talking to somebody the other day who has much older kids and they were like I don't even remember how hard it was and I was like, oh God, I hope I don't remember someday this is like branded into me at this point.

Sam: 30:57

They say, though, your brain does that amnesia thing from like childbirth and pregnancy and all of these things. I'm the same as you, kim. It is branded in me. I would never do it again. $10 million, but I still wouldn't do the pregnancy again. But I think, just how people's brain works, it's like nope, maybe it's meant to do that. So we procreate more. Yeah, they're like keep the population going.

Sam: 31:20

So, kim, I'm like you, or I am an only child of my parents and both have passed. It's kind of a weird experience, right, when you don't have that parent to call or that mom to call, and it can be really interesting. And then I'm watching my husband's parents fall apart, like his dad just died, you know, a year or so ago, and his mom gets sick, and it is really and it, yeah, it's just an interesting thing where you're like. This sounds so morbid, but for all the, for all the sadness that is when you don't have parents as you're raising children, I find kind of a relief in it that I don't have to watch them go through this while I'm in a really hard time in my life, like that sandwich generation. I don't know if you ever feel like that, or maybe I'm just a really morbid weirdo.

Kim: 32:01

No, so I'm all down for morbid, but one of my best friends lost her mom about a year ago and she's got two young boys and she keeps talking about how hard it is to parent them while also grieving and dealing with all of the things that go into losing your mom. And I didn't have to do that. I could deal with it in my own time. When my dad passed, I was in my 20s and I could just do the things that I needed to do at that point and process it in my own way. And when my mom passed, my daughter was just barely a year old and so and she was on the other side of the country, and so it just it was easier kind of to to not have to do the parenting or like the dealing with your parents stuff while having to parent too. I agree with you, yeah, it's like separate.

Zara: 32:53

Yeah, I'm also an only child, so lots of only childs, only children, sorry, in the chat.

Sam: 33:00

Yeah, and it can be. It can be a lot like. I know, zara, your family, as you're dealing with stuff. It is a lot of pressure on you, and then you have the twins and your marriage and your friendships and it's a lot to navigate.

Zara: 33:12

Yeah, and then you know, and I have friends who have lost parents recently while parenting their own kids and they've reported that that's kind of the hardest part is like having to get up and show up for your kids while you're, you know, you just want to stay in bed all day and you just want to kind of feel what you're feeling. You just want to stay in bed all day and you just want to kind of feel what you're feeling.

Kim: 33:34

So I, yeah, I mean, I just feel like once you have kids, it's all hard and everything else you're dealing with is just it's hard on top of that and this is, you know, this kind of ties back to feeding, to get back from where we were supposed to be going. But this was something like one of those big parenting slash feeding moments that like that Carrie taught me very early on. That kind of applies to this too, because we and my mom was really horrible at ever showing me that she valued herself. Like she never prioritized herself, she never showed me that what she wanted or needed was important. And so some I don't even know how it came up initially when Carrie and I were kind of poking through a lot of this stuff for solid starts or I'm not even sure what it was for, but it was this concept of like it's okay to teach your kids that you're what. Your wants and needs are also important.

Kim: 34:20

So whether it's at the table and they're asking for another you know, juice box or whatever it is it's okay to finish your. It's okay to say I'm going to finish my salad and then I'll get up and get you a juice box. Or if you'd like that cheese for the top of your taco, awesome, you can go get it. Or you can wait a couple minutes for me to finish what I'm doing and I've been trying really hard to do that in my own life instead of just jumping immediately when one of my kids yells that they absolutely have to have the Paw Patrol sippy cup, whatever it is, that I can finish making my coffee before I go and get that and everything will be okay.

Kary: 34:56

Yeah, one of my friends, I think, was the one who taught me that, but she'll say it for herself. But she'd be like I matter too, you matter too, and I'm like, yes, you're right, I matter too, and I'll use that with my kids. I'll say that sometimes I matter too. I'm going to take a minute and then I'll help you. Or you know, I need to do this for myself and I it can feel selfish, but I love thinking about the fact that they they learn by watching us, and so if they see me consistently not prioritizing myself, why would I expect them to learn to prioritize themselves, Like they will turn into that person that they see me doing a lot of times. So it's important to me to show them how you prioritize yourself and how you can do that respectfully and kindly, because a lot of times they prioritize themselves in a selfish way. That is very normal for kids. But how do we do that as an adult, in a kind way and stay in connection with people? I think that's the important part.

Kim: 35:52

Yeah, I just finished almost four years of therapy to get through my mom's non-prioritizing of herself and that effect on me.

Sam: 36:01

I talk about this all the time, but ChatGPT is also a great therapist for that. You just have to set the prompts correctly so that it pushes back on you instead of it just validating everything you say. You have to be like I saw somebody post recently you're an expert, you are skeptical and you don't just like agree with me on everything and, yeah, it's helpful.

Sam: 36:20

That reminds me of something that happened this week with in my family. We just got back from a trip with friends and everyone was just kind of like we're all sensitive and a little burnt out and my husband and my kid were just both not being the nicest and I was like I don't like how either of you are talking to me I'm going to my room and or I actually sent them to their room and get upstairs, both of you, and then they both came down and they're like I'm sorry Cause I was like no, you cannot talk to me like that and it was just not like anything super mean, but just not kind and I was like get out of here. So I fully agree with you all on prioritizing yourself and showing them how to treat you and how to be treated, and just being and considering where your capacity level is like.

Kim: 37:05

When you are really low capacity, don't serve the brand new food or don't ask them to do the really challenging thing. Or tap out and have if you have a partner, have your partner take care of that meal if you're really low capacity, because we all know that when we're low capacity, that's what we do. We say things like how many times do I have to tell you? And when my five-year-old threw that back in my face the other day, I was like, ooh, that was not good.

Sam: 37:30

Isn't it funny when they do that, when they start saying things to you and you're like oh my gosh, that's how I sound.

Kim: 37:35

I heard her say the other day she's like I just don't think you can handle it, and I was like, oh, so clearly I have said enough times I don't, I can't handle this. Right now that she has, Like she's internalized that one.

Sam: 37:50

I don't think you can. Yeah, it is funny how they're little sponges. What, for each of you, has been kind of the hardest part about parenting, would you say.

Kary: 38:00

I feel like Zara said it's all hard, there are joys, but my goodness, it's challenging. I think the I find the way it triggers me and like, like when my child doesn't like A, you're tired, you're you're, you know your resources are low, but then also they'll do stuff. That triggers something in me. So when I see a friend's child do it, I don't care and I don't judge them for it and it doesn't bother me. But my own child I'm suddenly very worried about how it reflects on me.

Kary: 38:37

Do somebody think that I'm a bad parent because they behaved like that? And is somebody going to judge me poorly because I didn't respond appropriately to them in the moment to either discipline them or did I not respond lovingly enough to help them? And is somebody going to think that I'm a bad person or that I'm a bad mom for this? And so the way it interacts with my parenting, I think is really challenging for me because again it's sometimes I find that I am a better therapist or I can coach other families and how to do it, but in the moment I don't have the same capacity with my kids and my family because again, it's reflective of me and it triggers old wounds and old things in me.

Sam: 39:19

Yeah, Dads never feel that way. I feel like Dads are never worried about like, if my kid doesn't eat this, what is somebody going to think about me? But that's very much a woman thing.

Zara: 39:29

Well, because, as a dad, all you have to do is spend a little bit of time with your kids and you're considered a great dad. And as a mom, you know it's impossible to be considered a great mom. You know, sam, I get on my soapbox about this a lot, yeah.

Sam: 39:43

Have you all seen the things online recently where moms are giving up custody of their kids to the dads. So the dads are taking like legal and physical custody and they're doing the visitation and how? People are just so mad and they're like but why is it okay for dad to do this? Like I want to still go have my life. Why can't I do this? Men do this all the time and it's such an interesting thing because you do. You're like whoa, it's so different for a mom to do that.

Kim: 40:18

And that's, I would say that's my hardest part of parenting is that like reconciling the person that I was and the person that I think I want to be, and the, the, the things that make me who I am, and the person that's a parent, and those people are just not the same person.

Kim: 40:36

And the good parents that I want to be and all of the energy that I want to put into that, versus the scientist or I don't know, we're not really scientists but like the person who likes to read actual books, not just romance novels on my Kindle at 11 o'clock, and the person that wants to randomly go out to nice new restaurants and not think about being home for a babysitter, and like that I want to spend stupid money sometimes that I don't have, and you know that person that's not the responsible person that's raising two girls to hopefully be really powerful, wonderful women one day. I am still five years in having a hard time finding the right balance. I don't know if balance is the right word, but just kind of like defining who those two people are and how they work together. But a little separation of like. Yeah, like Carrie has said before, divorce can be great for this. You have a little bit of your own time, and then you have your parenting time.

Kary: 41:28

I feel like there's a I have so much to say on this topic and I feel like maybe not the right place for a podcast.

Sam: 41:34

No, no, no, say it, say it. That's the right place for everything weird.

Kary: 41:38

No, no, no, I don't want to complain about somebody on a podcast, but yeah, it's.

Kary: 41:44

It's a challenge to have to feel so much responsibility for our kids at all times, for their actions, for their behaviors, for how they are in the world, and to feel like you're failing, because the reality is, as my kids get older, I can see ways, and also it helps to have two, so you can see this in both of them.

Kary: 42:05

I've, you know, you know you've parented very consistently. They've lived in the same household, they've had the same interactions by and large not completely obviously, but very similar, with extremely different outcomes in who these people are and their temperaments and their reactions to the world. So I think that that helps you understand that we have so much less control than we realize. And yet we still feel moms especially and then I know I've met many fathers who feel this way too, though that's, I think, maybe a little bit more rare that we are responsible for those outcomes and that we get to celebrate the successes because we caused them and that we are responsible for the failures or the challenges that they have or that they experience or the ways they are in the world that we don't love, because we again are responsible for all of those, and that's very hard. It's a weight that's hard to carry.

Zara: 43:00

I was going to say I have twins and so we really very much raise them side by side and in the exact same way and they both got the first time mom version of me throughout their lives and they're very different kids. So, yeah, I absolutely believe that a lot of it is just out of your control and I also think a lot of parents see their kids eating habits as a reflection of their parenting right. I mean, I think parents feel a lot of guilt if their kids are more selective, or parents will feel really proud of themselves when their kids try new things. And clearly, talking to both of you and just kind of knowing what we know, a lot of that is out of your control too.

Kary: 43:40

Yeah, I really love this topic because, again, I have such a strong feeling of there's a lot that's outside of your control and you should not feel that you are responsible, Sam.

Kary: 43:51

You're not responsible for your child's eating, it's not your win when he succeeds and it's not your failure when he doesn't eat.

Kary: 43:59

And yet there are things that are within our control as a parent. So I do think it's like a both and two things can be true and we have to recognize that we need to own the things that we can control and recognize that so much of it is outside our control and that the ways that we can support one kid are probably going to be different than how we need to support a different kid and there's going to be a lot of trial and error there. But there's just so much about parenting that is not controllable for us that we don't get to again. We don't get to really celebrate the wins, because they're not our wins. We can celebrate with them, but they're not caused necessarily by us and that those failures or those challenges are not also caused by us, even though we have some obviously influence and some control over the situation, so we can maximize that. But then we have some, obviously, influence and some control over the situation so we can maximize that, but then we have to let go of the rest.

Sam: 44:52

Yeah, we get a lot of judgment for how our kid eats. There's a lot of people who look at it and they're like because he'll do things too, like he'll eat pork at one specific house, cut one specific way, and people are like, well, if you, he's willing to do it, and it's like you don't get it. This is like a total personality thing and it's frustrating for us because we're like, believe me, this is like a topic of conversation in our house all of the time. Like right now, I'm going to be honest about something embarrassing. I'm thinking about how I cooked his chicken nuggets in his lunch to crispy and he's not going to eat them. So I'm thinking about, should I make him a sandwich and go drive after this podcast and drop it off at camp? I've been thinking about this the entire time we've been talking and like that is how crazy of eating like our household is.

Kary: 45:36

Just to give you some context, I feel that so deeply just because, again, I'm not I.

Kary: 45:42

I feel tons of pride in how my kids eat and I feel like that is because of the good job that I did, even though I know that that's not true in a lot of ways.

Kary: 45:52

And my son, like I said, is a very challenging child who, at nine, continues to have very large meltdowns in public sometimes and can be very explosive and challenging with his friends and in public. And the way that I feel, judged by that, is so significant, even amongst the people who love me, who I know, know that I'm a good mom and that I work hard to do these things. But I just feel so intensely that people are like if she was holding better boundaries, if she was these boundaries, this wouldn't happen. And my child is respectful because I do all of this work and I'm like my daughter is all these things and my son is just who he is and he builds skills in these areas slower, despite the fact that I am doing all of these things. I swear it's not me. So I feel like, again, two things can be true where you want the successes. I want to feel that I caused my kids to be great eaters and I want you to forgive my failures, of the ways that my son is explosive and challenging and still learning.

Kim: 47:02

We were out at a store the other day with both of my girls and then our next door neighbor and her two boys that are similar age, and she's always made the joke in the past that she's like oh, I don't know how you do it with you know, a sensitive kid. Like, oh, blah, blah, blah. And when we were at the store and Maeve was like on her way to a meltdown and in that moment I was having A plus parenting we, like identified the problem and we, you know like validated and walked her through it and she like got through it just fine.

Kim: 47:28

And she looked at me and she's like, oh my God, I wouldn't even know how to do that. I wouldn't even know where to start. I can't believe that you did that Like I what? And she was just floored. I'm like, oh my gosh, that's like every day for us, that's like multiple times a day for us. I just got lucky this time was mind blown that that actually is something that you have to do as a parent, because her kids are just kind of like go with the flow of kids and both of them are.

Sam: 47:56

Yeah, we had a doctor once tell us because they acknowledged for us that there are hard kids and there are easy kids. And she was telling us she's like yeah, we thought we were such good parents and we were judging everyone for being terrible parents because this shit's so easy and you see a lot of it online, right, being at home with your kids is so easy and all of this stuff. And then she's like and then we had our second and we're like oh no, this is just our kid. Our kid was really good, we suck. And so they were like. She was like so it's very humbling and people who think it's easy just have really easy babies and kids. And then, but you do get a break at some point, right, because maybe they'll be more challenging at teenage years and hopefully it switches off. I'm I'm keeping my fingers crossed that that eventually it gets better, once those hormones, kind of you know, stop going. Yeah, anyway, now I'm just thinking I'm like, oh shit, teenage years is going to be crazy.

Kim: 48:50

I don't want to think about it.

Kary: 48:52

Yeah, I'm right on the cusp there for my daughter and I'm very, very nervous she's 12. I'm like whew, but again she's my easy one, so I feel like probably it will be okay.

Sam: 49:02

Yeah, hopefully you don't get that switch. Yeah, I was a really easy kid and a really bad teenager, but no, don't say that. But that's more environmental. It had nothing to do with, I don't think, my personality. This isn't something we usually ask, but I'm curious if there is something that you've gone through in parenting that you have found to be easier than you thought it would be, where you're like oh, I thought that was going to be really hard and it wasn't.

Kim: 49:27

Potty training, my first, the sensitive one, really. Yeah, she's very pure, motivated and obviously potty training is like on the front of my brain right now. That's all I think about. You think about making extra sandwiches and I think about potty training. She was really interested around two and so we kind of started like tinkering with the idea of exposing her more. And then my second was born and so that all went down the drain, of course, and she started preschool at like just over two and a half and she went to preschool one day and came home and was like I'm going to wear underwear tomorrow and that was it. Never looked back, did nothing, did not do a thing. And now we're doing all of the crazy things with my second. So maybe it's like looking back on that experience and looking at how easy it was. But that's probably my one friend of mine for me.

Sam: 50:22

But that's good Cause you don't usually have many of those where you're like that, something so challenging. I've heard to look at the almanac and when you do that, like you, you're supposed to time when you do weaning and potty training around the farmer's almanac and apparently there's like easier versus harder times to do it.

Kim: 50:39

I found this out after I went through all that stuff, but now, yeah, so I also think that I found um traveling with my kids to be way less challenging than I thought it would be. Like they actually travel pretty well, and that was shocking. I thought that would just be absolute awful.

Kary: 50:57

Yeah, I think potty training the same. For whatever reason, it went very smoothly with both of my kids and my son, who everything is hard with, was weirdly very, very easy to potty train, even easier than my daughter. So I have no idea why that went well. Maybe I was doing something right, maybe that was just random. But feeding is another one. Again, my son was challenging, but maybe my capacity for it was just higher. So I feel like, across the board, I have found so much joy in cooking for my children, cooking with my children, eating with my children and all the ways that we interact with food together. It's one of my favorite elements of parenting actually, and I know that that is not the case for many people, so I recognize that.

Sam: 51:46

But yeah, for some reason it can be hopeful for other people that you can get there, though, because you're using all these techniques and things and you can have joyful feeding times or eating.

Kary: 51:57

Times around food Totally. And again, I want to just reiterate before, like even with my son, who there are things about him that I feel like there's things that I actively get to do to help his explosive behavior or to help his challenges with staying regulated, or to help him with his ways that he is in the world, and there are elements of his personality that just make it more slow and that make him act a certain way that I don't want to change. Like Kim said, I want him to be that child who does not take no for an answer. As he gets to be an adult and he's out in the world, I want him to push boundaries and to try and get what he wants and what he needs. But I think there are those elements that we can control, that are skills that are being built over time, and I want us to be active with those things that we can influence and control.

Kim: 52:48

I think that's an important thing to like circle back to, especially when it comes to eating, because this is something Carrie and I were talking about a lot recently, because there's a lot of pushback on even thinking about kids as picky. Right and just, kids will be kids and they're going to eat what they want and it doesn't matter. And why are we making a big deal out of it and we should just let them be? And while there is a component of that, that's true. Yes, we can't control if they eat right, we can't control their taste buds Like we can't change that they like certain things more than others. But what can we do? We still can set them up to learn new skills. We can set up the environment to help them have less anxiety. We can expose them to different ways of eating and different people eating different foods. We can help them learn the skill of tasting.

Kim: 53:34

We don't have to just let it happen, because that is our child's temperament and Carrie's used the example before about reading. It's like if your child was struggling with reading and they were like I don't ever want to read again, I hate it. You're not just going to be like, okay, that's fine, yeah, you're just not going to learn to read? Want to read again. I hate it. You're not just going to be like, okay, that's fine, yeah, you're just not going to learn to read. No big deal, and eating can be the same thing. They can struggle and they can have a hard time and be really particular about it, and we can still support them in learning to have a better experience.

Sam: 54:00

Yeah, that makes sense. This actually triggered something in my brain. There's also a socioeconomic component to this, because trying things 10 times a lot of people can't, or 100, whatever it is. A lot of people can't afford that, especially with vegetables or if they're in a food desert, and I just want to address that and be aware of it, because it is what I mean. We spend so much money on food that is just wasted, and we're privileged in our ability to do that wasted and we're privileged in our ability to do that. Do you have tips? This might be kind of veering off, I know we only have like a couple of minutes left, but if somebody like how, if they don't have all the funds you know to to try zucchini 10 times, what do you recommend in those cases?

Kary: 54:40

I'm a very big believer in serving kids the foods that you are eating yourselves, so that if they choose not to eat that meal, you still have that food, it still exists in the world and it's yours and you can eat it for your lunch the next day or you can serve it again to yourself. So trying, I think, I've worked for three years predominantly with low income families in rural Oregon, so I'm not unfamiliar with this, these ideas, and I feel like I've worked a lot with families to problem solve through these, which is not to say that I'm excellent in this area, but just that I have some experience trying to be like oh yeah, that's so you don't have access to these foods, this is not something that you're going to be able to go and buy. How do we do this? So really prioritizing the foods that you know and love, so you're not having to serve zucchini a hundred times if that's not something you're already serving to yourself.

Kary: 55:31

I also like to acknowledge that a lot of times, the foods that toddlers are really into, or the foods that they're guiding you towards, are expensive foods. They're processed foods that you are buying that actually cost more to buy the chips than to buy a single potato or to buy the packaged processed thing rather than buying the zucchini, which actually is quite cheap. So I think there's a lot of consideration of that, that as your child develops these skills and can eat more, it can actually be cost effective.

Kary: 56:01

So there might be some investment of time and money spent serving foods that then they don't eat, but you can use them for yourself so long as the child is not destroying them or throwing them or in some way destroying them.

Kary: 56:16

But also, again, it's okay. I've worked with families where they don't have that capacity right now. So it's not just that they don't have the money to buy those foods, it's also that in their family life they don't have that capacity right now. So it's not just that they don't have the money to buy those foods, it's also that in their family life they don't have the capacity to dedicate the time and the energy to this right now because they're struggling in other ways and it is perfectly fine to make accommodations for that. So, again, you're identifying. Well, actually, these are the 10 foods that your child will eat, that they know and love. Stick with those foods, buy those foods, serve those foods, plan meals around those foods and don't worry about expanding their diet right now. Because, again, if you're just getting by, if you're homeless or you are losing your house, now is not the time to think about how you're going to build soccer skills for your child. You know like that will come at a different time.

Kary: 57:04

Those things are important, but that's not the priority. So I think it's also recognizing what you have capacity for as a family and recognizing that these are skills that can come later, that you need to focus your energies elsewhere for now, and that's totally fine, so as long as the eating. So what happens is that families are fighting their child and it's explosive at mealtimes and then food is getting wasted and people are upset. We need to deal with that. So, again, if serving those 10 foods that your child absolutely loves will create peace at the mealtime, get your child fed and allow you to move on with your day without wasting food, do that until we have some extra capacity to start adding on or layering in new skills and new foods.

Sam: 57:47

I like that as like a theory for life too in general. With all you know, with everything, with kids.

Kary: 57:51

It's like do what you can do with your resources, time, energy, like mentally all of that and then slowly add on, because I think we, some of us, try to do too much all at once, a hundred percent, and we feel like we have to and you mentioned this, sam before like what I had said about some of us try to do too much all at once, a hundred percent, and we feel like we have to and you mentioned this, sam, before, like what I had said about some of the coaching. You're like that just sounds like a lot of patience and a lot of effort, and it is. It's a lot of patience and a lot of effort. So I think, recognizing that we need to give ourselves grace around that, that there are plenty of times where you're not going to have that capacity for patience and for slow coaching, and then there will be moments in your life where you do, so take advantage of those moments and then give yourself a lot of leeway when you do not have it, because, again, you're aiming for around 20% of the time to get things right.

Kary: 58:39

I think there's just so much out there on the internet that make parents feel like they're failing and that you feel like, well, you always have to be doing these things. You really don't. It's good to know that these strategies exist so that when you're ready, you can choose them, but until then, it is perfectly fine to set them aside and be like I'm not doing that right now because it's more important that I just get by, or that I calm myself down, or that we, you know, just get on with our day in whatever way we need to.

Sam: 59:06

Yeah, that's great and I know we are at time here, but before we ask our typical two questions that we ask should I make that sandwich and take it over to camp? Seriously, should I? I'm asking professionals here, so do I need to make a trip over to camp right now? Professionals here, so do I need?

Kary: 59:23

to make a trip over to camp right now. Again, think about capacity. Is your child really struggling in their capacity today? Have they had a really tough week? Is it been an awful day? Is there something going on at school today where they need to have a higher level of focus and attention and capacity Like?

Kary: 59:41

All of those things to me would influence whether or not I want to make that accommodation for them to help them. If you think that he's had a great night's sleep and you know really good week and nothing is going on extra at school, actually maybe it's an especially easy day at school or at camp or whatever. Maybe that's the day that you're like you know what he's not getting the chicken nuggets or he's not getting the sandwich to replace the chicken nuggets. He's going to come home extra hungry though, so I'm going to be ready with something that he likes and some nourishing foods for him as soon as he gets home, so that I'm not making him then come home and have to wait until dinner time to eat, because I know he's going to be hungry, yeah, yeah, this is one of those things that I wish we would have had more time to talk about, because this idea of accommodating can be so helpful on one hand, but then can also be a spiral to making things worse.

Kim: 1:00:27

because you want to accommodate to make sure that your life doesn't suck later, you don't want him to come home a complete tornado. Also, the more you accommodate, the more he learns that his selective eating is going to get him something else. It's a double-edged sword.

Sam: 1:00:44

Yeah, my husband's very much like. So what Then? He's going to starve today and that's fine. So I'm like ah.

Kary: 1:00:50

But again, there's value to connection. So if you running him a sandwich to school is going to make him feel loved and seen and calm, he will trust you more at the next meal. It's all a balancing act of where your priorities are, how you're doing that day, what you want to be working towards. So there's, like Kim said, there is some downside to running him a sandwich, because then he learns that he doesn't have to eat, that mom will save me and there's lots of benefit to running him a sandwich. So now you're just doing a cost benefit analysis of what you think is more important that day and again, what your capacity is and what his capacity is. I think that's what you miss in an Instagram page or in a blurb about picky eating or parenting, where you think it's all or nothing or that there's a right answer and a wrong answer and if you did the right thing, it would be fine. Everything is gray.

Sam: 1:01:41

There's so much of the balancing act. I think that's what makes parenting so hard is there is so much gray and it's like, well, if I make this choice, you're like constantly doing that, that analysis, okay, well, thank you. Now I, now I at least know how to structure it. I'm probably going to run on the sandwich. Honestly, I love that.

Zara: 1:02:01

And we have social media, which makes it seem like everything is like so black and white, right, and there's one specific way to do things, when in reality, like you said, carrie, there it's all gray, totally All right, we've got two more questions for you.

Sam: 1:02:15

So if you had a best friend coming to you asking for advice, they were going to become a new parent. Or maybe advice you've gotten from somebody else like the best advice. What is that advice? This is a tough one, I know.

Kary: 1:02:33

I know it's funny. Again, this is a. This is maybe a privileged type of advice, but the very best thing that I have done in my life around parenting that has made parenting easier is to build a community, and that's not necessarily my family. I've moved away from my family so that and I love them. I have a great relationship with my family but they're not close in proximity and over the past five years I have nurtured and really honed relationships in my neighborhood.

Kary: 1:03:03

So direct community. Where I am at a neighbor's house right now because something ised relationships in my neighborhood. So direct community where I can. I am at a neighbor's house right now because something is going on at my house so I can walk into people's houses. I can say I need you to take my kids. I can say I'll pick up your kids.

Kary: 1:03:15

Like that community is, I think, essential to enjoyment of parenting and I know that's a privileged thing to say, I know that's a hard thing to build. I know that there is a giving up of your time and your freedoms in some way when you are part of community and there's a requirement of you to participate actively in that community, which there are times where I'm like I'm stretched thin. I don't have the capacity, so it feels like a burden. And yet the community that I have built around me is what has kept my head above water in so many instances with parenting and again brings joy to my day to day in a way that I cannot fully explain to people who don't have that yet, and I, and I wish that for all people.

Sam: 1:04:05

Yeah, and I think too I mean that's my biggest advice too to your point too. You don't always have to give to the community when you're, you're not resourced for it. So it can feel really daunting when you're in like the newborn stage and all of that because you never have anything to give. But as you start to get a little bit further along in parenting, you give when you can, and it can just be small.

Kary: 1:04:27

So yeah, and it requires quite a bit of humility to like allow the community to support you, which is challenging, but I think when you recognize that it goes around, you give grace to other people that give grace to you. You give you know you. It's okay to accept help from other people, despite the fact that often our culture encourages us to be independent and to have it all together for yourself.

Sam: 1:04:53

In a little box. Yeah, my kid got picked up by a friend today and he's going over to their house after camp today, and I took him yesterday and she took him the day before. So there is a lot, but we've been texting each other being like are you sure it's okay? I feel really guilty, I don't want to add more to your plate, and for us it's just like let's just have that communication. If you feel like you're doing more, just say it, and I think that can also be kind of freeing. It's really scary, though, cause when you value something so much, you're like I don't want to lose this friendship because I'm relying on you. And then you realize, oh, that's not going to happen. You just have to be honest, kim. What advice?

Kim: 1:05:26

would you give? This wasn't initially what popped into my head, but as you guys were talking, I think the thing that pops into my head the most at this point is that your kid doesn't want to be an asshole. Your baby doesn't want to be an asshole. Your baby and your kid don't have bad intentions. Your baby knows that you keep them alive. Your baby knows that you give them love and support.

Kim: 1:05:46

And when they are having a meltdown or they're talking back or like my daughter this morning, when she was I was having a flash forward of what teenagehood is going to look like I had to remind myself she is a good kid and she wants me to love her. Like she's not doing this specifically to piss me off and that kind of. When I'm in a decent headspace, that reminds me to take a breath and be like she's learning. She's learning. We're both learning right now, but for me, that just reminding myself that she is a human being that deserves love and wants me to love her and wants to be a part of our family and is learning and making mistakes helps me not take it so personally when she's such a jerk.

Sam: 1:06:27

And they can be, they can be and they like know your points, your trigger points, like they get them.

Kim: 1:06:32

that first time. Oh, like when my two-year-old comes in in the middle of the night and smacks me in the face. I'm like she didn't really want to hit me in the face. She's just trying to wake me up. But seriously.

Sam: 1:06:42

What was the first thing that popped into your head, though I'm curious Babies are made for new parents.

Kim: 1:06:48

It's, you know, I think we this is something that we'd say at the hospital a lot when when parents were nervous about going home with their baby. But I don't want to take away the fragility of life and of course we want to take care of our babies and make sure they're safe and there we can do everything in the world to make sure they're safe and something still might happen. But there's so much value in letting them make mistakes and letting them fall and letting them skin their knees and letting them just make those mistakes. And I know our generation of parents. I feel like there's a lot of us that coddled our babies for a really long time, as we should. We should give them all kinds of love and support, and it's okay to let them not have the perfect place to land at every single moment, because they learn in those opportunities.

Kim: 1:07:38

My two and a half year old is a bulldozer and she's just like all over the place and she fell down the other day on a play structure and cracked her like, broke her lip open, bleeding everywhere, and she came over and she wanted a hug and like we cleaned it up and the parents were like, do we need to call? Do we need to call an ambulance? Are we okay? I'm like no, her lips just cracked, it's fine, it's fine Like no big deal, and she just, you know, we walked through it and she was okay and we, we talked through what happened and like kissed her boo-boo and all the things, and she went back and went and started playing again. We didn't need to make that like a bigger traumatic event than it was and it just reminded me that I feel I'm glad that I can, of course, take serious action when things need to be taken care of, but also, like, let the little childhood things happen that happened to me. And how many times did you fly off the handlebars of your bike, like you know?

Kim: 1:08:26

I used to fall out of trees all the time, right, and so I'm trying really hard to just let my kids be kids sometimes, because they're, they're, they're okay.

Zara: 1:08:35

And then what's a part of parenthood that's brought both of you unexpected joy.

Kim: 1:08:40

The little things that I see my kids do that are reflective of the way that my husband and I act. When I see them doing something sweet or kind, and it's because we've modeled that for them that makes me feel like okay, it's worth it. We're doing all this hard work for a reason. Weeks ago, and one of the little kids from camp, the mom, texted me and had said that her, her son, who's also a very sensitive little guy, was having a hard time at school drop-off and Maeve went over and was like singing a Spider-Man song to him and she was the way that she described it. She was like he just, she just gave him just the right amount of support and then gave him space when he needed it, and it was just like such a magical moment and I was like, okay, so we must be doing something right. That she's, you know, treating her friends like that too.

Kary: 1:09:30

My kids are a little older, so I think that for me, it's those moments when they learn a new challenging skill Like, for example, when they learn to swim, or when they learned to ride their bike, or when they learned how to ski, or we do a lot of hiking and camping and swimming in lakes and paddle boarding and things like that so like watching them do those sorts of adult things that are now things that we can do together where it is actual fun, where, like I can take them for a day of skiing and I I actually have fun with them. They carry their stuff, they put their stuff on, we go out there, we play together and I am really truly enjoying myself, and so are they on a really nice, even level. So it's not like sure, I'll play another game of Candyland with you, and it's like not actually fun. For me, those moments are wildly wonderful, where I feel again like I'm successful, I've done something right, that these kids figured this out and that we can now do this together as a family.

Kary: 1:10:50

And those days where we've done that gone out and swam in a new lake, where we swam to a rock and we jumped off the rock together and we high-fived and then we got back in the car and we got dinner and then we headed home. I'm like I feel like the most especially maybe as a single mom. I'm like I feel like the most successful human. I really did something right. If I can enjoy it like this and I think again, if you have toddlers, maybe that's hard to see that end game, but all of those moments of time that I invested early on to you know, help them be flexible or to help learn certain skills, you can see the payoff and it feels really good.

Sam: 1:11:33

That's awesome. I'm starting to get glimpses of that. So we had one of those swimming things the other day and I was like, oh yeah, this is okay, it's coming, it's coming, we're getting close, so I'm excited. Well, thank you both for spending so much time with us. We know you're busy. You have multiple children, jobs and all of that. So thank you so much for taking so much time and we really appreciate it so happy to do it.

Kim: 1:11:53

It was so fun yeah.

Zara: 1:11:54

Thank you. Thank you for having us, of course.