Episode 6: Should we pressure our kids to eat?

Episode 6: Should we pressure our kids to eat?

Welcome to episode six! In this episode, I’ll give you a seat at the table where we discuss the importance of managing food pressure at dinner time. How we talk about food significantly impacts our children's connection with food.

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Links
https://nourishwithkarina.com/feedingbabies
https://nourishwithkarina.com/3-week-feeding-kids-reset

Highlights:

Food Pressure at the Dinner Table (00:00.142)
Parenting Challenges and Solutions (02:24.782)
A 68-Year-Old Woman's Experience with Green Beans (04:48.334)
Parenting Challenges and Bribery (07:08.782)
Parenting Influenced by Past Experiences (09:32.238)
Parenting Behaviors and Past Experiences (11:36.526)
Parenting Stress and Its Impact on Children (14:04.11)
Chaos Mom's Eating Habits and Challenges (16:29.742)
Mother's Struggles and Solutions (18:56.686)
Calm Mums: A Guide to Happier Meal Times (21:17.678)
Calm Mums: A Balanced Approach to Family Meal Planninga (23:41.934)
Calm Mothering and Family Connection (26:08.046)
Improving Parenting Environment and Child Nutrition (28:32.622)
Subconscious Influence on Motherhood and Child Eating (30:51.566)
Understanding the Impact of Pressure on Behavior (33:10.894)
Pressuring Kids to Eat: A Balance between Support and Over-Pressuring (35:36.622)
Research on Children's Eating Behaviors (38:03.246)
Effective Feeding Environment for Children (40:17.678)
Grasping Momentum and Seeing Change (42:41.262)

Show notes

READ TRANSCRIPT

Show Notes

In this episode I explore some key questions:

Do we talk about food at the table?

How do we discuss food, and what's our tone of voice?

How much should we talk about food?

Is making a big deal about it the solution to getting our kids to eat healthy?

Does talking about food too much create more problems in the long run?

I'll also look at why we as adults act the way we do at the dinner table….and what factors influence how we behave with our kids at mealtimes.

I walk you through the differences between "chaos mum" and the "calm mum" during dinner time, shedding some light on simple strategies for becoming a calmer mum during dinner time.

If the idea of “calm” happy mealtime, where kids actually eat sounds good, then this episode is for you. Let’s chat about how to turn your dinner table into a happy place rather than a source of worry.

Learn more about my membership program, head over to: https://nourishwithkarina.com/membership

Food Pressure at the Dinner Table (00:00.142)
You're listening to the Easy Feed Podcast, episode number six, Food Pressure at the Dinner Table. Hi there, I'm Karina Savage and with over 20 years experience feeding children, including my own, I've learned all the secrets that busy mums need to get their children eating better and actually enjoying healthy foods. So a huge welcome to the Easy Feed Podcast.

Welcome back. It's so nice to have you here. I'm talking about a topic today that can truly divide people. It can divide husband and wife and it can cause a lot of angst between parents. Let me tell you. So what I'm referring to is how we go about encouraging our children to try a new food or to eat their veggies at the dinner table. I have so many mums tell me that...

Their approach is different to their husband's and their husband's approach, not to like name and shame, but the husband's approach is sometimes a little more forceful and doesn't end well. And look, I've experienced it too. I've experienced a meal time where my husband and I, you know, we won't necessarily agree on the best way to manage, you know, he understands now our approach, but.

You know, you have to be on the same page and there's certainly had other experiences with managing behaviour or different things with our children where, you know, if we've been on a different page with what we think should happen or how we think we should manage it, you know, it can cause a lot of tension. So I'm here to chat a little bit more about the best way to approach.

past the eating behaviours and food rejection, because the question is, do we even talk about food at the table? And if we do talk about it, what do we say? And how do we say it? So what tone of voice do we use? Where do we draw the line? Where do we stop pressuring? Do we pressure? Because I tell you, it's human nature to want to talk about food at the table with your child, especially...

Parenting Challenges and Solutions (02:24.782)
if they're not eating what you want them to eat or what you've spent hours in the kitchen preparing. If you've spent ages in the kitchen trying to cook, you know, a number of different meals, and hopefully you've listened to episode number five from last week where you are now trying not to cook three different meals, but you know, if you've spent time in the kitchen preparing this food, you know, maybe you've been searching for these healthy recipes in the hope that they're going to eat the food.

You know, you finally get to the dinner table and if they're not eating it, it can be really frustrating. It can actually be soul destroying to a parent, especially if you're worried about their nutrition. So you naturally then fall back on, you know, your own parenting toolkit. And I'll talk a bit more about where this perhaps has come from in terms of our own parenting behaviors, but you know, that toolkit will often involve...

Talking about food, coercing them to get, you know, a few bites of broccoli into their mouth, perhaps bribing them. And, you know, making a big deal of food may not necessarily be the answer. And it may actually go against what we want to achieve in the long run in terms of our goal for our children to develop a liking for a wide variety of

different coloured foods, like the colours of the rainbow, which is what we always get told and not guilted into, but you know, it is good for them to eat all the colours of the rainbow, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they are going to eat all the colours of the rainbow by the age of 10. And so don't feel guilty if they're not. We do our damnedest, we try our hardest and that's all we can do. So does overdoing the food talk at the table...

you know, do more damage in the long run? Probably yes. And I'm going to explain why a bit later, because I hear all sorts of stories about how people have been scarred by being made or forced to eat food when they were young. You know, they still can't touch food to this day because of what happened to them, the trauma that they went through with this particular food when they were a child.

A 68-Year-Old Woman's Experience with Green Beans (04:48.334)
I literally heard another story yesterday about a 68 year old lady who was made to eat green beans when she was young. And she was forced to eat them to the point where she would gag and vomit on these green beans, but she still had to eat them. And you know, to this day, she still hates green beans and I don't blame her. Look, I vividly remember, not my finest parenting moment, but...

My daughter, you know, was fussy. She was low in iron, bless her. Always a bit skinny, I was told. Now she's good. But yeah, look, I remember the day when she just hadn't eaten meat for ages. I was really worried about her protein intake, her iron intake, all of that, which, you know, is a very normal worry for a lot of mums. And...

It was a dinner time. I can't even remember what we were actually eating, but I remember she had no protein, no iron again. And I'm like, here we go. Another day where she's just not going to get any iron in. So I was like, right, let's have some hummus. So I still vividly remember. I think she'd got up from the table and I was like, no, you are going to have some hummus. Like you are like, and again, this is not what you should do, but of course this is what I did because I was desperate. And I remember.

giving her a big spoonful of hummus. And this is my daughter who also for years had a very sensitive gag reflex. So she was a chucky baby, like a huge chucker. Thank goodness we had floorboards, I tell you, because she threw up so much, it was disgusting. It's amazing how tolerant you can become of vomit when your baby's a big chucker.

There anyway, she had a, sorry for that little digression there, but she, she had a very sensitive gag reflex. And I remember saying to her, you, you must eat this hummus. Like you just, you just gotta eat it. You just gotta eat something. Come on. So she, she bought this big mouthful. I probably even held the spoon as it went into her mouth. And then she gagged so much on this hummus because it can be quite sticky. And in the.

Parenting Challenges and Bribery (07:08.782)
Now in large amounts, a bit like peanut butter, I guess, it can get stuck. Anyway, she's gagged so much on this hummus, she's ended up throwing up, emptying her stomach of any of the goodness of the veggies that actually did go into her stomach from dinner. So I've literally sabotaged the entire dinner from trying to get this spoonful of hummus into her. So was that a good option? Probably not. Did it get me anywhere? Absolutely not.

Did it actually undo all of the other goodness of dinner? Yes. So lesson learned. But I'm sure we've all got our own stories where, you know, not necessarily that has happened, but you know, where we felt desperate for our child to eat. I've heard plenty of other horror stories too, about kids being held down whilst food, dinner is shoved into them. You know, they're that fussy, that...

This way, anything in the Paris is so desperate, they hold them down. I've even heard it, it was a kind of pretty funny story, but kind of sad at the same time about a child who was literally bribed $50 to eat some veggies, but refused. But you know, this dad was so desperate to get his child, his son, I still remember them sitting in my clinic and...

He was so desperate, he bribed him with 50 bucks. And you know, it's sad because it just goes to show how desperate we feel as parents to get our children to eat healthy foods and be nourished and thrive. And it shows the lengths that we will go to, or some parents will go to, to make it happen. Bribing is another one. You can't have dessert if you don't eat all your veggies or eat your broccoli so that you can have some ice cream.

And that's another very, very common situation. And again, certainly guilty of it, put my hand up. You know, it's very common parenting tool, I think, you know, the parenting tool for all aspects of parenting, not just eating. But I guess I just want to question why do some of us parents bribe or pressure more than others? So why do we as parents behave the way...

Parenting Influenced by Past Experiences (09:32.238)
we do at the dinner table. And I think it's affected by many factors. Firstly, I think how we were raised can influence how we parent.

Sometimes this is a subconscious thing that we don't even realize, you know, how many times have you opened your mouth to say something and heard your parents' words come out? And if this has happened to you, you're not alone. Many parents have had this experience because just as you are your child's first teacher, your parents were yours and they did things and said things and you know, it was their way of being. All of those things laid the foundation for many of

the ways you do things or your beliefs or your values and your attitudes. And of course, when we leave the nest, we grow and we evolve and we change and we shake off the things we don't like and we improve ourselves and we become the person we want to be. But subconsciously, sometimes those learned experiences and those learned behaviours are still there subconsciously.

So sometimes the experiences that we've had with dinner times or with food can then play into how we parent our kids. Sometimes we dislike something so strongly from our past or our upbringing that we actively do the opposite of what our parents did. So perhaps a person that grew up feeling very unloved or unwanted, perhaps...

because that was their experience. Perhaps then when they raise their children, they overcompensate and smother them in love and affection, which is lovely. But sometimes when we are conscious of something that we didn't like about our upbringing, we then do the opposite. So it's really interesting how our past experiences shape how we parents.

Parenting Behaviors and Past Experiences (11:36.526)
And the behaviors that we choose to continue on and the behaviors that we choose to completely go against. So I'm sure that there's experiences from your upbringing that you love and you hate, and you then use those judgments of those experiences to shape how you then want a parent. And you do things that you perhaps love. So, you know, for example, I loved going...

camping with my parents and my family, my brother, and had really fond memories of that as a child. And so then I want to continue that on and have those fond memories with my kids and my daughter loves camping. And, you know, we're only just sort of getting going on our camping journey, but I'm trying to recreate those for her because I remember those really fondly from my past. And so sometimes those past positive experiences can be wonderful to continue, but sometimes those past negative experiences.

are not good to continue. So if you grew up in a, an environment where you were forced to eat everything on the plate, then perhaps that's not a experience that you want to continue to create for your family moving forward. So have a think about perhaps how your past experiences or your husband's past experiences will impact behaviours, parents' behaviours at meal times, because parents' behaviours at meal times matter 100%.

And if two parents are coming from very different backgrounds and experiences, they may have very different views on how the middle time should play out. And if those views are very different, that's where a lot of tension can occur, arguments, and then it has a bad ripple effect. So I think it's just important to being mindful of where our current parenting behaviours come from. And sometimes they are deep rooted in our past.

I have had many mums over the years say to me that they wish that their partner was on the call with me because they needed to hear the same conversation around taking the pressure off and using positive words because sometimes we do have very differing approaches and we need both parents to be on the same page. That's really important. Another factor that influences how the meal time plays out.

Parenting Stress and Its Impact on Children (14:04.11)
is how stressed we are as parents and how tired we are on any given day. Look, that influences everything to do with parenting, right? You know, if I'm tired or frustrated, my tolerance is a lot lower than it should be. And I snap more and then I feel bad about that. But I think we need to cut ourselves some slack too, right? Because parenting is hard. Beating kids is hard. And I think sometimes...

Again, this is a little, you know, kudos to moms. Moms are the glue that often stick everything together. Now I take my hat off to the dads that are, you know, managing the kids. Sometimes it's the reverse. Sometimes it's mom doing the full -time job and dad's at home. So I want to acknowledge dads in that role. Amazing. So you, you're, you're phenomenal as well. Yeah. All parents are doing the best they can, but often it is the moms in that role and.

That's where I feel like we need to cut ourselves some slack. Even if we are tired and stressed and we don't feed our kids well some days, it's okay. You're doing the best you can. I do now though, want to delve a little more into how things play out for a tired, stressed out mum, compared to a calm, confident, positive mum. Because I think when you can...

really see the stark contrast between the two, it makes you realise where you want to be. And we'll talk about some steps to get to more calm rather than chaos. So to start with, I want to talk about the tired, stressed out, chaotic mum, because look, I've certainly been there too. And how do you think I know all the answers? How do you think I know how the tired, stressed out, chaotic mum feels? It's like...

First -hand experience, right? And I've had 11 years of feeding kids in chaos and I'm here to shorten that timeframe for you and get your kids eating better, healthier, quicker. And that's the exact reason I have my Nourishing Kids membership so that I can help mums get there a lot quicker. So I am going to talk firstly about the chaos mum. So the chaos mum, number one, feels completely overwhelmed at

Chaos Mom's Eating Habits and Challenges (16:29.742)
Even the thought of dinner, you know, it comes five o 'clock and you're like, my goodness, what am I going to cook to haven't even thought about it? Haven't got, you know, what I need in the fridge. And it's just another drain. It's just the daily grind, right? And it just reinforces the fact that this is such a punish. It's a daily grind and you just feel completely overwhelmed. So sometimes you end up choosing takeaway because that's just the easiest, quickest option. Get them said.

And of course then you feel bad. So the chaos mom will probably then feel bad that her kids ate takeaway because it was just the quickest and easiest route to getting them fed. And then she'll feel like a failure. And then there's all those sort of negative emotions that come with that. So anyway, if you don't, if she doesn't get takeaway chaos mom may choose to cook. And if she does choose to cook, then it's probably going to be a known

easy dish that she knows the kids are going to eat. So this could be a rotation of chicken nuggets and chips. It could take away, not take away, sorry, supermarket pizza. It could be pasta, plain pasta, maybe with a side of like one bit of cucumber. It could be some crumb fish maybe. It's just something that's a quick and easy frankfruits. I know the kids are going to eat it, but she doesn't necessarily offer any new foods because

She knows that it's pretty fruitless. She knows that they're probably not going to eat it anyway. So why bother? Don't want to waste food. It's just going to end up in the bin or in her mouth. So Chaos Mum doesn't usually offer any new food. She just offers the food that her kids will eat because then it's done and they're fed and at least getting something. And she ends up eating a version of what the kids eat because she feels so worn down. She cannot be bothered cooking her own healthy food that...

food that she might actually want to eat, she just succumbed to cooking and eating what the kids will eat because it's just easier, right? And so you just end up on this pasta and nuggets die because that's what the kids will eat. And so it's just easier. So she serves up dinner. She may eat with them or she may wait for her husband to come home. But if she does eat with them, she's just feeling pretty exhausted and you know, conversations.

Mother's Struggles and Solutions (18:56.686)
Okay, but you know, it's not super fun conversation. It might be, but you know, she's feeling pretty exhausted. Kids have limited veggies on their plate and mum just eats what the kids are eating. So there's not really huge exposure to a variety of foods there, but you know, they're being fed. So again, if this is you, 100 % no guilt, I'm just trying to show you where things could be at now and where things could be. So chaos mum is sitting with the kids.

If there happens to be any veggies on the plate, she's probably going to encourage the kids to eat the veggies because she's probably just sick of them refusing the veggies. She doesn't feel very resilient. She doesn't feel very tolerant. And so she's like, can you just eat your damn veggies? They're good for you. Can you just eat them? Can you please just have a bite? Please. And if you have a bite, you can have some ice cream. You know, that kind of thing. So Kayo's mum's feeling kind of desperate.

There's pressure, there's bribing, depending on the day. So sometimes there is dessert and it could be if the kids have eaten what was on their plate, depending on how much they've eaten. But you know, the family meal time isn't that enjoyable because mum's feeling a pretty low vibrational frequency or energy. She's feeling pretty smashed, she's feeling, you know, it's just food on the plate is not really inspiring. But.

They're fed, right? And then the best part is you've got all the dishes to do afterwards, unless the awesome kids and family step in, if partner's around. So that's, that's the picture of the chaos mum. And that is a very common story that is rinsed and repeated in many different households, daily sometimes, across the world. So please don't feel guilt if you're in that place, because I've been there. It's very normal.

But there is a new way, absolutely a new way. And so I'm going to paint that picture of calm mum in a minute. So you're not a bad mum if you're in chaos mode. And even if you come in and out of chaos mode, totally normal. Remember, you're also probably, and look, I'm assuming things here, but again, if you're the mum sort of running around after all the kids.

Calm Mums: A Guide to Happier Meal Times (21:17.678)
You're possibly a nurse, you're a consoler, you're a teacher, you help them with the homework, you're a bedtime reader, you're a cleaner, you're a laundromat, you're an Uber driver, you know, and the list goes on. So, once you're exhausted and tired and sometimes snappy, because we all get like that. Anyway, now let's paint a picture of what a motivated, empowered, confident, calm mum with a much

higher vibrational frequency or energy. So she's just exuding confidence, energy. She's happy. She's playful, you know, smiling. She cracks jokes with the kids. Like who wouldn't want to be that mum, right? Like I have snippets of that sometimes. And you can see the kids respond and lighten up and it's, it's great. I love that. So yeah, that's the goal, right? You know, a hundred percent, we're not going to be like that a lot of the time, but.

I don't know if I just made sense right then, but basically I'm trying to say that it's normal for us to not be like that a lot of the time, but that's where we want to get to more often because a calm mum will have much happier meal times. And to be honest with you, we'll have a much better outcome over the weeks and the months and the years getting her kids to expand and enjoy a greater variety of healthy foods. Her kids will eat better.

as teenagers and adults. Absolutely. So what does a calm mum do? A calm mum firstly feels in control of the week because she has spent 10 minutes on a Sunday writing out a weekly meal plan. And look, I've got these meal planners and I've actually got a two week menu plan in my membership and you get this as part of my membership. So you get this planning, you get recipes and just taking 10 minutes on a Sunday to plan the week.

can be such a game changer, it can really make a difference. So if all you do after you listen to this podcast is plan for 10 minutes on a Sunday, your week, it will be an absolute game changer. It will make such a difference. Cause you get to 5 .30 then on a Tuesday night and you go, why am I going to cook? that's right. I've written a plan. And then you go to the plan and you go great, I got a chicken. And you know, you've got the stuff in the fridge because you actually planned for it on Sunday. And hopefully you went to the shop then to get the stuff.

Calm Mums: A Balanced Approach to Family Meal Planninga (23:41.934)
So a calm mum will have plans, so she's not going to get to five o 'clock and go, my god, and then off to get take away. So she won't need to get the takeaway option and therefore she won't need to feel guilty or feel like a failure or any of those negative emotions that come with that, my god, I'm a bad mum, I haven't cooked for my kids, they're just going to eat rubbish. So you negate any of that because you've actually got a plan, you've got some food in the fridge that you can cook up quickly.

So, calm mum is confident and she knows how to substitute in various foods. So, if you haven't heard it yet, I highly recommend listening to episode five, last week's podcast, where I talk about how to set up like a one cook dinner. So you're not cooking three different meals. You're just cooking one meal for a family each night and you're subbing in...

different foods according to your various taste preferences from the kids. So it's one dinner rather than three different meals being cooked because goodness knows we don't need to spend that amount of time in the kitchen. I mean we do, but we don't need to. So this calm mum is confident and knows how to cook one meal for the family and how to sub in the various food groups based on what her kids will eat, what they're

Taste preferences are, so she's confident to serve up the food that she wants to eat. So she's not on a nuggets and pasta rotation. She's actually eating what she wants to eat, but she knows how to make it work in the context of feeding her kids that may be fussy. So check out podcast number five for that. And also look, this is like one of the key points, one of the basis of my three week feeding kids resets, like how to set up a really positive feeding environment. So that's part of my membership.

You can check out my membership link in the show notes. So calm mum is happy because she gets to eat her yummy food and she sits with the kids and they have a happy meal time. Granted, she's not eating with her husband if he's coming home late. I mean, maybe he does come home amazing on the weekend they can eat together, which is great. But yes, that's the only downside. But to be honest with you, you've got this window of opportunity when your kids are younger.

Calm Mothering and Family Connection (26:08.046)
And you really need to be eating with them. Okay. You've got many years to have dinner with your husband or partner after that. Well, hopefully anyway. So because calm mom knows how to manage mealtimes and manage fussiness confidently. When her husband does join them at mealtimes, they're both on the same page. So they know how to respond to food rejections or food refusals that the kids have.

So they're not arguing about how to manage the food fussiness. And we don't have dad pressuring more than mom. We don't have them bribing because they're both on the same page. So they're actually enjoying happy mealtimes. They're talking about the day. They're spending quality time connecting, which is so powerful. It's so much more important than the foods that they put in their mouth at dinner. Dinner time is so valuable from a family connection perspective in terms of the child's social and emotional wellbeing.

There's a whole lot of research to back this up. So calm mum is enjoying meal times. They might be doing a pop quiz, maybe from my membership. And there is no pressure and focus on food. And this, and for this reason, they're really connecting as a family. There's no bribing. So if the kids want to have dessert, they can have dessert. It doesn't matter how much dinner they've had. Calm mum's like, go for it. You know, have it, have a go at things, but...

You can still have dessert later on. And of course you can still choose what you give them for dessert. It might be fruit, go get something healthy. But it's not a, if you do this, you get this because then that puts dessert up on a pedestal. And yes, the downside of calm mum's dinner time is still the dishes are still going to be there, but maybe the awesome family helps out as well. And really that is the only bad part.

about the whole dinner time because the rest of it has been very different. The energy at the table, the subconscious cues are so much more positive and powerful that role modeling's there. Mealtime's a calmer and when kids are calm and happy, the magic happens. They're much more inclined to try things, to eat things. And last week we talked a lot about putting test foods on a side learning plate, having a no thank you bowl.

Improving Parenting Environment and Child Nutrition (28:32.622)
And when that environment is set up properly and then kids are calm and happy and mum's happy, then it's going to be a complete game changer and things will start to happen. Of course, not necessarily straight away or this week or this month, but absolutely over the months and the years, things will happen and things will become much better, easier, lighter, and the kids will eat better over time. Absolutely. This is a long game, not a short game. Yeah. So this is the future.

You could become a much calmer mum. We just need to start somewhere. Okay. I want to now jump back to the factors that can influence how we as parents behave at dinnertime. So we've talked so far about number one, how our own upbringing can then influence how we parent our children. And number two, how our levels of tiredness and stress and frustration.

can play into how we then show up at dinner time, what foods we give our children and the whole vibe and energy at the dinner table. And probably also the words that we use. I now want to talk about another few factors. So another factor that will also influence how pushy or forceful a parent is at the table really relates to how...

internally worried they are about their child's current nutritional status. So if you have a child that is underweight or is iron deficient, or you're seriously worried that they're iron deficient or they're getting sick a lot, then I feel that you have another layer. And I'm not meaning to layer this on you, but from what I've seen in the thousands of mums I've worked with, I see an additional layer of worry and concern and stress for that child. And that's valid.

but I feel like then that further fuels the pressure sometimes at dinnertime because I feel like it's the parents are feeling pressured to get food or iron or whatever into their child because it's deficient or underweight. And that only fuels our pressure cooker situation at dinnertime. And then another more.

Subconscious Influence on Motherhood and Child Eating (30:51.566)
subconscious influencer that's wrapped up more in our own self -worth as mums really relates to comparison. When we go out with our friends and their kids, and their kids perhaps are much better eaters than your child, you subconsciously snapshot that and pocket it in your brain in probably the compartment that says,

I'm not as good a mom, my child doesn't eat as well as the other kids. What have I done wrong? I'm a bit of a failure. And again, I'm not labeling you, but I've seen this and I've certainly felt my own sense of failure. And so when we compare to others, it generally only brings us down. And then what this can also do is fuel more pressure at dinner time because you're sitting down with your child.

And you're sitting there with them, seeing them having, you know, veggies on their plate. You think back to the other day when you were with your friend and your friend's kids, your friends like smashing their meat and veggies. And you're looking at your child who's just like pushing it around the plate, refusing it. And it just fuels more talk and pressure to eat their food because you're comparing your child with the other child and you're just feeling perhaps, perhaps.

a bit of a failure because your child's not eating. It's not you that's... you're not a failure, it's just that your child is at a very different point on their food journey compared to the other child, but please don't think you're a failure because you're absolutely not, nor is your child. They're just at a different point on their food journey. So many factors that can influence a dinner time without us even realising. So, let me ask you a question.

And this is a bit of a random question, but I'm a big dog lover, a massive dog lover. And so I like to use this analogy of a dog. So say you've got a dog, beautiful dog, and you're walking it down the street, but it's shaken itself, it's shaken itself loose of the harness and it's taken off and it's sprinting down the street away from you. And it's heading towards the road and you are freaking out.

Understanding the Impact of Pressure on Behavior (33:10.894)
because you don't want it to get hit by a car and it is running away from you. So you start to chase after it, but it only makes it run further in the opposite direction and faster away from you. So you actually running towards them, pressures them. If you stop, and people with dogs may know this, if you stop and you actually run the other way, so not towards them, but away from them, that action,

actually stops a dog in their tracks, or most of the time, and makes them think, hang on a minute, where are they going? Where's my owner going? I don't want to lose my owner. And actually stops the dog and actually makes it run towards you. So you take the pressure off that dog and run the other way and it starts running towards you, which is exactly what you want it to do. So what is that telling us? What behavioral insight is that giving us?

I'll give you an another analogy. What happens when you try to convince, ask, tell, plead your husband to do a job around the house? How does that go down? So for example, if it's, you know, if there's heaps of leaves outside and you'd really love them to sweep them up because you're busy doing stuff inside, when they're pressured to do it,

Do you think they're more or less likely to do it? And the same goes for you. If you're pressured or coerced or, yeah, I think we're just going to be really careful when we're, you know, conversing with other humans because the more we push, the less people want to do things. And I'm the same and I'm sure you're the same too, because if you're pressured to do something, you're less keen to follow through with that task because it does change your mindset towards doing that task.

So, I think we've established that when someone is pressured to do something, they are much less likely to do it. So, what does this mean for our children at meal times? If we're pressuring them to eat, they're more likely to run the opposite direction and not eat, especially the foods that we're going on about them eating, like veggies, for example.

Karina (35:36.622)
The other thing is when we're pressuring our kids to eat, we may be causing other feeding issues related to appetite regulation and mindful eating. You know, my dad told me that when he was young, he had to eat everything on his plate, no matter how full he was, because that's what was done back then. And to this day, that behaviour is still ingrained. So the thing we need to think about is if we are pressuring our kids to eat,

Are we teaching them to be mindful eaters? Because if we're forcing them to finish everything on their plate, then we are asking them to ignore their feelings of hunger and fullness. And sometimes we can get into this trap with babies actually. We want them to eat so much. They're in the high chair, we're spoon feeding them. Say they're seven months old. We're like, come on, come on, you can eat, you know, this food's good for you, let's eat.

You know, and the baby is like turning their head away. They are done with dinner or lunch or meal times. They don't want to eat, but the parent is, you know, shoving the food in their face and can really cause a lot of anxiety and feeding aversions in babies. Because babies and kids have an innate ability to self -regulate their appetite and eat to what they need. And they do this far better than us adults. I think as

adults, we can sometimes lose this ability to be really in tune with our bodies and listen to our signals of hunger and fullness and eat mindfully. But babies and kids do a damn good job of it and we need to respect that and practice what we call responsive feeding because that enables them to determine when they are full and when they are hungry too, when they need to eat again.

Now you may be thinking, yes, they eat what they want to eat. They just eat the pasta and then they tell me they're full when they don't want to eat any of the veggies. And look, my son does that too. I totally get that. And then he'll ask for a banana smoothie half an hour later. So I understand that. And I think we have to find that real balance between supporting them, encouraging them to eat, but not over pressuring them to the point where we're making them eat.

Research on Children's Eating Behaviors (38:03.246)
when they're actually full. So it's really trying to find that fine line and understand the nuance and the pros and the cons both ways. That is some pretty impressive research though to back up the importance of not pressuring kids to eat. Firstly, there was a study on almost 200 five -year -old girls looking at their food intake and how their parents' behaviours influenced what their daughter ate.

And this study found that parents who pressured their daughters to eat had daughters that ate less fruit and vegetables and consumed a higher fat intake. So the pressure to eat actually meant the girls ate less plant foods and more fat. And those parents also tended to eat less fruit and vegetables themselves, highlighting the importance of

us eating the good stuff in front of our kids so that monkeys eat, monkey do, the role modelling those healthy eating behaviours. We've also seen in the research that offering rewards for eating vegetables can actually result in the child learning to dislike that food. So it's actually doing the opposite of what we want. So whilst bribing a child with dessert may work in the short term, so your child may eat broccoli if they can get their ice cream afterwards,

That may work in the short term, but the research is telling us that in the long run, your child is actually less likely to learn to like broccoli, which is not what our end goal is. Our end goal is to over time, get them to learn to like a variety of different coloured plant foods and protein foods and healthy balanced diet, right? So we need to...

work out a plan that's going to plant seeds and support our children to become competent healthy eaters over time. And bribing and forcing actually works against and pressuring works against what we want to achieve in the long run. So we know that when parents enjoy a food in front of the child, those subconscious cues of enjoyment and satisfaction and those role modeling of healthy eating behaviors, we know that they plant seeds.

Effective Feeding Environment for Children (40:17.678)
talked about that before and a child will definitely have a much greater chance of eventually liking that food. So, familiarity is key. We need to keep foods familiar. We need to keep mealtimes fun and light and pressure just does not have a role at the dinner table. It's never going to get you anywhere in the long run. The most important thing you can do is to set up an effective feeding environment. Now, a few key elements of an effective feeding environment includes number one,

where possible eating together, or at least with one adult. Number two, enjoying a happy, calm environment. So we want calm mum at the table. And my membership talks a lot about this. So definitely check out the membership if you want to learn more about that. And we want to be offering a combination of safe foods and test foods. And podcast number five really goes into a lot of detail about this. And number four.

topic of today, no pressure, no bribing, preferably no discussion about food. So setting up an effective feeding environment will be a complete game changer. And this is the basis of my three week feeding kids reset, which is what you get complete access to membership. So I'd highly recommend you check it out. If any of this is resonating with you today, then check it out and see if it's for you. So at the end of the day, it's up to us.

as parents to walk that fine line of setting up a happy meal time, you know, softly encouraging our children to try and explore food, keeping it fun and light. Maybe they're a food scientist trying to make it fun and light because let's be honest, kids are all about fun, aren't they? And we need to make sure that we're not overcooking the situation, so to speak, and not turning dinner into like a pressure cooker situation. Pardon the pun, because...

the more pressure we put on, the worse things are going to be for all of us. So what is your first step in trying to work out how to improve your own family's feeding environment? Because I just want you to pick one thing to work on today or from today, grab one thing to work on and that's all you need to do to start gaining momentum. You know, one thing will lead to another, but achieve one thing first.

Grasping Momentum and Seeing Change (42:41.262)
and then, you know, work on the next thing, because that's the way to gain momentum and to start seeing change. Keep the bar low, keep the expectation low. Don't beat yourself up if things don't change straight away, but do strive for one small change because that's the way you're going to gain momentum. Ultimately, we want happy meal times and healthy kids. We want to move as much as possible from chaos to calm. So wrapping things up.

Thank you so much for being here and listening. If you like what you hear, make sure you subscribe to this podcast. And once you've listened to a few, if you're really receiving some value, please leave me a review so that it helps get this podcast out to more people. Bye for now.