Chapter 6!
I got a message from a reader this past week. Among other things, it said: “I just wanted to reach out and say how much I appreciate your choice of Nourished and your consistency with sharing thoughts around the reading. It has been a very moving read for me so far, both in terms of touching my emotions and also in significantly shifting my perception and decisions as my family’s kitchen-matriarch-in-training.1 Thank you.”
This made my day. I’m still thinking about how to best structure book clubs for mothers of young kids. On one hand, I don’t want it to feel overwhelming (so many posts to comment on!), but on the other, accountability to stick with the things we’re doing for ourselves (like reading a book and discussing it with other women) is helpful. So any feedback or ideas anyone has, do let me know! We will absolutely keep reading books here together.2
Ok, onto it!
A few thoughts on Chapter 6
This chapter was about the problems that can arise when feeding and connection get separated: dominance, detachment, and transference. Thoughts below.
I love how she weaves stories of parents and children into the book. They’re so beautiful, and so helpful. The Pokemon story, wow.
The idea of counterwill is one I first learned about in Hold On to Your Kids, and I find it really useful. I was happy to see it here. The paragraph on p. 154 that starts with “Why do we end up in vicious battles of counterwill and resistance with our kids over food?” was so good.
Loved seeing Ellyn Satter referenced again: “The parent decides when to eat, what to serve, and where to serve it, and the child decides whether and how much to eat.”
A question I have is: are consequences always “behaviorism”? We try to do “natural” consequences as much as possible, and have a very particular way of delivering them (non-emotionally, told in advance this is what will happen if you continue, etc.), but sometimes I question it when I read that, for example, consequences are a behavioral form of coercion (p. 155, first complete paragraph). Thoughts on this? Is there a non-insane school of thought that doesn’t think one should ever use consequences in parenting? There’s a woman who has a company called Visible Child that talks about things along these lines, and I do really like a lot of her stuff…
“When emotional cocercion is used through guilt or praise, it lowers the enjoyment of food, thwarts connection, and reduces curiosity and interest to try new food.” The “good eater” stuff is so prevalent. My mom and “good job!!!” to my kids when they eat what they’re served is constant. I’m looking forward to the coming chapters when she will go into some of solutions and alternatives to some of our garbage habits and practices around food like this.
Loved the paragraph on p. 156 that begins w the sentence: “The question we don’t consider enough is, what is the impact of food battles on our relationship?,” as well as the last sentence of that paragraph which touches on how battling over food may harm development as well for some kids. “Our goal should be to do no harm to the relationship, to persevere through adversity, and to “never let a problem to be solved becomes more important than a person to be loved.”—oof, isn’t that a countercultural statement. Again I’m hearing the devaluing of efficiency and a prioritizing of love and I love it.
Opioids in saliva! Ok, wow.
The transference part was so fascinating (and sad). I have taught kids before who would sneak and hoard food, and it was always talked about by other teachers like “they’re hungry, they don’t get enough at home.” And while that may be true, this provided a deeper explanation for the impulse to take food like that and made perfect sense. It was also a rich explanation of “emotional eating,” something I definitely do myself! “Anything that soothes but does not satiate us sets us up for addictive patterns. There is nothing as addictive as something that almost works.” Oof. Wow.
So looking forward to the rest of the book! I feel like we’re moving from theory to practice. Keep going! We’re a little behind schedule but I’m aiming for a post a week to finish up by end of August!
The heart cannot be separated from the stomach or the hands that feed them both. Circumstances in our lives and practices that undermine a child’s trust in adults can contribute to the development of attachment and food problems. Food can only serve either our togetherness or our emotional distress, but not both at the same time. The single most important corrective factor we can take to turn the tide on our troubled relationship with food is to ensure it is an expression of our caretaking, and to serve it in the context of togetherness.
Deborah MacNamara
“Kitchen matriarch.” Love that.
I think I know the next one I wanna do!
“Anything that soothes but does not satiate us sets us up for addictive patterns. There is nothing as addictive as something that almost works.” My 4-year old is a committed thumb-sucker and this perfectly articulates my gut-feeling about the way I see her behavior. I just wish I could figure out what she is missing to truly satisfy that need.
I haven't joined the book club despite it sounding like a book that would interest me, because I only just found your blog last month and don't have time to catch up on the book. But it's been interesting reading the posts on it.
Relatedly, there will be a one-session video chat discussing Wendell Berry's Essay "The Pleasures of Eating" on September 4th, hosted by John Cuddeback of LifeCraft. I've participated in a similar discussion there before and although he and many of the other participants take a very Catholic approach, I felt comfortable as a pagan.
https://life-craft.org/live-readings/