Season 1, Episode 3: cultivating joy in the kitchen

Transcript

Conner: (00:00)
Welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a podcast hosted by my mom.

Melanie Potock: (00:18)
My question always is, how do you get the kid to take a bite in the first place? How do you get them not to say, "Yuck," when you put broccoli on his plate?

Stephanie C.: (00:27)
Yeah, that's my question too. But Melanie Potock is a person who doesn't just have the questions, she has answers. Melanie is a certified speech language pathologist who specializes in feeding children. Her most recent book is Adventures in Veggieland: Help Your Kids Learn to Love Vegetables with 100 Easy Activities and Recipes.

Stephanie C.: (00:48)
It has a lot of answers, a lot of ideas, and I'm so excited she's here today. Welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a podcast about helping busy adults find the inspiration and information they need to teach the kids in their lives how to cook. I'm your host, Stephanie Conner, and today, we're going to talk about a secret responsibility of parents: conveying joy in the kitchen.

Stephanie C.: (01:19)
According to Melanie, around 18 months of age, kids become pickier about what they eat. Then, by age 2, they start to really figure out who's the boss around here, and guess what? It's not us. It's not the parent.

Melanie Potock: (01:36)
That's right. About the time kids really start to understand not only the power of no, but also the fact that they are very different human beings than Mommy and Daddy, and that their behaviors influence Mommy and Daddy's behaviors. And they start to just practice that little bit of independence that can be so frustrating for all of us as parents, but they're supposed to do that.

Melanie Potock: (02:03)
Not only do kids naturally fall into more of a picky eater trap at that stage, but their growth has now really slowed down compared to the first year of life. So they just aren't that hungry. Yet we've been feeding them a lot for over a year now, and we can't figure out why they're not eating as much. Don't they need this bite of broccoli to help them grow?

Melanie Potock: (02:26)
And it starts to stress the parents out. Kids fall into a natural phase of picky eating from about 18 months of age all the way up to almost age 3, and that's a long time. Where we have to be careful, and where I saw the red flags, is when we can see that the child just isn't capable of even taking a taste, that there's a lot of anxiety around it, or maybe they have to always spit out the food, or they gag, or sometimes even throw up.

Melanie Potock: (02:55)
All of those are red flags that this actually might be what we call a feeding disorder, which is not an eating disorder. A feeding disorder is just where the child is having difficulty eating age-appropriate foods in an age-appropriate manner and volume.

Stephanie C.: (03:14)
So, with your picky eater, you saw this behavior around 2, which is typical. But at that time, if I understand right, you didn't have some of the training that you have now. So what did you do?

Melanie Potock: (03:26)
Well, as I watched her, and I watched how hard this was for her, to even just take a bite of everything on the plate, the rule in our family was, hey, we just always take a taste of everything, and then if you want something else for dinner, you can go make it yourself, no problem. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to be a short order cook, but yeah. Go make yourself something.

Melanie Potock: (03:46)
And so sure enough, she learned to take a bite of everything on her plate without a lot of anxiety, and she would just get down from her little chair, she was only 2, and go make herself, literally, Cheerios and milk. And true story. She had Cheerios and milk after a few bites of my offerings, probably almost every night for about a year.

Melanie Potock: (04:11)
But what happens is, the more the kids take a few bites of whatever the parents present, the more they take enough bites of the food over time that they learn to like those foods. That's how we all learn to love new foods, just by taking a lot of tastes over time. And the more she did that, before you knew it, she was eating three or four bites of everything before she'd resort to Cheerios and milk, until eventually, the Cheerios and milk just faded away.

Stephanie C.: (04:37)
This is a good time for me to tell you that Melanie's picky eater is now 30 years old, and a very adventurous eater. And Melanie has this idea that I love. As parents, we might think our responsibility is to make sure they have healthy foods, but it's really so much more fundamental than that.

Melanie Potock: (04:58)
So often we hear that, as parents, our job is to present healthy food, because that is the most common answer to that question. When you ask, what's a parent's, say, main responsibility? You'll often hear professionals say that it's the parent's responsibility to present healthy food, but to me, personally, that's actually not our main responsibility. Our job is to parent joyfully.

Melanie Potock: (05:24)
It's always to get back to the joy, especially at mealtimes. So sure, we need to provide healthy food for our kids, but family mealtimes are about creating joy around the dinner table. It's really above all else about connecting with our kids. I always explain to the parents I'm working with that their job, from day one, is to lay positive memories in that child's brain around a lot of things, but especially mealtimes. Because mealtimes not only help our kids learn to love healthy food, but it also sets them up for success later in life.

Melanie Potock: (06:02)
We have really good research to prove that family mealtimes help little kids develop language skills and early reading skills, and later, those kids do better in school, and it also helps teenagers to make better decisions around life choices. Even things like drugs and alcohol and getting better grades at school.

Melanie Potock: (06:21)
All of that can be tracked back to regular family mealtimes, so above all else, we want to make sure that we keep it joyful and we use that time to connect with our kids.

Stephanie C.: (06:32)
That sounds really easy, but it's not.

Melanie Potock: (06:36)
It's not.

Stephanie C.: (06:37)
I feel like that requires some work for a lot of us. We're coming home after a busy workday, and we're probably still processing some things that happened at work, and we're rushing around. Maybe we went to soccer practice and then came home, and are trying to eat.

Stephanie C.: (06:50)
They're not eating. And that's frustrating. So what steps can we take to make sure that we are forming those positive memories and we're showing up in the best way?

Melanie Potock: (07:02)
I hear you. It's not easy, especially in this day and age, where we often have two parents working outside the home, or they're getting home a little bit later with their commute, et cetera. I have a lot of families who it's just really hard even to find time for family dinner, because the kids need to eat around five, and the parents might even be getting home as late as seven, after they pick them up from daycare or the grandma's house, or whoever it happens to be.

Melanie Potock: (07:29)
I definitely want to recognize that it can feel very overwhelming to parents to even consider any of this advice. So where I like to start is just starting with pulling the kids into the kitchen for 10 minutes at a time. And I'm not even going to think about family meal times yet. If we start with 10 minutes, we can devote 10 minutes to anything in our day.

Melanie Potock: (07:54)
And let's say, maybe, your toddler wants to come into the kitchen, and you're in there just trying so hard to get dinner on the table for everybody before we have to get off to evening music lessons, or whatever it happens to be. It's okay. It's okay. It's a great time to bring your toddler in, set them up in front of the sink, on, maybe, a child-safe stool, or whatever it happens to be, and just give them some carrots or some beets, or whatever you happen to have, that they can wash under running water in the sink or in a big bowl in the sink.

Melanie Potock: (08:25)
I always bring a couple of those exfoliation gloves, you know the ones that we get at the spa that are so fun to use in the shower, in the bathtub? I actually pick up packs of 10 of those at the dollar store, and I give a lot of my families a couple of those just to get started, because those are so fun for kids to slip on their little hands and to scrub a carrot or a potato or a beet with.

Melanie Potock: (08:51)
And it will keep them busy at the sink for a good 10 minutes. Maybe just throw it in the washing machine after that. You can use it over and over again. The reason I do that is sometimes, when we have just a fun, inexpensive tool, it reminds us, hey, I'm going to get the kids in here to scrub the potatoes, even if we're not even serving potatoes at that meal.

Melanie Potock: (09:12)
But they're scrubbing the potatoes and we can serve them later. Maybe tomorrow. It gets the kids in the kitchen with you, so as you're at the stove, and they're at the sink, you can chat. You can start to make friends with a new vegetable, like a beet, and you can talk about the properties of food, and how fun it is to be together. Again, it's about laying these positive memories in their brain around food. It's not always about taking a bite.

Stephanie C.: (09:37)
So that's interesting, because I think a lot of the motivation behind bringing kids into the kitchen is this idea that if they help prepare it, they will almost certainly eat it.

Melanie Potock: (09:51)
If they build it, they will eat it.

Stephanie C.: (09:54)
Right? That's the myth.

Melanie Potock: (09:57)
That's the myth. There is an element of truth to that, but the myth is that it will happen instantaneously. We know for sure that kids need repeated exposures to the same food as many as 15 to 30 times, but that's not to learn to love the food. That's just to accept the food. That's just to start to make friends with it.

Melanie Potock: (10:20)
The beauty of that research, though, is that we all have sort of our go-to meals. If I asked you, "What do you love to eat for dinner?" You might say to me, "Oh gosh, every Friday night we have pizza, and I love to make chili. I probably have chili at least twice a month throughout the winter time." We can all find those go-to recipes that we all resort to, right? Our favorites.

Melanie Potock: (10:42)
Well, the beauty of that is, those foods are going to keep showing up on the dinner plate or in the kitchen if you pull your kids in to participate. So why not do both? Why not bring them into the kitchen, let them help prepare, also have it on their plate? Don't worry if they don't eat it yet, but it's those early exposures that are the foundation to getting to adventurous eating. But there are lots of other strategies we can incorporate, too.

Stephanie C.: (11:11)
Melanie's book, Adventures in Veggieland, is on my kitchen counter right now. In it, she describes her strategy to help kids accept more types of food. She calls it the three E's. Expose, explore, expand. And playing with veggies is where it all begins.

Melanie Potock: (11:29)
We make an edible asparagus log cabin. If the kid doesn't eat it, that's okay. But he had fun making the asparagus log cabin with his family. It makes a fun centerpiece in the table, and he can be really proud of it. And if the rest of the family munches on the asparagus, that's great, too.

Melanie Potock: (11:47)
So I want kids to always start with food activities, like food play. And then we move from the exposure phase to the exploration, and they kind of meld together. But exploration is where we start to make some very simple recipes with our family, maybe just with Mom, maybe just with Dad or big brother, but we start to make some simple recipes and get the kids into taking tiny tastes.

Melanie Potock: (12:15)
And throughout that book, I give parents multiple strategies on how to encourage tiny tastes of food as we cook. And then finally, the expand phase is where we start to get into a little fancier recipes, including a vegetable dessert.

Stephanie C.: (12:33)
I love that, especially this idea that exposure doesn't have to mean eating it yet. Those playful activities I think are really great. I love that.

Melanie Potock: (12:46)
It keeps the kid's anxiety down. It keeps their interest up. And as I said, we have such good research that shows that when you create joy around food, it helps kids learn to love food. It's what the best teachers in our nation's schools do. Whatever they're teaching, they throw in a little bit of fun, and the kids quickly learn to love that subject, because it's tied to the fun.

Stephanie C.: (13:13)
And I think that that's something that the activity examples you gave, like that asparagus log cabin, what I love about that is it doesn't require me, as a parent, to have to go out and buy a lot of things to do that with. I just need the asparagus, right?

Melanie Potock: (13:31)
You're going to pick up asparagus anyway. And also, every single activity in the book, anything that you make with the vegetables, you are always going to use those same vegetables in recipes later in that chapter. So there's no food waste whatsoever, unless the kids start munching on the asparagus when you're making the log cabin. But that's not a problem, really.

Stephanie C.: (13:54)
Before we move on to our lightning round, do you have any parting words for us?

Melanie Potock: (13:59)
I think the most important thing for your listeners to consider is that, if your picky eater, whether it be that garden variety picky eater that we've been chatting about, or more extreme picky eating, is causing your child or your family any stress, talk to your pediatrician about it.

Melanie Potock: (14:18)
I love pediatricians, but oftentimes, they will respond with, "Eh, all kids are picky. They'll grow out of it." That's not actually the point. The point is, this is stressful, so I always say stress to your pediatrician that you're stressed, and know that there's help out there.

Melanie Potock: (14:37)
You can consult with someone like myself. You can get early intervention through your school system from birth to 3. You can go to a feeding specialist in your area, that would either be a speech pathologist, or an occupational therapist who specializes in pediatric feeding. There's so many different resources out there.

Stephanie C.: (14:59)
I could have listened to Melanie all day. She is a gem. Be sure to follow her on social media. On Instagram, she's @MyMunchBug_MelaniePotock. That's P-O-T-O-C-K. And on Facebook, look for My Munch Bug. You can also find her online at mymunchbug.com, and check out her book, Adventures in Veggieland. It is a treasure trove of great info for parents.

Stephanie C.: (15:26)
And all of her info is linked from our website too, at kiddosinthekitchen.com. Now, it's time for Kitchen Questions, where I ask my guest a series of fun questions about their own kitchen and perspectives on food.

Child: (15:40)
It's time for Kitchen Questions. I have a question. What would happen if you put a little bit of the wrong ingredient inside a cookie? Why are cupcakes squishy? How often do you burn things on accident? Do you like cake? What is the difference between baking and roasting? What is your favorite recipe?

Stephanie C.: (16:04)
What is one thing in your kitchen that you always have on hand?

Melanie Potock: (16:07)
A food that I always have on hand, it's my special concoction of herbs de Provence, and a special soft, moist salt that I order from a spice shop, and I mix the two together, and I keep them in a little jar right there on my counter, and that's the salt that I cook with and I add to anything that I want to just get a little more flavor.

Stephanie C.: (16:27)
Oh, yum. What is your go-to easy weeknight meal?

Melanie Potock: (16:32)
My easy go-to meal is always a big huge sheet pan of roasted vegetables, because I can eat those with maybe just even a few pieces of cheese, or a lovely piece of chicken, whatever I happen to have in the drawer in the kitchen. But ... Or, in the refrigerator, excuse me. That's my go-to meal, but I also love to have those roasted veggies available to add to an egg dish the next day, or to top my salad with. And I would say I make roasted veggies twice a week.

Stephanie C.: (17:04)
Oh, wonderful. What is your hosting menu? When people are coming over, whether it's a dinner party or a holiday, what is it?

Melanie Potock: (17:12)
That's easy. A [inaudible 00:17:15] charcuterie board.

Stephanie C.: (17:17)
What is your favorite healthy or healthy-ish dessert?

Melanie Potock: (17:22)
Oh, okay. I have to give you two. My favorite healthy-ish dessert, they're both from Adventures in Veggieland, and one are the choco-beet cupcakes. Those are so moist and so yummy. And then my other one is to take just the puff pastry that you get in the frozen food section, that you just unwrap to create a pastry with, but what I do is, is I take apples and parsnips, and I saute them in a little bit of butter and apple juice, and the apple juice soaks into the parsnips, and they just blend together, and it just tastes like a huge apple pie.

Melanie Potock: (18:03)
But half of it is vegetables. And then I fold it up, and I do a little egg wash on it, pop in the oven, and then it's all I can do not to eat the entire thing by myself. It's so good.

Stephanie C.: (18:15)
Oh, I'm going to have to try that. Anything that I can do to get my son to eat a few more vegetables, I'm in. Do you prefer arugula or spinach?

Melanie Potock: (18:25)
I like both. I hate to tell you. They're tied for me. I really love arugula on top of a veggie pizza.

Stephanie C.: (18:31)
Oh, yum. Do you clean up as you go, or do you wait until you're done?

Melanie Potock: (18:37)
No, I'm terrible at cleaning as I go. It drives my husband crazy, so to be honest with you, I cook, and he cleans up, and he gets to eat what I cook, so it's kind of an even Steven trade. I am not good at cleaning as I go, but that's why I married him.

Stephanie C.: (18:53)
Right. Cast iron, or nonstick?

Melanie Potock: (18:58)
Both. My favorite big pot is a huge cast iron pot. I use it for everything, and I have a little bit of nonstick for certain dishes, but I would say, if I had to pick, cast iron.

Stephanie C.: (19:14)
Coffee or tea?

Melanie Potock: (19:15)
Iced tea, decaf coffee. Decaf coffee in the morning, iced tea nonstop throughout the day. Green tea is my favorite.

Stephanie C.: (19:25)
Well, Melanie, that was super fun. Thanks for playing. My next guest is Amisha Klawonn. She's the mom to an eight-year-old picky eater, and the owner of Centered Mama, where she focuses on wellness education for moms.

Stephanie C.: (19:38)
In her work, Amisha explores mindfulness, gratitude and building resilience, and mindfulness has a pretty strong connection to food and cooking. So I asked her to share some of her strategies for being more mindful, and bringing our best selves into the kitchen with our kiddos. I started by asking her why cooking is important to her, even as she and her husband are already balancing so much.

Amisha Klawonn: (20:06)
I think, first and foremost, is that our son is a very picky eater, and so I think that the more that he is in the kitchen with us, touching food, holding food, smelling what we're making, while he may not eat it, he's at least being exposed to it, and every exposure eventually leads them to a path where he may try it.

Stephanie C.: (20:30)
Are there particular foods that are food groups that you struggle with your son?

Amisha Klawonn: (20:36)
All of them. Every single one. He does have standard foods that he does eat, but he is unwilling to try new foods, and when he does, he tends to either gag or actually physically throw up.

Amisha Klawonn: (20:51)
So we do kind of have a very fine line that we work with, which is why we just try to get him in the kitchen with us, and chopping vegetables with us, and stirring soup, and making stuff in the Instant Pot, just so he can at least see what the whole foods look like before they're created into a meal. And so that eventually, when he feels ready, he'll be able to take a bite without having such a strong reaction.

Stephanie C.: (21:16)
Yeah, I love that. And I think what's interesting to me is that I feel like, whenever I started bringing my son into the kitchen, I thought, "Well, if he helped make the meal, he'll eat the meal." And that really doesn't work the way I thought it would.

Amisha Klawonn: (21:31)
It really doesn't. I read a ton of blogs, and they're like, "As soon as your kids make the meal, they'll try it." Forty meals later, it's happened maybe once. And so, we just kind of, at this point, just have to let our expectations go and be like, "This is what it is for now. He's growing, he's healthy." I think you just have to let your expectations go and just be in the moment.

Stephanie C.: (21:54)
When I think about the things that prevent a lot of parents from getting into the kitchen with their kids, a lot of it is that it's stressful, and we just don't have time, and it's hard to be present. And so, when you talk about mindfulness, I was hoping we could start with, when we talk about mindfulness, what does that really mean?

Amisha Klawonn: (22:14)
Yeah. Well, so, there's the textbook definition, and then there's really what is it to be mindful in your own life? And so, really, what mindfulness is, is a mental state. It's how you're perceiving the environment that you're in.

Amisha Klawonn: (22:33)
And so mindfulness is achieved by focusing on the present moment, and focusing on that moment by being able to acknowledge how you're feeling right then, being able to acknowledge what your thoughts are in that moment, and just being able to acknowledge how your body feels in that moment. And then being able to accept that without judging it as being right or wrong. It just is what it is in that moment.

Stephanie C.: (23:03)
Oh, that's kind of tough when you put the judgment piece in there.

Amisha Klawonn: (23:05)
Yeah. As moms, we usually tend to think, "Well, this is right or wrong," or we tend to forecast into the future. So, I'll use myself as an example. With my son, I'm like, "He's never going to eat anything except for pizza and fish nuggets. This is what he's going to be having at his wedding."

Amisha Klawonn: (23:24)
And really, that causes me so much stress and anxiety that then I start getting angry that he's not eating other things when they're offered to him. And so, really, I just have to bring myself back to that moment and be mindful, and know that this is his experience as well as mine, and for him, he needs to feel safe at the dining room table.

Amisha Klawonn: (23:47)
That he can eat what is in front of him, and not be forced to try things that are going to make him gag. And so, I just have to bring it back to the moment, and be like, "You know what? For today, he had some fruits, he had a couple, one vegetable, and he's happy and full." And so ... And just not forecast it out.

Stephanie C.: (24:05)
Hey, I would take any vegetable.

Amisha Klawonn: (24:09)
They're few and far between.

Stephanie C.: (24:11)
What does mindfulness and that being present look like when we're in the kitchen with our kids? What does that look like for your family?

Amisha Klawonn: (24:22)
What that generally looks like for our family, it can change day to day. Generally, we do try to cook a family dinner once a week, and it doesn't happen every week, and some weeks do get skipped, and then we're like, "Oh my gosh, it's been three weeks."

Amisha Klawonn: (24:37)
And so whether that's making waffles together, or whether, it doesn't have to be a dinner. So sometimes, on Sunday mornings, we'll make waffles together, and that means that we're all in the kitchen. Everyone has a job to do. My son actually usually makes the batter. There are days where he makes everything.

Amisha Klawonn: (24:57)
We'll hang out with him when he's right by the waffle iron. But generally, he can make them on his own now. And so it's fun to see that. But that took, I don't know, maybe 25 times of doing this together. And so it's kind of that building of it to where he can make it now. Now we probably still wouldn't let him do it himself, just because of the waffle iron, but he can do it.

Amisha Klawonn: (25:19)
And it's such a great feeling for him that he made something, really, just out of ingredients. And so those are probably our best occurrences of when we're cooking together. But other times, when we're making things that we know he's not going to eat, he's kind of a very reluctant helper. So I always know that, before we start, that I need to feel grounded and centered in myself.

Stephanie C.: (25:47)
So how do you make sure that you are grounded and centered? You have exercises that you do that we could steal from you?

Amisha Klawonn: (25:54)
Sure. Well, one really basic, simple one is just to close your eyes for a moment, put your hand on your belly, and just take a nice, deep breath, in through the nose and then out through the nose. And then just try and do that one more time. Just taking a nice, deep breath, in through the nose and then out through the nose.

Amisha Klawonn: (26:24)
And then once you've done that, really just ground your feet, ground your hips into the chair that you're sitting on, and just really kind of feel your body there for a moment. And sometimes, just bringing in that minute of stillness can make a huge difference in how you react to what's happening when you head into the kitchen.

Amisha Klawonn: (26:48)
So that's one really, very simple way. Another really simple way is called the four, seven, eight breath. Are you familiar with that?

Stephanie C.: (26:56)
I'm not.

Amisha Klawonn: (26:57)
So that is where you're breathing in for four counts, and then you're holding it for seven, and then you're letting it out for eight. And so even just doing three rounds of that, so I can take you through it if you'd like.

Stephanie C.: (27:10)
Yes, let's do that.

Amisha Klawonn: (27:11)
Okay. So you'll take a nice, deep breath, in through the nose. So you'll inhale two, three, four. You'll hold two, three, four, five, six, seven, and then you'll exhale out for eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one.

Amisha Klawonn: (27:34)
And so, if you can do that for three or four breaths, that's a really nice one, because it occupies your mind with the counting, and so it very quickly gets you into your body and into what you're feeling at that moment.

Amisha Klawonn: (27:49)
That's really important, because if you're in your body, and you're feeling nervous about a work call that's coming in, or a conversation that you have to have, and you just kind of have this anxiety, well, maybe it's not the best time to be in the kitchen.

Stephanie C.: (28:03)
Thank you to Amisha for sharing her wisdom. If you want to soak up more of her great information, check out her course called Peaceful, Calm, Resilient. It's designed for women who feel overwhelmed and are looking for ways to build self-care into their day. What a wonderful resource for the holiday season. You can find that at centeredmama.com.

Stephanie C.: (28:28)
Joy. It's a relatively simple concept, right? As parents, we want our kids to have joy in their lives. And yeah, we crave it, too. But as fundamental as joy might be, it's not always so straightforward. I know I want my son to associate joy with cooking and food and family dinners, and I totally want to have idyllic evenings in my kitchen.

Stephanie C.: (28:52)
But it's a struggle sometimes. Still, the emotion we associate with cooking is largely a choice. Is it something we look forward to, or is it a chore? The challenge, I think, is that we feel starved for time, and we're distracted by the thousands of things that need to happen in a day.

Stephanie C.: (29:11)
Layered on top of that is our desire to have the perfectly cultivated social media feed with beautiful food pics. And frankly, all of that can sap the joy out of cooking. So this month's challenge is a big one. Find a way to discover, or perhaps rediscover, joy in your kitchen.

Stephanie C.: (29:30)
What changes do you need to make? How can you be more mindful or present? How can you set your family up for success? What do your kiddos need from you in order to find their joy? Everyone's path is going to be different, but here's the notion I believe we all share. A joyful kitchen and a happy dinner table are among the most important achievements we can aspire to as parents, even if our kids still won't eat the broccoli.

Stephanie C.: (30:05)
Thanks for joining me for Kiddos in the Kitchen. I'm your host, Stephanie Conner, with a reminder from my son.

Conner: (30:13)
If you liked my mom's podcast as much as I do, you could subscribe on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stephanie C.: (30:31)
That's right, Conner. You can also view the show notes, subscribe to our newsletter, and check out all of our other content at kiddosinthekitchen.com. We're Kiddos Cook on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and I'll be back next month with another fresh episode. Until then, I encourage you to get your kiddos in the kitchen.