Clean Plate Club
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Are you like me in that you blame yourself whenever your kid is going through a hard stage, but then it gets better, you double blame yourself for, quote, waiting so long to get help? Well, I have news for you. I think the reason you might not have taken that next step of getting help is because actually you know that you're so busy and you might not utilize whatever the thing is that you would invest in.

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You can do it when you're brewing coffee, waiting in the pickup line, scrolling in bed at night, or my personal favorite, when I'm sitting on the toilet. And what's amazing is because it's personalized to age, you know the advice is developmentally appropriate.

Plus, there's a chatbot. So whenever you have a question, you can ask it and get an answer to implement right away, which means no more spiraling on unanswered questions. I know now is the time for you to get started because finally, there's a parenting tool that actually makes sense for your life. I cannot wait for you to get in there and get your first parenting win today. Check out show notes and download the Good Inside app today. When I found out that I was going to have a daughter, my first baby, I was like,

I was in tears. It was all because I was terrified that she would go down an eating disorder slash dieting body hatred path that I had lived. And I didn't tell anyone that. I didn't admit that for many, many years. I, of course, was so excited to meet her. And I love being a mom to two girls.

And I think I was given two girls for that reason to kind of address that own fear in myself. And not that, you know, boys can't go through this exact same thing either. But I was so worried that I would pass on my own crap to my daughters. Our relationship with food is loaded. And it starts at a really young age.

I don't know many people who don't have some type of personal story around their relationship with food, around their relationship to their body, or how those all played out in their own childhood with their own parents.

And actually being a parent has been so healing for me because I can do it differently. I have the knowledge and the background to know how to help them develop a healthy relationship with food, help them have a healthier way of interacting with and feeling about their bodies than I grew up with.

Megan McNamee is a registered dietitian nutritionist specializing in maternal child nutrition, food sensitivities, and eating disorder prevention. You might know her better as one of the brains behind the Instagram account Feeding Littles. If you have a baby starting solids or small children struggling with picky eating, or if you just want to raise intuitive eaters who love all types of foods and know how to eat for their bodies, then turn this episode up.

When I was born in the 80s, we didn't have nearly as much knowledge as we do now about how our actions and our language affect our kids. So once I realized, wow, I can really make a difference here and I can change this narrative for my own kids, I felt so much more empowered. And my approach to food that I hope our audience feels from how I talk about it is, yes, nutrition is important.

Yes, we want our kids to love eating nourishing, vital foods. We want them to enjoy eating a whole bunch of types of foods. And we also want them to enjoy foods that are just good for the soul and not have any hangups about it. Not feeling weird about, I had an apple and then I had a cookie and both foods can fit and both have their own purposes.

And that's kind of what we're trying to teach parents to do is grow past their issues with food so that they can see food as neutral, you know, morally neutral and allow their children to learn to eat in a way that feels good to their bodies, not because of external influences that tell them this is going to make you fat. You need to eat this to stay thin. That's what we grew up with. That's what I don't want for the next generation.

I'm Dr. Becky, and this is Good Inside. We'll be back in a minute. I'm so glad I started with this question because what you're saying, no, but what you're saying, Megan, it resonates with everything I care about in the parenting world. And what you're saying, Megan, like your journey with your kids, what you do in your cookbook, on Instagram, in your courses, all explicitly is about how parents interact with kids. But your journey started with parenting.

with your own stuff. Our journeys all start with our own stuff, which you're right, we're confronted by. We're smacked in the face when we have a kid. It's like that mirror. And I want you to know, I don't know if you know this about me, I suffered from an eating disorder also. I suffered with anorexia when I was a high school senior. It was a very, very core part of my childhood, of my

Kind of figuring out my identity, figuring out who I really was, figuring out it's okay to feel angry, figuring out it's okay to take up space. Yes. And yes, with my own kids as well, around food stuff, around their body issues.

trying to get from, oh no, am I going to mess up my kids to whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I actually have so much knowledge. I have so much experience. And this is actually going to be that much stronger of a why for me. And it sounds like that's a why for so much of your professional identity and career as well. And I just got emotional even thinking about it as you said that because it's

Now that my oldest is 10, she has language and a little bit of understanding to tell me how she's feeling about this. And she lives in, you know, a slightly bigger body than her friends. And just like I was as a kid. And she'll even say to me, mom, you know,

a boy might call me fat or whatever. And she's like, I don't get it. She's like, why do we all have to be the same sizes? My friends will turn around and say, no, you're skinny. You're skinny. And I'll say, I don't want to be skinny. I don't need to be skinny. I need to be me. I want to be me. And, and,

It feels so good to me because it's not just working with her and helping her break that cycle for her. It's helping me heal my stuff too. It's like, oh my gosh, I wish I had this when I was a kid. Of course, we have these journeys to teach us things and help us do better. But I'm so grateful that she has that perspective and see that her body is, you know, to quote Beauty Grue to find her body is an instrument. It's not an ornament. Yeah.

And I love that she loves her strength and she feels so good about herself. And I'm sure the world is going to tear her down the older she gets, but she just has such a, she's just starting so much higher on that mountain. You know, she just already has this, this core belief that her body is good no matter what.

So if you're tuning in and you thought Megan and I were just going to get into some, you know, here and there, say this, do this, you know, I hope you have the tissues ready. Yes. That's what I always love to do, get deep and get concrete. You know, we need both ends. But maybe actually, Megan, I feel like probably everyone listening can pause and probably reflect on the messages they got growing up about their body.

about women and men's bodies, around morality of food and body size, what is better, what is good, what is lazy, what is determined. These things, we don't always consciously know that they're coming up when our kid is having that second helping of dessert. You know, we don't know what's coming up when our kid says this food's disgusting, but actually reflecting on

And kind of all those lessons we've learned that really do live somewhere in our bodies is really the most important foundation, I think. I love that. Half the time when I would work with clients, most sessions would end in some sort of tears or there would be tears involved because food is emotional.

It is so primal feeding your child, especially if it doesn't go well. Judy uses this analogy all the time. Judy is my business partner. She's an occupational therapist. She's super fun and totally gets kids. And she'll say, okay, if your child isn't moving as we expect, you'd have them see a physical therapist. If they can't see, you'd have them go to an optometrist. If they are not eating, everyone thinks it's their fault.

And it doesn't make sense. We trust that, you know, if they have problems with something, we'll ask an expert, we'll seek help. But suddenly when it comes to food, it's all on us. And oftentimes it's all in the mom. And it feels so personal. And it feels like,

This should be the one thing that I could do. And I can't. And it starts actually right at birth. It starts with breastfeeding and, you know, don't even get me started, Megan. So it's, it's one of those things where you have expectations and you have all these messages that you expect to fulfill this, this role that, and then, and then you get this distrust in your body if it's not going well. And like,

And then when your child eats solids, if they're not figuring out fast, again, you feel like it's your fault. You must be doing something wrong. Well, there's such a huge variety of difference in children when it comes to eating and their skills, even just what we consider typical. There's a massively wide variety. And I just want parents to know that if feeding their kid feels hard,

They're probably doing just fine. It is hard for so many parents. I think we have such pressure on ourselves that parents 20, 30 years ago didn't even experience because we put so much emphasis on nutrition. Again, I think nutrition is super important and it's great that we're learning about how to fuel ourselves better. And there's so much more science coming out. And yes, these are important things.

But the expectation on parents now is like, if your kid doesn't eat like a kale blueberry salad, you know, with gusto, then you're messing up. It's your problem. Yeah. Well, I didn't eat that when I was a kid. I don't know about you. I don't even think, was kale even around? No, it was a garnish. I think it was like just invented basically. Okay. I mean, there's so many things I want to kind of double click on. So going back to how it starts.

I think, and I'm going to speak as a woman, and I do think this is, I don't know if it's more common for women, but I hear from it more from women, that unconsciously we are always looking for some barometer outside of us to tell us that we're good enough.

It's so almost radical to feel like we can look inside and just be good enough. That's why I feel like that phrase, good inside, I was like, we do have inherent goodness, but we are not taught that. And so we're always trying to figure it out outside in. And once we have a baby, that kind of feeding is, and then to some degree sleeping, but definitely feeding becomes our barometer of whether a good mom is.

And even just realizing this is so helpful because knowing, whoa, I think I'm doing this thing. Like breastfeeding goes well or bottle feeding go well. And yeah, of course the day is easier, but it's more than that. It feels like the whole world is saying, I am a good parent. I am easily sustaining my child. I am good. And then the baby vomits or rejects the bottle or won't feed. And the reason it feels so awful is not because it's a tough feeding day.

It's because something's happened where I've lost the ability to feel like a good parent. And what I love about your work so much is the way you separate the process of eating for a kid is way more important than the consumption itself. Because what our kids will remember, what they'll really encode in their body is not the broccoli they swallowed, is everything

Was food stressful? Did it lead to a lot of tension? Did I feel like a bad kid or a good kid based on what happened around the table? Was there guilt? Was there shame? Was there fear? That stuff lives within us way longer than the broccoli or the kale blueberry salad does. Right. I love that. And I literally am feeling it in my body as you say it because sometimes...

Even in my own work, I get so granular and I'm not a psychologist, obviously. And to hear you put it in that perspective, I'm like, oh, yes, yes. That's such a light bulb moment for me, too. It's the feeling. And kids are going to remember the feeling at the table. They're not going to remember what you put on the plate.

They are not. And their bodies will actually be more impacted by those feelings than they will about each moment-to-moment, you know, nutrition. Assuming that you live in a house, which you might not, but if you do live in a house where there generally is food available and there generally is a wide range, the stress is

And so I think just everyone listening now, like one of my favorite exercises to do with anything I'm stressed about is to really separate being a good mom from any one moment. So we've been saying, I'm a good mom whose kind of dinner time is stressful. I'm a good parent with a kid who is only eating crackers right now. Just saying that to yourself forces us to separate ourselves.

my good parent identity from my kids' eating behavior because when we don't do it explicitly, I'm sure you see this all the time, Megan, the two things become collapsed. Yes. And then we're not even helping our kids with feeding. We're actually using our kids to try to feel good about ourselves as a parent. They're like a pawn in our own identity game, which we don't really want to do. That doesn't really benefit anyone. Right.

Oh, I'm literally these are lightbulb moments for me, too, because you're connecting so many pieces that I see all day and that I haven't necessarily put together in this way in my brain. So walk us through a scenario. What what do you know? Like, you know, everyone listening here, their parents, they have kids. Food is stressful. I'm not trying to say like just everyone knows. I don't have some like Zen moment. My husband probably listening being like, Becky, please tell everyone.

that you can also get triggered by food. So yes, I can too. I can say it one way and still experience it differently. So what do you see? Let's walk through a stressful kind of meal or snack time situation. Sure. And then let's brainstorm a little together. So very common for, you know, it's the end of the day, maybe your kid's coming out from school or daycare, they're really tired. Now, there's so many different ways this can go. Maybe they're

snack hangry, right? And they're in the kitchen, they're begging, they're begging, they're begging. Right. It's like intense. Okay. And you're like trying to like saute something. Yes. And you're literally chopping and trying not to like burn the baby and like cut your hand off at the same time. And your child is literally running into the pantry, pulling stuff out. And it's so challenging because you're like, I don't want to, you know, yell at them around food, but I also don't want to spend all this time and money making something that they're not even going to eat because they're full.

So this is hard. And what we tell parents all the time is like, think about even when you get really hangry, if you're making dinner, like you're probably eating a little bit of it with you, you know, as you go, you're probably snacking a little bit because you're so hungry. It's okay for your kids to also be hangry in that moment. And what helps in our family, just specifically for this, I know we're going to brainstorm, but just for this issue, a designated like pre-meal snack.

something that's not super filling. I mean, pretzels, your kid has like five pretzels, whatever. They're not gonna be full. We'll do something like dry cereal or a few strawberries or like if you like cucumber, something like that, throw them in a bowl. Okay. We're going to have snack real quick. I know you're starving. Let's just, let's just take the edge off. So would you do that to like to front end it? Like don't even wait for that chaotic moment. Your kid comes home. Is that, I'm just curious to like get really concrete. Absolutely.

We always talk about having like a routine around meals and snacks. So there's predictability for your child and for you, but you also need to know your kid within that. So you might've already had a snack that day or two snacks, you know, between lunch and dinner and your kids famished. They're not going to feel great if they sit down for a meal and they're so hungry that they're angry, right? Um,

Just taking the edge off with a little pre-dinner snack like that can really help. Did your kid eat a pound of strawberries and now you're kind of screwed at that dinner? Yeah. But you know what? We take from that, we learn and we move on to the next meal. Fortunately, we get another chance to eat because it happens often.

That is really true, right? And I do think one of the things I'm trying to work on in my own parenting is reminding myself, like, I trust myself and my parenting beyond proving it in a moment. Okay, that moment wasn't what I wanted. That doesn't become the parent I am. I can trust that I can do it differently tomorrow, like you're saying. So to walk through that, if I put that into action in my house, I might even say to my kid before they get onto the bus in the morning, hey, I just want to let you know when you come home, I know you've been really hungry. We usually have this thing. I'm cooking.

You run to the pantry. I burn the food. We both yell. Nobody wins. So instead today, there's going to be some snacks out. There's going to be fruit. There's going to be strawberries and peppers. I know you like that. There's also going to be some pretzel crisps. That's fine too. That's the snack. You might say you want to go to the pantry.

it's going to be a no to the pantry because we have this available. Everybody likes to eat when they're home from school. And that will help us kind of have a, I don't know, easier time before dinner, like something like that. Absolutely. Okay. I think communication is really big with that, especially if you haven't been doing stuff like that way. And again, this might not be what you choose. Maybe you say, hey, go pick out, you know, a little prepackaged something from the pantry because that's all you can manage right now. And we're talking like right before dinner is served. Obviously, if your kid comes home much earlier, my kids get off at 2.15pm.

So I plan a really substantial snack because there is some sort of weird phenomenon, no matter when you pick your child up from daycare, school, whatever it is,

they are starving. It is guaranteed no matter what the time is, no matter when you pick them up, they're going to be hungry. So planning for that, planning for their needs to be met and just realizing too, they are in growing bodies. They're learning. So their brains are hot all day long, right? They're literally using up energy emotionally, intellectually, physically. And now maybe you're adding in an hour or two sports practice as they get older. Of course, they're going to be starving.

And it's okay. It's okay if they don't, if they eat a whole bunch of snacks sometimes and they, dinner doesn't go well. It's okay. Cause you know what? Yeah. You learn from that and you'll do it differently next time if you, if you can. And maybe you won't next time. It's just feeding is a long game. It is not like meal to meal. Yes. And then you can remind yourself, okay, like I'm going to focus on lowering stress and yelling and guilt.

even if it means they snacked instead of dinner. Then I'm going to learn from it tomorrow. And just for a parent to remind themselves, like, that's a really solid parenting decision. Again, I trust myself. I can learn from this. I can move on. My kid eating snacks instead of whatever kind of chicken I made doesn't mean I'm a bad parent, and it doesn't mean I have a bad kid. Hey, Good Inside members. If this episode has you thinking, but what do I do when my kid has two bites of dinner and then asks for dessert?

Or, okay, how do I get my kid to try real food instead of just eat snacks all day? I've got you covered. Search food battles in the member library for a step-by-step approach to managing meals, snacks, and desserts.

and reducing the meltdowns that come along the way. And if you're not a member yet, follow the link in the show notes or head to goodinside.com to learn how you can join today. Okay, get ready for the most relieving, not at all stress-inducing message about back to school, I promise.

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One thing that's woven into what we talk about a lot, and I don't know if people pick up on this nuance, the reason we are not crazy prescriptive about food is because being really rigid about food leads to really rigid behaviors around food as kids get older. Dieting beliefs, restrictive behaviors. So I almost never use the word never when we're talking about things.

Like, we don't eat that in our house. What do you hear from, and I know this, and I know you agree, the most well-meaning parents? Like, what are some of the things that you might say, let's like create a little dissonance around that. Here's why we might want to shift away from some of those phrases. I would never feed my child that. I would never feed my child that. There's a morality there. Yeah. Right? So now food is equated with kind of being good or bad. Right.

You should never have any sugar or that has way too much sugar. You're not allowed to eat that.

We teach kids very passively. We don't realize it, but we teach them about food and their bodies by how we talk about it when it relates to us or even talking about other people. And they quickly learn, this is good. This is bad. I am good for eating this. I am bad for eating this. And it's really hard to tease apart the person from the behavior. And the reason you'll see, if you kind of pay attention to the things we talk about

There is always a caveat. There's always an exception. You know, do we want to feed our kids donuts every day for breakfast? In my house, that wouldn't go very well. My kids would not feel good. They wouldn't probably have the most focused behavior at school with that like sugar rush. But do we sometimes have donuts? Yes.

And do we enjoy them when we eat them? Yes. We don't sit and talk about, oh, this has sugar. We shouldn't eat this. You know, all of the guilt and those feelings that we've been brought up with, they're just not productive in teaching kids about food and their bodies. It literally, that black and white thinking leads to black and white thinking when they're teenagers, leads to I'm not allowed to eat carbs when they're 22, right?

leads to very disordered behavior as they get older. We want them to feel pretty neutral morality-wise when it comes to food.

And I want to assure parents listening that that kind of relative neutrality, that doesn't mean that kids will say, oh, well, if it's all kind of neutral, I guess I'm only going to eat and then fill in the blank with foods that feel kind of scary or junky to you. That's actually really not what it means. But when we think about disordered eating, when we think about the most extreme versions of that, or even just the guilt and shame that can accompany food patterns, those all develop.

Because food has actually stopped being about food. It starts being about proving your identity, being good, being lovable, being worthy, being bad, being lazy, being disgusting. Then you have to avoid foods.

and get really extreme just to feel like a good, secure, safe, lovable person inside. So no wonder disordered eating really happens down the line. It's not really about the food. It's about kind of the preservation of goodness, which we don't want for our kids. And again, if we lean into trust versus that control.

When kids are able to differentiate their goodness as a person from a specific food they're eating, that's actually the foundation for more mindful eating. Most people, when they get older, they don't want donuts every day. That actually doesn't feel great in their body. They want a variety of foods over a period of time. And what's so funny is that people assume you're just going to go way down one direction. This is actually a process of intuitive eating called unconditional permission to eat.

It's the first step of intuitive eating. It's allowing yourself to eat with unconditional permission. And there's some kind of rebound that happens where oftentimes people go kind of one direction so far, they almost don't want to eat anything they associated with their dieting behaviors because it feels like a diet food to them. I recently heard a quote from Evelyn Triboli, who is the coauthor of intuitive eating. And I know her personally and adore her. And she said, diet culture doesn't get to claim salads.

They don't get to have salads just because it's been associated with dieting before. Salads can be really good. Just because we're allowing ourselves to eat a variety of foods and finding food is neutral doesn't mean you're not going to gravitate towards food that actually feel good on your body. Actually, the opposite happens. When you allow yourself permission, you say, I can have the cookie if I want, but what actually feels good to me right now?

that's where we want to get to with not just ourselves, hopefully one day, but also our kids. We want our kids making decisions about food based on how they feel on their body and what they know they're going to do that day. Yes. So I hear parents, even though I'm not, like I imagine parents are listening, okay, okay, Becky, okay, Megan, but my kid only wants donuts and butter pasta and then any snack that's packaged, any of those, that's good too.

But they are so picky. They're so picky. And they're no longer three. They're eight. Or can you talk a little bit about picky eating, how it develops, how you think about it when it's kind of in place in the moment in a family, how you think about helping a parent? I don't know if the right word is unwind or kind of figure it out.

That's a great question. You know, they say picky eating is only an American thing, that it's so much more intense here. And I think it's a very nuanced, complicated issue because we have a different food culture here than there is in other parts of the world. We have kid food, quote unquote, here. We have this phenomenon of kid food that many other countries don't have. And kids.

There is a time period between 12 and 24 months. It kind of varies for each child. It could be even later or earlier than that, where they go from being more accepting of a variety of foods to suddenly food neophobic or fearful of new foods or even fearful of foods that they loved before. And it's very jarring because a lot of times, again, we put this big pat on our back if our kid's eating well and we're like, it's because I'm doing it. I'm finally being a good parent. I'm doing it. And then it's suddenly, oftentimes very suddenly switches.

And now it feels like, well, I can't get them to eat anymore. I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing. It's actually considered very typical for a child to suddenly not want the foods they used to want. And they theorize it's because that's around the time your child is getting more physically independent. They can move. Oftentimes they can run away. They can wander into the forest and eat the poisonous berry. It is considered theorized to be hardwired into them to be

fearful of that berry because something they don't know and trust could hurt them, could harm them. That makes so much sense. I never knew that. That's so, I remember those periods as my kid, right? And I do. I remember the mom's group where it was equated with my, it felt equated, my goodness. I remember one of my kids, everyone's like, your kid hates the rock.

Oh, goodness, Becky. Like, it was like I became the star mom because my kid was, like, popping broccoli, right? And then he stopped eating broccoli. And, Megan, I really did. Like, I felt embarrassed. Like, I didn't want to have those, like, lunches with my friends or we were feeding babies. But what you're saying, it is normal at a time when your kid is getting older and they're exploring more. Actually, from an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that they'd be more guarded and hypervigilant. It's protective.

It's literally considered protective. And if you think about evolution over thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, we only really discovered nutrients and micronutrients in the 50s. We have not had this hyper focus on nutrition very long when it comes to an evolutionary standpoint. So it's very, very normal for your child to kind of bait and switch you. And now they don't want to eat anything that they used to eat before. I also wanted to point out that

If you think about things like fruits and vegetables, which are like the, you know, halo, they have the halo of all the foods that we're supposed to be getting our kids to eat, that this is really what everyone should eat most of. They're actually quite unpredictable. Judy always talks about, okay, let's, let's think about a blueberry for a second.

That sucker can be big or small, super sweet or really sour. It can be mushy. It can have a texture you did not expect. I'm sure a lot of you listening have fruit fans at home and you go through a ton of berries at home. You might notice like this season, this past winter, there were giant blueberries that looked amazing and they were sour.

And that is very scary for a child who doesn't understand like, oh, you know what? These fresh produce items are going to be different every time you eat them. Oh, let's also throw in the fact that sometimes we cook the carrot. Sometimes we don't. Maybe there's a spicy seasoning on it. Maybe there's salt. Maybe there's not. We really mix it up on them. The reason they gravitate toward beige, starchy foods is because that's a predictable food with a predictable texture. They know what to expect. Hmm.

And so packaged food. Yeah. It's kind of always the same. It's always the same. There's a meme that we kind of did a post on that was like, it was about blueberries or apples or something like some are this color, some are this, some are mealy, some are mushy, some are crisp, some are not. But you know what never lets you down? Doritos.

They never do. Same every time. They really never do. Cool Ranch nacho cheese. Not a fan. Cool Ranch. Yep. Yep. There is a reason why your child likes that food. The predictability is built in. Okay. So this all makes sense because I also think just very concretely. So you get to that stage where people are listening of that younger kid, maybe they're no longer eating the foods anymore.

When we are able to separate kind of who we are as a parent and how good we are from that moment in front of us, I feel like we free ourselves up to say something like, you're not so sure about this broccoli today. I don't know, just something like totally neutral. It's okay. So I want to walk through a few just concrete steps to take. Great. First and foremost—

Kids can take 15, 20 plus, plus, plus exposures of a given food to like it, to eat it. So it's really easy to give up. You give them something one time and they don't want it. It's easy to assume they're never going to eat it. But the only way they're going to learn about it, learn to eat it one day is to be exposed over time. They might pick it up, smell it, put it back. They might even taste it and spit it out. These are all part of the process and they're actually what are called pre-feeding steps.

It's actually great when your child even touches it. It's actually a good step in the right direction. So try not to get frustrated if they are rejecting, rejecting, because it does take time for certain foods. For a lot of kids, it takes time for them to want to eat it. You are still responsible for what goes on the plate. So if you want your kids to love veggies one day, it is important to try to put a vegetable on the plate when you can. If you're eating it, plop a piece on there for them.

One thing that I think people forget is that kids don't need as much food as adults and serving sizes that we put on plates can be really daunting and overwhelming for a little kid, especially if that's kind of a scary food for them. One piece of broccoli, one pea. I know it sounds silly because people are like, well, what is that even going to do? Well, okay. If a less intimidating amount of food actually allows them to want to try it, even if that's all they eat, okay.

That's a win. They've tried it. And now they might think, okay, maybe next time I'll try this again. Maybe next time I'll have two pieces of the broccoli versus overwhelming and inundating their plate and even forcing them to try it and maybe turning them off of it forever because they're just not ready for it yet. Yeah. Just to address the pressure thing, I guess that's another thing to talk about.

We were all, not all, but many of us were forced to eat certain things when we were kids. You can't leave the table until you finish your vegetables, your Brussels sprouts. I see you hiding those Brussels sprouts. I mean, people would have standoffs with their parents. Let's just also just make note that we made vegetables not very tasty in like the 80s and 90s. Like Brussels sprouts were boiled and that's it. No, they don't taste good that way. And so you might have this kind of

feeling that, well, my parents did it for me and I turned out okay, so I'm going to make my kid eat it. Sometimes it helps to put yourself in your child's shoes, sit down at the table and imagine somebody shoving a fork of food in your mouth and you actually feel full or you know you do not want to eat that food or maybe that food hurts your body or it hurts your stomach. It gives you some sort of reaction that you can't describe because you're little. We don't know why kids reject foods necessarily.

especially when they're pre-verbal or they don't have the language to describe what's happening to them. And when we force them, we might get them to eat at one time, but we run the risk of turning them off to that food forever. And a lot of you listening have that food in your brain that you will not eat because you were forced to eat it as a kid. To me, it's just not worth it. I'm not going to risk my kid hating all of these things forever just to get them to eat it once.

And again, it feels so circular because if we say to ourselves, wait, like I'm a good parent, whether or not my kid tries the Brussels sprout. Right. I'm a good parent whose kid doesn't love vegetables today. Then I don't think I feel as kind of

I don't know, triggered, or I don't feel like them eating that vegetable matters as much either. So being able to separate those two things, I think it just over and over. And then the other thing, Megan, I don't know if you think about this, but when I think about the idea of forcing a kid to eat something or you have to eat this before you leave the table or before you get dessert, whatever you might say, beyond turning kids off to the food, which I think definitely happens, I think about the message a kid gets. Yes. Which disturbs me. Yes. Which is other people know what you want in your body,

Better than you know what you want in your body. Yep. If I think about my daughter at like, I don't know, a high school party or some college fraternity or wherever she is, and I think about a circuit that says someone else knows what I like better than I know what I like. Someone else knows what I should take in and like swallow from others better than I can trust my own gut on that. That really scares me. That really scares me.

We're teaching kids not to listen to themselves. That's exactly right. And the extensions, you can't teach that with a food and a vegetable and not think it doesn't extend to all different types of, you know, in some ways, higher stake environments. Yep. We want our kids to fully trust and know exactly what they need and want. And nobody else knows it better than them. And you and I, as we started with, right, like we've lived that journey of not feeling like

You can kind of trust your body's signals or being scared of them, feeling like someone else might know them better or someone else can define that. And what a gift for a kid to not have to kind of regain that, but to just develop with that self-trust the whole time. Well, that's what's so interesting about kids. And that's actually when I was trained in intuitive eating, you learn that children are born with these innate signals. Obviously, there's exceptions for kids with dealing with certain medical issues, but

For the most part, they are born knowing how much to eat. They show you, they slow down, you know, their sucking pattern at the bottle or breast. They turn their head away. It's very hard to force feed a baby. Sometimes we do. Sometimes people do and they learn it's a learned behavior. But for the most part, when babies are allowed to self-regulate, they know how much to eat.

And they know when to start and stop. They know when they're hungry. And we want to not, we're not trying to get those back from our kids. We're trying to preserve them. Yes. We're trying to preserve that innate sense that they are born with. 100%. I want to go through some sample scenarios. And one of the things I love about you is I love the way you also, you're a very deep thinker and then translate that into science.

a lot of concrete ideas. So we're going to do something that's probably hard for both of us. I'm going to ask you a question and like the briefest possible answer to give parents something to walk away with in a couple of scenarios. Are you ready? You're on the hot seat. Okay. Ready? My kid refuses to eat dinner and then a half an hour before bed, you know, they're screaming that they're hungry and they need a snack.

Two choices. You can stick to your guns and say, this is what we're having. We had dinner already. You know that that's what we were having. Or you can do a planned bedtime snack if that's a regular thing. Something boring, not that exciting, banana, glass of milk kind of thing. But they know that they're going to have something to eat before bed. If you notice that the planned bedtime snack interferes with dinner eating and they're just waiting for the snack, then at that point you might decide to cut it out. But I think you know your kid best here. Love it.

My kid will only eat pouches. Ooh, this is a tough one. Judy would probably kill me for doing a very simple answer. Can they not eat something that's not pureed? Because that's actually a separate issue, right? If they don't have the ability to chew and swallow other types of foods, we're very worried about that. We would need to start talking to somebody about that. But if the only type of vegetable that they'll eat is in pouch form, keep offering those foods in their full form

be mindful of how often you're offering the pouch. So maybe cut back to one or two a day instead of all day long. It's a process. Yeah. But if you feel like your child can only eat pureed foods or is only kind of sucking down foods, definitely talk to your doctor.

Okay, what about dessert? My kid is dessert obsessed and is always asking for more treats and always saying at dinner, how many more bites before dessert? Oof, there's a lot going on with that because it sounds like dessert is used as a reward for eating a certain amount of food. So a discussion, hey, we're no longer going to have dessert as a reward or prize. It's actually going to be part of the dinner.

That's something you can try. I know you have that in your book as well. Serve it alongside the dinner. It takes the appeal or the, I guess not even appeal, just the more special quality out of it. Yeah. So put a cookie on the plate. Yeah, put a cookie on the plate. Put a cookie. And don't say a word. And make it only it's the cookie. Then what? It's okay. Honey, this is what we're having for dinner. If you don't want to eat it, you don't have to. I want another cookie. I need another cookie. This is what we're having right now. Do you want to add butter to your bread? Do you want me to put it on there for you? Or do you want to use my butter knife and do it yourself?

One of Judy's most genius tricks techniques is getting them out of the, you know, they're upset, they're distressed, they want something. And if you can redirect into something physical, because they're so mobile oriented, especially when they're little, they want to move, they want to learn, they want to model what you're doing or mimic what you're doing. They want to do self-meditation.

So if you can get them doing something that they're interested in at the table that involves the food, maybe it's not eating necessarily, but it's just doing, you know, your grown up thing that you've been showing them suddenly. OK, OK, I can handle it. I want to do this now. I'm interested. An interaction with the food is what's going to get them down that road to eating it eventually.

So good. Okay, my last question. Do you know any amazing cookbooks for families and children? I mean, I have one in mind. Share, because it really is amazing, and I use it in my own house, and I love it. And everyone here knows I don't say that about things that, like, I don't actually use in my own home. So everyone needs to know about it. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's called Feeding Littles and Beyond.

and it's a hundred different recipes for all ages, six months to 99 years. There's a lot of variety in there. So, you know, my whole thing with cookbooks is like, you're not going to love every single recipe.

But if you can find five to 10 that are just go-to standards for your family, the reason why we have so much variety is everyone eats so differently. So we have dairy-free options. We have vegan options. We have your classic picky eater, you know, amazing ways to use chicken nuggets options. We have a whole, I can't even section all this fun stuff in there. And our goal is for you to kind of get

It's almost like this like renewal in the kitchen. You might've gotten stuck in your ways and everything feels stale and stagnant. And our goal is you open up this book and maybe look at through it with your child and you look at the pictures and you're like, you know what? This is something I could try.

And I love it for exactly that, too. And you can use it with your kid, especially if they're struggling in a food power struggle or picky eating phase. You're saying, hey, one of the things we're going to do as a family is cook one of these recipes once a week. And you know what? I figured you're eating, too. I'd love to have your input. Let's pick something together. I'm going to make it. If you choose not to eat it, that is what's for dinner. But I thought we could go about this together. And now it's kind of the two of you, the cookbook. It's a process. It's not me against you. We're kind of really in this together. Yeah.

I feel like you and I could probably talk about this for hours and days and days. I really, really agree. And so I want to thank you for being here and tell everyone where to find more of you, you and Judy, where do they go next? Sure. So we're on Instagram at Feeding Littles and you can check out more at feedinglittles.com. Thanks for listening. To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside.com slash podcast.

You could also write me at podcast at goodinside.com. Parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world. And parents deserve resources and support so they feel empowered, confident, and connected. I'm so excited to share Good Inside membership, the first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like-valued parents. It's totally game-changing.

Good Inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom at Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhi, Julia Knatt, and Kristen Muller. I would also like to thank Eric Obelski, Mary Panico, Ashley Valenzuela, and the rest of the Good Inside team. And one last thing before I let you go. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves...

Even as I struggle, even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain good inside.