Tips for Managing Your Picky Eater - Weekend Wisdom

Today, we are tackling a question that comes up a lot for parents and caregivers in our community – what do you do with a picky eater?

Resources:

•  Food Issues
• My Foster Child Only Eats Junk Food
• Practical Solutions to Typical Food Issues with Adopted and Foster Kids

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

- Hello, and thanks for tuning in to Creating a Family's Weekend Wisdom podcast. I'm
Tracy Whitney, the host of this episode and the content manager for Creating a
Family. I love bringing Weekend Wisdom to you, and I love it because it's your
opportunity to let us know what you need help with or what insights you need or
what practical help might benefit you to strengthen your family. If you have a
question about adoption, foster care, or kinship care, and if you want help with
those issues that come up when raising your kids in these circles, I would love it
for you to send a question to info @creatingafamily .org.
I'll do my best to dig through a resource or two, find some practical advice, or
even experiences from raising my own family that will help strengthen your family.
Today, we're tackling a question that comes up a lot for parents in the foster,
adoptive and kinship community. And that is what to do with a picky eater. Having
raised six kids, I have had a wide range of picky eaters in my house.
And I am sad to say that I didn't come across this information until it was well
past helpful time or most of my children. So I say that to say that I'm learning
with you and I know the fear and the anxiety and the stress that comes when you've
got a kid that won't be eating what you prepare or that is maybe not eating enough
and you know that they need to. My anxiety in the early years of parenting often
made me act in ways that did not create connection or attachment, it actually
probably increased the anxiety around my dinner table. And so I'm very grateful for
the opportunity, like I said, to learn with you, but also to start to rectify some
of the mistakes that I made when my older kids were little and handle it
differently now that I know better. The reality is that our anxiety or rigidity
around food issues is learned behavior from the way we were raised or the way we
experienced food around a dinner table as children in our own lives. And so it's
important to remember that the children that were raising, whether they're adoptive,
foster or relative children, they've got a completely different context than we had.
And so being open to learning in this way and being open to accepting their context
is kind of a foundational key to getting started on how to handle a picky eater.
When you are raising a child with very strong sensory preferences or impacts from
trauma or prenatal substance exposure that creates behavior challenges or neurodiversity
that makes the way they think about food different than the way you think about
food, it's challenging. And again, it can spike your anxiety.
It can create stress and tension around your dinner table. And when you know that
they're not eating enough or enough of what their body needs, it's really easy to
fall back into the way you were raised about food, the clean your plate club and
that kind of thing. So these tips come from a guest article that was written for
us many years ago by Dr. Katja Raul. She's also known as the Feeding Doctor. She's
been a guest on our podcast many times and I will link one or two of those in
the show notes for you. So if you're interested, you can listen to the full
interview. I've pulled together these seven tips from her guest article to help you
handle the picky eaters in your house and still stay focused on building connection,
building trust, and offering the comfort and familiarity that your adoptive foster or
kinship child needs to feel safe to explore food and open their palate a little
bit. So whether it's your foster child, an adopted kiddo, or a grandchild,
it's crucial that you kind of set that stage of building connection first and not
turning your dinner table into a battle zone. So the first tip is to be absolutely
reliable and consistent about offering food and drink every two to four hours,
especially when this child is new to your home. We may need to do this more often
for younger children and then space it out as they get older or as they get more
safe and comfortable in your home. Consistency with this habit will build their
bodies and heal their brain and then also reinforce that you are trustworthy.
And when their bodies and brains are healthy and healed, then their hearts and minds
can be about the business of building that trust and learning that connection and
trusting you. The second key is to offer new food in many ways,
many times. So kind of just put that mantra in your head many ways, many times.
So pay attention to the ways that this food appeals the most to the child that
you're working with. And then offer more of that type and delivery system of the
food when and where the child will tolerate it. For example, let's put some feet on
this for you. If you are making blueberry pancakes for the family on a Saturday
morning, make some of the pancakes without the blueberries, and then put out a
couple different side dishes of blueberries. One fresh, one frozen, and you know,
recently thawed, and maybe even freeze -dried blueberries if you can find them. Figure
out by watching this child's behavior and this child's reactions to the foods which
method of food this child is most drawn to. Do they like the kind of chewy crunch
of the freeze dried blueberries? If they do, then get more of that kind of food
and keep offering it in many ways, many times. The third tip is to take the
pressure off all of you by putting out the dishes that you've prepared and then
focus on the people around the table instead of the food on the table. Again,
observe what they're drawn to, pay attention to what's going on around the table,
pay attention to what they choose when they are kind of sampling from the family
style or buffet style meal and then use that information for future meal planning.
So if you notice that they avoid all orange food, use that to inform yourself about
which side dishes you're going to prepare tomorrow. Maybe don't put carrots on the
table again tomorrow. If they are not touching any foods with certain textures like
one of my kids really didn't like the texture of meat. So I provided lots of other
side dishes that would be healthy substitutes for me. Cheese,
things like that that would help your child fill themselves with healthy foods but
not necessarily have to choose the food that is a texture issue for them. Number
four, get insight wherever and whenever you can from former foster caregivers,
caseworkers, their birth family if you're working with a foster child or a relative
child, find out what their favorite dishes are, find out what familiar foods in
their family kind of speak comfort to their family, culturally or just within the
culture of their small home, and then keep those ingredients or snacks on hand.
Incorporate them into your family's regular meal times and snack times. So if you
have a child that just loves takis and in their home of origin,
they had access to takis whenever they wanted them. Then occasionally put out on the
table with, you know, maybe some carrot sticks and some celery sticks and some apple
slices and things like that so that you're offering what's familiar, you're offering
what they love, but you're also offering it in context of lots of other great foods
too. Number five, try not to stress over prepackaged or what you might perceive as
junk food, especially when this child is new to your family. This is pretty common
when foster families are talking to us, they say, "They won't eat anything but box
macaroni and cheese." We went through a season where my kids didn't want anything
but dino nuggets. I don't understand the appeal, but there it is. Try not to stress
over things that you perceive as junk food because it may be a comfort food to
them. It may be something familiar that helps them fill their bodies, which we want
them to do, but also helps them feel safe and connected to their family.
So mix in some of your family's regular foods with their regular foods or their
familiar foods and just keep balancing the mix a little bit at a time.
Add other options into the mix as you see what they like or what new foods they
may be willing to try. Just remember that this familiarity is probably something
they're clinging to because it makes them feel safe and it makes them feel
comforted. And that's okay. You just don't want to overly fixate on not letting them
have it. Number six, get their buy -in by including them in meal planning,
shopping, meal prep, even just creating the grocery list. Invite them to help you
prepare a weekly menu or even just the menu for the day. Invite them to maybe post
it in a creative artistic way if they're artistic. They can add little pictures.
They can make pictures of the food. They can cut pictures of the food out of like
clip and paste or things like that, you can invite them to add their favorite foods
to the menu planning or to the grocery list. And even if it's not something that
you would normally prepare, it gives them a sense of control and a sense of choice
over what's going in front of them at meal time. So you can invite them to add
their favorites. If they know how to read, you can post the list of snacks and
drinks that are always available to every member of the family. And then they can
go back and look at that list and read that list. It gives them kind of that
sense of reassurance that there's always something they can grab. The point of this
is to just make sure you're giving them a voice and a choice and letting them know
that you want to meet that need. Number seven is tricky for a lot of families.
It's to consider the condiments and sauces and dippings and toppings like hot sauce,
chili oils, ketchup, whatever else might be their favorite. My kids love Chick -fil -A
sauce. You can put them on a lazy Susan in the middle of the table and then just
include them at every time you sit down at the table. Give them access to it So
that they can choose for themselves what to put on the food that they're eating or
how to put it on the food That they're eating you might not be used to all the
stuff that they like on their food But if you think of it as training wheels Then
you're helping them learn how to try new foods even if it means dousing it with
their favorite toppings And then eventually they may work themselves out of meeting
all those sauces because they're discovering new foods that they really enjoy or
like. We have plenty of other resources for learning how to support a picky eater
at our resource page. Go to the home page, www .creatingafamily .org,
tap "Foster" in the header bar, and then choose "Foster Care Topics" on the drop
-down menu. The Food Issues page is full of podcasts and articles and free courses
that can help you manage sticky situations related to food like sensory issues,
nutrition, body image, and a whole lot more. If this episode was helpful to you
today, we would love it if you would leave a rating or a review and tell us how
it was helpful to you. When you do that, it boosts our ability to get these expert
-based resources, like the tips from the feeding doctor, into other families' hands.
We use your comments and your feedback to help us improve what we do when we serve
foster, adoptive, and kinship families like yours down the road. And we really
appreciate when you take the time to do that. We read them to each other, we share
them with each other when we're doing a good job, and we get a notice from one of
you that we've done a good job. We give each other kind of like virtual high fives
'cause we don't all work in the same place. And so your ratings and reviews are
always really, really appreciated. Thank you for listening today. I hope that these
seven tips were helpful. I will link some of the additional resources in the show
notes and have a great day.