I have been reading Helping Your Child with Extreme Picky Eating to help my big kid with his eating issues. I love this book. It is so clearly respectful to the child and emphasizes all the reasons why it is important to lessen pressure around meal times and to trust that the child will explore new foods on their own timeline. I also live in the real world and understand that maintaining that trust is hard when you are facing a challenging eater, but the book helps me to at least wrap my mind around this philosophy so that I can really give it a shot. The thing I like the most about the book is that it makes me feel like the authors really see my child. I know that they are writing about a general category of kids, but the descriptions they use feel so vivid to our family's experience, that they might as well be sitting in my dining room.
Feeding therapy is going surprisingly well, actually. We are only five weeks in, and miraculously, every week my son has gained and kept up with one new food item! (Each week, we try about three new foods during the 45-minute feeding therapy session, so he is still rejecting plenty of foods. I feel that the feeding therapy was a very good decision on our part, and it has already moved us in the right direction, but it is clearly still necessary for him to continue the professional help.) I don't take this progress for granted, because I have read threads on different forums about picky eaters either trying a new food during the therapy session and then not keeping the food up at home, or picky eaters not trying any food at all per suggestions. One thing that has been very powerful for us in the therapy process is introducing new foods that are related to existing favorites. For example, last week we tried to introduce guacamole, immediately after my son ate some avocados. (If you are wondering why guacamole would be challenging for a child who eats avocados, this is what I am saying -- you and I are living two separate parenting realities. This is why I feel so supported and seen by this book, as a parent struggling with this issue.) My son ended up eating the entire serving of guacamole that day, even though initially he would not even touch it with his fingers. In the book I am reading, they describe this as a "bridging" strategy for connecting what the child already eats with what you would like them to eat. (They also offer other bridging strategies.) I used to think that you can just keep putting any food item in front of a child, and offer it enough times until they eventually try it. Now, I understand that for my son, at least, that strategy is very unlikely to work. He needs to be offered tiny little steps from where he is, to go all the way to the new food. It takes a lot of patience and forethought, but it seems to make a difference. For example, my son has been successfully eating small pieces of new (unfamiliar) cheeses tucked inside a tiny Cheezit cracker sandwich (2 crackers holding a piece of cheese in the middle), as a treat at the end of every lunch meal that I serve at home. He likes these fun / funny Cheezit "sandwiches," because he likes the cracker and he thinks that this way, he can't really taste the cheese. But, after eating the Cheezit sandwich for a few days in a row, I was able to convince him to open up the sandwich to eat the cheese on top of a single cracker (like an "open-faced sandwich"). This way, over time, I can change it up to put the cheese on more bland crackers, and -- tada! -- he will just be eating regular crackers with those new cheese varieties at that point. These are many tiny bridges, intentionally connecting where he started and where he needs to go as an eater. It sounds a little exhausting, perhaps, to think ahead this way, but trust me, it is way less exhausting than trying to deal with the emotional rollercoaster of a child who skips meals because they feel overwhelmed by everything on the table. I also feel incredibly grateful that we decided to get feeding help when we did, because I don't have actual caloric concerns at the moment for L, and I don't believe we have permanently damaged his relationship to food. I think ideally, we would have found feeding help even sooner, before L fell into the rhythm of being served a separate meal from us. But, when I read through the book Helping Your Child with Extreme Picky Eating, I was affirmed that we did not do too many things to cause further food-related anxiety. (We only bargained with him minimally, and we never tried things like sticker charts or bribing with desserts.) We did start to go down the route of inviting conflict during meal times about two months ago, but stopped things from spiraling downhill when we sought help from a feeding specialist, and for that, I am so grateful. Related to this, I have been thinking about the parallels between family dinners and watching my child on the playground. I accompanied my other child (my toddler) to the playground today, and frankly felt a little disappointed, because most of the time at the playground, she was carrying two tiny pieces of fruit from a tree back and forth between two places on the playground. She only used the playground equipment minimally, which made me feel a bit like, "Okay, we could have just gone outside of our house, if she was going to just do this, instead of walking 20 minutes to get here?" Although I gently suggested a couple of times for her to play on the slide or the swing, I did not insist on her playing with anything. I did not tell her, "This is a waste of my time," or confront her with, "Why are you not interested in the equipment today? What's wrong with them?" If I did do that, I think it would have been very inappropriate. But, why do we feel like we should do that at meal time? In fact, we feel like it's our job to get our kids to eat "enough", and that if our kids decide to ignore meats for 6 months, that there is a real problem to fix, maybe through coercion. Maybe we feel like they need to eat because we spent so much time cooking the food, and what's wrong with this food anyway? --Today, on the playground, I was reflecting about how kids will be kids; thinking about the connection between trusting them to have autonomy on the playground and trusting them to make their decisions at the dinner table, helps me to refocus on why Division of Responsibility makes sense. I always think about how we, as people, have a hard time learning abstract things in a vacuum. It's hard to really teach a child about growth mindset, when they are not actively working through a challenge. It's hard to teach a child about compassion for others, if they rarely encounter people who are differently-abled or who are in a different socioeconomic situation. Likewise, I try to look at situations like the one we are in -- where we are trying to work with our son through something that is really tough for him -- and consider what insights we are gaining as parents, as we work through this challenge together. (I am pondering this from a parenting perspective, because I think it's a bit more obvious what my child is gaining from this? He is slowly gaining more confidence with food, which must indirectly impact other aspects of his confidence and self-perception.) I am still thinking about this, but I know that what we gain as parents has something to do with deeper trust, joy, empathy, and patience. Viewing through that lens, we are maybe exactly where we need to be in our journey to grow as parents.
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Yesterday, a white shooter killed eight people at three spas in Atlanta. Six of the victims were Asian women. Today, I feel grief for the lives lost (not just those killed yesterday, but the Asian elders who have been targeted and attacked all over the country), fear for my family's and friends' safety, and an overwhelming concern that this is not just "a phase," that violent racism against Asians may well be a permanent condition that my children and my community will have to contend with indefinitely.
Today, more so than on any other day, I feel that it is relevant to say what is on my mind, to give myself grace, and to take up space in the world. Actor, writer, and activist Simu Liu wrote a very relatable piece here about how our Asian immigrant parents practice being invisible: "Most of you reading this would not give my parents a second thought if you saw them in line at the supermarket or passed by them on the street. Like so many immigrants, they are a part of an invisible minority that came to a new country and promptly proceeded to make themselves as small as possible: they smiled and nodded at everyone (sometimes through tightly clenched teeth), paid their taxes, never caused a ruckus and never wanted to be an inconvenience to anybody." If you saw my parents, you would not think twice about how they gave up professional jobs on the other side of the ocean to earn a joint income of less than $50,000 a year in a country whose language they did not speak, because they were anxious about possible military action by China to subdue Taiwan. You would not know how my dad got up and drove me to an opening shift at Starbucks at 4:30am everyday when I was in high school, or how proud my mom was to see my sister graduate and get her first chemistry lab technician job that paid a salary. Our parents worked tirelessly with the sole goal of raising their kids in safety and to give their kids a chance at a professional life. Unlike many white American families, the dream of a working-class immigrant parent is not one of personal fulfillment; they project their life's hopes and dreams completely onto their children. This practice of self-effacement can sometimes impact the way children of immigrants show up in shared racial spaces. I know that for myself, I have to work hard to have the courage to take up space, especially if my perspective or experience are not shared by those of the dominant culture. And being small and invisible has not protected us from becoming scapegoats for America's problems. Today, of all days, I decided to cancel commitments in order to take time to grieve and process. I decided to make space for myself, and to be okay that it's going to come out incoherent at parts. Something about the way we are raised by parents who gave up so much to move to another country gives us the feeling that we need to work hard in order to validate their very real sacrifices. I think this is true of all immigrant families, not just Asian ones. (I've heard the same sentiment from my husband's good friend from college, who is a Guyanese immigrant.) The harmful myth that Asians are "model minority" was created to sow division between Asians and other oppressed minority groups. I grew up in a suburban neighborhood with plenty of Asian kids, and we occupied all parts of the academic spectrum. Besides being used as a pawn for white supremacy to shame/silence other races and to deny needed resources to the Asian-American community, I find also that being a "model minority" means that our academic success is never celebrated for the effort that it took to get there. From the outside, it makes us a faceless mass to college admissions teams, each student interchangeable with the next. At a job, we are tokenized as increasing "diversity" while we are expected to not raise issue with the status quo. Who really hires an Asian employee to shake things up? It's just not what is expected of us, based on racial stereotypes. My initial response to these attacks is -- how absolutely horrible that the aggressors target the weakest and most defenseless folks, again and again. What kind of monster attacks 80- and 90-year-olds? Do they choose to do it because they know that elders hold our community together? What about these women who are attacked -- what were their names, faces, and stories? Is the mainstream media going to mispronounce their names after humanizing their mass murderer, thereby continuing to add salt to the wound? One of the many things that I thought about today is how we must teach our children to not internalize the hate that others have for us. It is sad that I even have to think about this, but this thought came up when I was talking to my son about the events of Atlanta. It went pretty much like this: Me: "Yesterday in Atlanta, six women who are Asian -- meaning they look like me -- were shot and killed by a white person with a gun. It happened because... remember how I was saying that our former President did not like people who are not white?" Son: "Yeah, Donald Trump, right?" Me: "Yes, well, he was the one who poorly managed COVID and caused so many people to die from COVID. But just because COVID originated in China -- really, it could have started anywhere -- he calls the sickness 'China virus', and he continues to use that term, even yesterday on the news. People who voted for him believe him and they think that Chinese people are responsible for COVID and all the deaths, so one of those crazy people shot those six women who look like me, because they think those women are Chinese. Those women might not actually even be Chinese, but they look Asian, like mama. Do you understand what I am saying? This is important." Son: "..." Me: "I am telling you this because we have to be careful when we are out and about, to protect ourselves, since we are Asian." Son: "I am not Asian, I am just white." Me: "Well, you are both Asian and white. People who look at you will think you are Asian, because you look like me." Son: "No, I am not. I am only white." (shows me his skin) Me: "Why do you say this? ....Is it because you are scared that you could be hurt for being Asian?" Son: (looks away sadly) "Yes..." Me: "It's okay, I understand. I am not saying we will get hurt. We just have to be careful. And most importantly, I am not telling you what happened to say that I wish I weren't Asian. I am very happy and proud of being Asian. Think about it; you speak two languages. It's a beautiful thing. I am very happy about who I am, and you should feel proud of who you are, too; but I feel angry that other people are trying to hurt people who look like us." Thinking back about our conversation, I can think of many complexities for my son. Someone of his dad's race gunned down six women of his mom's race. There is a lot to unpack and to work through there, especially if these events continue to occur. (My husband and I do our own share of unpacking at home between the two of us. Race is a continuous dialogue for us.) Speaking of self-hatred that can often develop within Asian folks (I don't think I personally suffer from this, but in high school I did wake up everyday trying to pull my nose so that it would over time grow more European -- and hence I definitely worry about the same self-erasure that my children are bound to experience sometime during their lifetimes), here is an excerpt from Cathy Park Hong's Minor Feelings, which I read a chunk of before needing to return it to the library. This excerpt is from a New Yorker book review, and it reminds me of all the ways that Asian-Americans internalize the judgment that others have for us. “In the popular imagination, Asian Americans inhabit a vague purgatorial status... distrusted by African Americans, ignored by whites, unless we’re being used by whites to keep the black man down.” Asians, [Cathy Park Hong] observes, are perceived to be emotionless functionaries, and yet she is always “frantically paddling my feet underwater, always overcompensating to hide my devouring feelings of inadequacy.” Not enough has been said, Hong thinks, about the self-hatred that Asian-Americans experience. It becomes “a comfort,” she writes, “to peck yourself to death. You don’t like how you look, how you sound. You think your Asian features are undefined, like God started pinching out your features and then abandoned you. You hate that there are so many Asians in the room. Who let in all the Asians? you rant in your head.” I don't feel competitive with other Asian folks, but in Ali Wong's book Dear Girls, she made a similar observation that Asian folks can sometimes feel like they need to outshine other Asian folks in shared spaces. As a parent, I definitely worry about my children growing up to feel this way (rather than kinship) towards other Asian folks -- a hidden impact of white supremacy boxing us in. Racism against Asian-Americans comes in many forms, and it was present long before Donald Trump (although, make no mistake, his "China virus" and "kung flu" rhetoric fuels the anti-Asian flames and xenophobic tendencies that are already embedded in American culture and history). Recently on Twitter, someone remarked that all schools should learn about Lunar New Year, not just those schools with Asian students. Similarly, students with no classmates of Asian descent should still learn about Asian history in the U.S., because Asian-American history is U.S. history. Every school in the U.S. that is offering French (a colonial legacy) should be swapping it out for either Chinese, German, or Arabic. This is so reasonable, yet such an unimaginable ask; the systemic omission of relevant cultural learning is racism, and it is the reason why Donald Trump's anti-Asian rhetoric is so effective. Wondering what you can do on a daily basis to dismantle racism? Ask to see your child's school's syllabus on integrating diverse stories and histories. It's not enough that we individually educate our children at home about our own cultural and ethnic histories; we should be advocating for widespread quality education for all children in our communities. Needless to say, organizations should be taking a stance in the on-going crime against Asians, similar to how organizations around the country took a stance during the BLM protests of 2020. Your child's school should be sending out a statement; your companies should be making a statement. The lack of action on the part of organizations to do so, especially in geographical areas where Asian folks reside and these crimes are happening, is complicit and reinforcing the forced silence and invisibility of our community. It implies that our struggles don't matter even to organizations that recognize black plight, and that crimes against Asians are somehow of lesser significance, when it is clear that we are literally dying. Lastly, two links that I found to be helpful today: an excellent educational resource to use in schools and a spoken-word piece that embodies all the rage that I cannot myself articulate. Brace yourselves, friends, for a long fight ahead. I have had a brain dump that I wanted to write about, but have not had the time or energy to do so. So, here we go. It's mostly for myself in hindsight, but maybe it will be interesting to another parent.
My son, who is 4.5, is just starting weekly feeding therapy with an SLP. That's a statement that probably requires a lot of unpacking, but basically he is so averse to trying new foods, that we decided to get him help. When he was about 1.5, he started skipping lunches at school on a daily basis. My husband recommended that we offer him frozen-food entrees every night, after we offered him something else to eat off of our plates. Sounds reasonable, right? If you have a kid who is a picky eater, you might guess what happened next. Soon, the frozen foods were all that he would eat. Fast-forward three years, he was becoming more and more choosy. He started to refuse things like pizza, or Mac n Cheese that is not a particular brand. I decided one night to say to him, that if he refused to eat any of the pizza his dad had made especially to his taste, then from that night on, we would stop offering him any frozen foods. He would just have to eat our food everyday. My child and I are similarly stubborn. That night, he refused to eat. For the next five nights, he skipped five dinners in a row because he did not want to eat the same food as us. On the 6th day, I weighed him to get a baseline weight, and I called the pediatrician, worried that all of this food protesting was going to cause permanent issues. The nurse at our pediatrician's office advised us to stay on course. She said, "Don't offer him a separate dinner. Keep dinner conversations light, and don't talk about who is eating how many bites. Call us back if he starts to lose weight, or if things have not gotten better in a month, but it should sort itself out." Over the next month, things did get better... until they got worse again. He started to eat parts of our dinner, until he started to skip entire dinners again, several times in one week. We tried to keep dinner conversations light, but "how many bites" and "I definitely won't eat" were the only things our son wanted to talk about. Desperate, I looked up feeding therapy help and got connected with an SLP who does virtual sessions within our insurance network. Well, we are only one week in. I really have no idea how well it will or will not work, but I will say that it has already alleviated my own anxiety to have someone who is qualified guiding us through this tricky transition. From the time when we stopped offering frozen food until now, our son has made some progress (small in my eyes, but probably huge to him). He will now eat parts of most of the dishes that I cook, even though it's just a few bites some nights (more on other nights). The SLP diagnosed him with an oral-motor delay as well, that may be impacting his eating of complex foods. She is optimistic about being able to help him make improvements in eating; I am optimistic as well, because after the first session with her, his attitude towards new foods has already shown a small positive improvement. (I could be wrong about this, but it's my maternal intuition, anyway.) But, this post isn't about the feeding therapy. It's actually about something that I have been thinking about, related to being a parent. A friend said to me at some point, that her child (like my big kid) struggles with taking risks and growth mindset, and she struggles between letting him be himself and trying to help him improve. I have been thinking a lot about this in the context of L starting therapy. It is incredibly emotional for a child to start and receive therapy at this age, because at a deep level, we all want to be loved for who we are, and requiring on-going therapy seems to suggest that who we are needs to change / is not enough as it is. (My younger child has also received a variety of therapy services, but because she is so young, she does not experience those complex emotions.) It helped me to reflect upon the fact that they are really not mutually exclusive -- I can both love someone (including my child) unconditionally and want to actively help them grow as a person. My husband and I have had a similar discussion before. One time, he gave me some feedback about the way I communicated, in the middle of an argument. To which I said, "Well, that's just how I am! You were okay with that about me before, and now you are not okay with it?" He replied, "That's not who you are. That's what you have always done, it's not constructive, and it does not have to be what you do, moving forward." His statement was hard to take at the time, but it's true -- what we have always done/been, does not have to define who we are/what we do moving forward. I can both love my child unconditionally, and help him to see that he is risk-averse and that he needs to practice taking small risks everyday. I can love my child unconditionally, and help him to get the therapy that he needs. Just writing this down for my later self. PS. I was quickly talking about this with my husband in the car yesterday. My husband goes a step further and says, "I think because we are their parents and we love them unconditionally, our role is to help them to become better versions of themselves." I also agree with that. To help someone make a fundamental shift in their natural inclination (like helping my big kid become more of a risk-taker) is a really tough task; you have to leverage a ton of relationship with that person, and who better to do it than a parent? |
About MeBorn in Asia, I have spent more than a third of my life living outside of the U.S. thus far. I currently reside in the Pacific Northwest with my techie husband and two biracial children. Categories
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