Happy July, book club! We will keep trucking even though summer is summer. Keep trying to read a chapter a week or so, even if you don’t have the margin to comment on these posts.
Chapter 5 is called “Becoming an Eater” and is all about picky eating. Well, really, it’s an examination of how we come to learn to eat—how we grow as eaters, with roots that get established first.
Here are some of my thoughts and reactions on this chapter:
“We are losing sight of how our matriarchs placed the roots of relationship on our plate and how this nourished us.” (p. 115) I loved this part. "Matriarch of the kitchen”—count me in. What a contrast between this language and the language of modern feminism, which rails against women “in the kitchen,” as if the kitchen is the most oppressive place a woman could be. (I also love how she says we shouldn’t “be blinded by nostalgia”—a good added nuance in conversations like this.)
Loved this part on p. 118: “The term picky eating is a phrase used by adults to describe a child who is not following the adults’ eating agenda. When we say a child is a picky eater, the focus is on the child and what they are not doing rather than on the context, the child’s developmental needs, and the responsibility of the adult to lead through the impasse.”
That we’re applying behavioral principles to eating makes a ton of sense, and this part was a lightbulb moment for me. I’ve read Ellyn Satter and try not to have this kind of dynamic, but eating is an activity that happens so frequently and is so often frustrating that I’ve resorted to these tactics, even though “[a] behavioral approach backfires, as kids react negatively when they feel pressured to eat, not to mention the tragic effect on trust in caretaking relationships.” I felt called out in the best way here. I think part of the challenge here is the judgment (and the flip side, praise) of others. Adults love to comment on kids who are eating everything put before them (“such a good eater!”) and harshly judge kids (and their parent) who don’t.
This feels like such a big topic it sometimes feels overwhelming. This line hit: “Sometimes we do things we disagree with simply because we don’t know another way.” Um, YES. Also this: “As parents, if we don’t feel confident in feeding ourselves, how would you trust your child?” Oof. This makes so much sense. So many adults have issues of one kind or another with food, and even if there aren’t major issues, so many of us simply don’t have healthy mindsets around mealtime (seeing it as only fuel, as something to get over with, etc.). Hard to pass on what you don’t really have yourself.
We have at least one kid who is highly sensitive. I do try (increasingly) to not care about what she chooses to eat (“The bottom line is that taking a neutral stance on food is key to creating healthy contexts to eat in”) but it’s so hard, mostly because it triggers feelings of failure. I loved that she had a whole section on highly sensitive kids, this line especially: “The key to understanding a sensitive child is to not hold their big reactions against them but appreciate how they are being affected biologically through the senses.” This is so true but sometimes even I forget it (and I’m an HSP myself!). I’ve written about this before and need to again. People don’t understand how real this is; HSPs do not experience the world in the same way as non-HSPs. Everything quite literally feels different.
The three essential eating practices (starting on p. 131) were great.
I loved the image of roots in this chapter. Roots are invisible, yet they are essential—which is a very apt metaphor for our relationship/connection with our kids. So much of the work of good parenting is relationship work, work that you don’t see “results” from immediately but that is literally building the foundation for growth and thriving.
My thoughts here are just a jumping off point to use if you want! Feel free to share any connection, question, or reaction that came up for you!
"Becoming an eater should unfold in relationship to others. Instead of asking how to get our picky eater to eat, we need to consider what makes a child want to try the same food as us. We don’t need to explicitly teach our kids how to eat, and especially not through coercion. We have something far more powerful with which to influence and guide them. What we need to do is focus on connection, harness the power of our relationship, and lead them towards discovering food.”
I have absolutely approached food from a behaviorist standpoint without realizing it—and I think I didn’t realize it because I was using a different metric than my own mom. Since reading Nourished, I have really tried to focus on anticipating my children’s hunger (especially for snacks) and it’s really sweet how excited they get when they see the food already out on the table. They also tend to be more open to trying new things when they can tell I really had them in mind when I made the food and set it out for them. Do they still sometimes opt for salami and apples (always an option if they don’t like the food I’ve prepared)? Yes. But I would say that this approach has really been helpful for healing some of *my* wounds around the way I was fed (not really nourished) as a child and it has strengthened my relationship with my boys. Win, win.
Chapter five actually shifted quite a bit for me in terms of comprehending eating dynamics in our family. It's been a bit of a deep dive into grief over here, sorting out the many bids for connection I've completely missed in processing nutrition as food composition first, relationship second. Like my teenager always offering me a bite from whatever junk food he has stashed for his own snacking, and my totally inappropriate irritation at his persistence in offering me what he knows I don't eat...and even my lack of understanding around why he might pick certain things to continually have on hand and then not eat at the table even when I've prepared his favorites. It occurs to me that maybe in continually shunning his snacks I've been shoving away relationship, and in shoving away relationship shutting down his capacity for being fed by me. Clearly it has never been the food that has been the problem. Not to mention that he is definitely sensitive to textures and changes of all kinds...
While I don't usually mark my books, Nourished has been COVERED in ink so far, via underlining, starring, and many, many margin notes. What an intense read.