Living with a Picky Eater - Weekend Wisdom

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Dawn Davenport  0:00  
Welcome to weekend wisdom by creating a family. Creating a family is the National Support and Training nonprofit for foster adoptive and kinship families. And the weekend wisdom is when we take about 10 minutes to answer your questions. So today's question is on picky eating, living and loving with a picky eater. The question is my nephew came to live with us last March. He's a great kid who deserves better than he had but his pickiness with food is driving me crazy. He eats only white carbs, even his mac and cheese has to have white cheese on it. Boy, all I can say is I feel your pain. I have experienced living and loving a picky eater. It can be tough, and food issues and feeding challenges are not uncommon and adopted Foster and kinship children for a variety of reasons, they may have had very limited exposure to a variety of foods, they may have experienced food insecurity or they may not have known when and where their next meal is coming from. They may have experienced food being used as a tool for manipulation or control. Or they may have had experience with food use as the only way to express love or to apologize for poor parenting or for neglect. And they may have only had access to junk food. And honestly, they may be just one of those people who have sensory issues and which can also be expressed in picky eating due to textures of foods, and eat even babies who are adopted or foster already in kinship care may experience feeding challenges when a child was prenatally exposed to substances, which means these children have been the risks increase. I think one of the things that helps is to think through what it is specifically that is bothering you about the child being a picky eater. If I was honest and looked at myself, I had to acknowledge that I love to cook. And I like to try new foods and having one or two members of the family who turned their nose up at what I fixed meant I either had to fix more things or I had to change the way I was cooking and not in the ways that I like to cook so you know it's not all about me, but it did help to look at myself to see what what am I bringing to the table and being a adventuresome eater and loving to cook and they were inherent in how I thought of myself and our family. So it was a challenge for me. So some practical suggestions for you to handle your picky eater. One serve meals family style, we had a recent interview on the creating a family.org podcast, Dr. Katja Rao, who specializes in this area. She's a pediatrician who specializes in eating disorders, suggested serving family style meals. family style dining is when the serving bowl and the platters are in the center of the table with serving utensils, and each member dishes themselves up from the large bowl or the platter, kind of think in terms of Grandma's table that Thanksgiving, pass around the plates to each other and then they you put what you choose on the plate, you may have to adapt this with younger kids are those with motor control issues. And honestly keep all the dishes in the in the kitchen and bring you full plate to the table. The idea though, is that the children make the decision on what they put on the plate. And one thing to do when you're doing family style and different families can say that you have to put a tiny bit of everything on your plate. With an extremely picky eater, you may just not even want to get into that at the beginning, you may want to hope that as time goes on, they will do that. One thing that's important is include one thing that you know that your child will eat and will like that means for you, including one white card food in the meal so that you're taking some of the pressure off of the food. And that leads us to our second suggestion which is to make your table a safe space. So when you have a child with food issues, mealtimes can become stressful for the parent and for the child. And we don't want that we want mealtimes to be a place of connectedness for our families. And we want to have obviously for mealtimes to be pleasant, nurturing and emotionally safe. So try to keep your mealtimes and the snack times free of conflict and excessive correction and discussions about pickiness. So start a conversation about something good that happened to him today or throw out a puzzle you know and have them try to solve it verbally things like that. Just have fun with your family. Save your more complex talks and especially those about food issues for a for another time. Another suggestion depending on his age, explain how food is used in our bodies. And you can get as detailed as the child can handle depending on his age, but keeping it Simple, you can say it helps us get strong. It helps our boo boos Hill, it helps you run faster. Don't harp on it, but it helps him to understand why eating a variety of things is important, and what type of foods, there's not bad foods, but there are foods that provide our body with the energy it needs to help you grow, be stronger. And there are a lot of books for younger kids out there. Just go to your library, tons of books, less so as your child becomes an independent reader. But if you're fortunate enough and this is your child is young and still and read aloud type of books, there are so many books on this topic, get some particularly focusing on what foods do and, and how they help us grow and stay strong. Hope this helps. Before you leave, I wanted to ask you or let you know about the creating a family newsletter. It's free, its monthly comes to your email, and it has lots of resources to help you and your parenting journey. You can sign up at Bitly slash C A F guide that is bi T dot L y slash C A F guide and you will receive a guide whatever the guide we're advertising at that time can be any number of things transracial adoption that can be on children exposed to trauma, all sorts of things. So thank you for listening to this week so we can listen if you liked it. Please tell a friend to subscribe to the creating a family.org podcast wherever they listen to podcasts.

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