Podcast Transcript
Attendees:
Joshua Boswell, Margie Boswell, Katie Kimball
Transcript:
Joshua Boswell: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Happy Family Club podcast. We are so excited to have you here with us today. And we have a guest that Margie and I… we literally have been anticipating this for about two months because the first time we scheduled it, we had a total storm and a power outage here at our house and we had to redo it.
Margie Boswell: Reschedule. Yep.
Joshua Boswell: So now we've been waiting with bated breath. But we are delighted to have Katie Kimball with us. And Katie, I'm gonna let Margie tell some more about you, Katie, but what I love is you're like this National or should we say International spokesperson for kids eating healthy and a number of other cool things like safe skin and sunscreen, which we probably won't talk about today. But I mean you got some awesome stuff. So you're just…
Margie Boswell: Well rounded.
Joshua Boswell: Just an amazing individual, what you've done for children is incredible. So Margie, you want to tell a little more about Katie?
Margie Boswell: Well and also, she's a former teacher. And it shows through your classes and your courses. Two time TEDX speaker, writer, mom of four children, it's amazing. She also founded the Kids Cook Real Food e-course.
Joshua Boswell: Which we’re going to talk about some more, which is an amazing course. Our children are going through it.
Margie Boswell: We’ve already been going through it, our kids have. And it was actually recommended by Wall Street Journal as the best online cooking class for kids, which is really cool. And she has a blog, The Kitchen Stewardship that helps families stay healthy without going crazy in this world today.
And I love your mission, Katie, of connecting families around healthy food. Teaching children how to cook and helping families instill these all-important life skills in their children. So when they grow up they can move forward and be healthy.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, and I think it's especially exciting for us because I know I grew up, and Margie has acquired it, but in our family, cooking is the love language. It’s just like… food is the love language. We just dig on this. So this is amazing, we're excited. So Katie, welcome to our show. We're so excited to have you.
Katie Kimball: This is so great, Joshua and Margie, because I think Joshua, you are the only person who uses as many exclamation points and all caps as I do in emails.
Joshua Boswell: Yes! All right.
Katie Kimball: So this is gonna be a super high energy discussion.
Margie Boswell: Now we know.
Joshua Boswell: It's very good. So I want to start off and ask the question that we love to ask, and that is, what do you think is a key ingredient to family happiness? To increasing family happiness? But before we do that, I gotta say it's really cool that you've dedicated your life to helping kids cook well. And there's not a lot of people running around in the world doing that. So, what's your backstory, Katie? I mean what got you to this point to where this became such a passion and you became so good at it? What happened there?
Katie Kimball: Straight up desperation, actually.
Joshua Boswell: Okay, perfect.
Katie Kimball: You guys know every time you add a child to the family, there's more mouths to feed. You spend more time in the kitchen. And for me, I hit the point at four, my end, your middle, where I just felt like I was spending so much time in the kitchen feeding these beautiful people that I was not even seeing. You know? There was a great imbalance there. And so for me, the teaching kids to cook piece started out really practically of just, I needed to figure out how to share that responsibility among the whole family. And also my oldest was 10, so he had just sort of passed that halfway point of halfway to 18 years old. And I thought, you know… I had had a real valued family culture of eating healthy since I had started writing about that in 2009.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: I'm a lifelong learner. So I was constantly learning more about what's healthy and what's not and integrating that into our meals. But I thought, Even if my kids have a habit of eating healthy, if they don't know how to cut up produce, when they leave my house, it all falls apart, right? You can't do without the implementing. You can't eat without the preparation. So for me it was kind of these two very practical goals for my children's future and for our present as a family at the time.
And one of the reasons that I'm now so much more passionate about teaching all kids to cook, not just mine, is that it became so far beyond the practical. Once I started really getting them into the kitchen and once we started, it was a very quick jump for me to look at my audience at Kitchen Stewardship and realize that I had been hearing the same complaint year after year after year. Katie, I really want to get healthy. I really want to do this, but this is a huge hill to climb. I was never even taught to cook. Right?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: Like forget healthy, I don't know how to make biscuits out of a can. You know what I mean? So it was just a big, big mountain and I thought, Gosh, if as the parent generation are not comfortable in the kitchen, we certainly are not teaching our kids. And the cycle will just continue. In 20 or 30 years our kids will be saying, Oh man.. I wish I could get healthy, but I was never taught to cook.
So I thought, This is gonna stop. Like, other moms and dads need what I'm doing. And then we started seeing the additional benefits. We call them the three C's. The connection, the confidence and the creativity. And just the incredible rocket fuel that teaching kids to cook ads to pretty much anything we want them to do, right. We need our kids to have more self-esteem in this broken world. Man, give them an authentic skill like nourishing a human body?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: Boom, right like that is their confidence bucket filling up very quickly. We need connection, we need to get off our screens. We need to be with our family. Kitchen. Right? That's where we're working shoulder to shoulder toward a common goal. So it's just a beautiful thing. And the benefits have surprised me and spill out far beyond the kitchen and the food.
Joshua Boswell: So awesome. I love how it started with desperation and is now gone to, Oh my gosh, we could actually change the world being in the kitchen together, right? And it is so very true. So, you talked about, we're gonna talk some more about this. I'm making notes as we go here. But, the connection the confidence and the creativity. And you're right. I mean, do youth need that more than ever? I’m like, yes. Wow.
Also I was thinking, as our children… as the older children have gotten older and gone off to missions for our church and then off to college and been on their own. Invariably they all say they have roommates and they're like, Mom, Dad, our roommates have no idea how to cook. They can cook a fried egg, maybe. Right?
Margie Boswell: Piece of toast.
Joshua Boswell: Piece of toast. They can do a piece of toast, and that's it. With some butter on it. And that's it. And it’s amazing…
Katie Kimball: Yeah, it's a real Google search that college students are searching… “how to boil water.” That's a thing.
Joshua Boswell: Wow, okay. Yes, that is not a... yeah. So again, I want to get into your idea about how to have happier families, and I think you're already getting there. But even before that, it seems like there's major societal and social ramifications for multiple generations not understanding how to cook. And I wonder… I mean you're deep in this world. I wonder what you see there as some repercussions from this lack of the basic skill of being able to prepare a meal?
Katie Kimball: That is such a good question. And I'm not sure if anyone's ever asked it in quite that way. But my brain is just spinning because there are so many both physical and mental and social, right? Let's make that whole triangle of problems that happen. So we talk about not cooking in the physical realm. We're farming out our nourishment to food processing companies and marketers who have no interest in our well-being, right?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: If someone else is making food, it's got a lot of extra ingredients in it you will not find alone in your own kitchen. And so we see, just looking at it statistically, things like heart disease, stroke cancer. They're all going… There's a million reasons for that, right, we’re human beings, but if anyone wants to tell me that food has no impact, I'm gonna laugh in their face. That's ridiculous, right?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, yeah.
Katie Kimball: We eat all the time. It's literally the building blocks of every cell in our body is something that we have consumed through our mouth. And so if we're consuming food that is progressively, generation after generation, more processed, less whole food, less wholesome, it absolutely is gonna have an effect on our physical health.
Especially with epigenetics. That what my grandmother did, the choices my grandmother made, have adjusted the genes of our family passed down to my mom, right?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: Passed down to me and so it's almost as if each individual affects our physical health is then multiplied epigenetically for better or for worse. In this case, I would say for worse.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: And that immediately spills into the second leg of that three-legged stool, which is the mental health benefits. When we prepare food for other people, first of all as a huge boon to ourselves. I talked about the confidence. The ability to be of service to other human beings I think is a lost art. And I think it's so important, right? We've got able to… that's how we're designed, to be interconnected. So the fact that both the cook, the person doing the cooking is receiving mental health benefits from serving his or her family or community, but then the people… you know. There's really something to making food with love and serving it with love and your kids knowing that you put a lot into that meal, right? As opposed to just eating out.
I still remember, this is way back, but one of our early members she's a college professor and joined our class Teaching Her Kids To Cook and she had this moment where she realized. Holy cow. We are eating out all the time.
Joshua Boswell: Oh no.
Katie Kimball: Just… I don't know how this happened. I fell down a slippery slope. This is absolutely not my values, but it is currently my reality and I'm not okay with that. So she presented to her two girls who I believe were seven and nine at the time that they were gonna do a 30-day eat at home challenge just within their family. It wasn't any… you know, no influencer thought of this. She was like, I don't know what happened. I don't like what I'm seeing. We're gonna do 30 days no eating out. The children lost it. Like, completely lost it because they were so habituated that eating out is the way to go.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: And so the mom really had an uphill battle to get the kids on board, but because they were learning to cook they had so much fun, ultimately… like deconstructing and recreating restaurant meals. And they were big… I mean they had great palettes like Sushi and Asian food and all this stuff.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: And I think the parents realized that, there's in the mental health benefits and the social benefits of being together, of cooking for one another instead of the top down letting other people look for you.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: And just pouring that love into a meal like you cannot get that at a restaurant or at a store so I think that's so important. And again the societal benefits, when we talk about the tiny society of our family. Or in your case the medium society of your family, a little larger than average, which I love seeing big families so much because there's so much good they can happen with that interconnectivity. But two, when you can cook then you can continue to give that gift out, right?
Joshua Boswell: Yes.
Katie Kimball: When other moms in our community have a baby, we're bringing them a meal and people are sick. We're bringing them a meal. You said, Joshua, that this is your family's love language. But everyone… is proficient. You know? We can speak it, for the good of our society. So when you think about the generations continually just allowing others to cook for us and paying them to do it. Probably great for the economy, not so great for the family's physical, mental and social health.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Margie Boswell: That’s right.
Joshua Boswell: So those are incredible ramifications and the benefits you're talking about… the positive and negative on those three major stools from our health to our mental being to societal issues are really so powerful. And we see this happening, and I love your ideas about, we share that and we serve other people. It's amazing how many children don't understand what goes into a meal and how much Mom and Dad are actually giving to them. And they start to feel entitled and it's a sense like, Well, of course, I just get this. And that spills over into lots of different areas of society and their life. And some people have a rude awakening when it's like, Well, actually you're not entitled, somebody had to do that.
And I love the opposite of that and the value in the characters that it builds. So, okay, there's a lot of stuff I would dive into there. But let's get to… I want to hear the plain answer to the question about what creates greater happiness inside of a family? So let's hear that and then we'll dive deeper into a couple things. Because I want to get some practical suggestions for listeners, too.
Katie Kimball: For sure. It's such a sweet focus, The Happy Family Club. How can we be happier? And I'm a two scoops, like two flavors of ice cream on one cone kind of girl when we go out. So I have to have two answers, I can't just choose one.
Joshua Boswell: Good.
Katie Kimball: But that's families, right? We're still complex. And so I would say that there’s two principles, the first principle is honestly to look at your family as a team. Which would mean raising expectations for your kids. And at the same time allowing a lot of grace in the baby steps.
Joshua Boswell: Oh yeah.
Katie Kimball: So I've been known since way back in 2009 when I started Kitchen Stewardship. One of my original taglines was Grace In The Baby Steps and just baby stepping our way to better health. Because if we set impossible goals, as soon as we don't reach them we tend to give up. And then there's no forward motion, right? And so whether it comes to teaching kids to cook or parenting or anything… changes to make your family healthier in any way. It's got to be those baby steps, but it's also got to be a team.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Margie Boswell: I love that.
Joshua Boswell: I love both scoops of the ice cream. That’s beautiful.
Margie Boswell: Very good.
Joshua Boswell: Very, very nice. So seeing the family as a team and grace and the baby steps. So give us some practical ideas. Let's go to the baby steps first. What does that look like in terms of working with children? Especially in cooking and teaching the cooking. What are some examples you can give?
Margie Boswell: And in the families?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah and in the families. So what does that look like in terms of the grace in the baby steps?
Katie Kimball: People are so overwhelmed right now by their to-do lists, we can barely even function, I think when we take a look. And so I always have to say when I get on a podcast like, Parents do not put “teach kids to cook” on your to-do list like… that's massive and it's absolutely overwhelming. So when I think about cooking, well what is cooking? It's really a collection of tiny little skills, right?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: Measuring a teaspoon, measuring flour and how that's different from fat. Measuring water is different yet because it's a different tool. And so when you really break things down into the little baby steps, something like making pumpkin muffins is seven or eight skills. So I wouldn't even say don't put “teach kids to cook” on your list.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: Don't even put “teach kids pumpkin muffins” on your list. That's seven things. Boom, your brain's gonna explode, you’re overwhelmed. Just put, “Teach your four year old to measure a teaspoon of salt.” Right?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: Like… how simple can we break that down? Can you do that today moms and dads? Yeah, probably. And if you don't you could do it tomorrow. That's part of the grace in the baby steps. So, way back when I started teaching families to be healthy without going crazy, it was, Don't do everything at once. Choose one ingredient. You are not and no longer in favor of… because you have more knowledge and when we know that we do better. Just choose one thing and change it this week. And if you do one change a week, like… not even one change a day, right? One new habit, one ingredient you'll no longer buy per week, by the end of a year that's 52 baby steps.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: That's actually really significant. You've just got to give yourself time, to build it up without giving up and overwhelm always makes us give up. It's those little tiny steps that make a big difference.
Joshua Boswell: And the nice part is you can make those yummy muffins with 52 baby steps. You don’t even need that many.
Margie Boswell: You only need seven!
Joshua Boswell: Yeah you only need seven. So in a couple of weeks you could be whipping out those muffins like nobody's business, baby. So… it's good. So I love that very very practical application. And what's interesting is that psychologists teach us that this is the exact process that human beings use to overcome fears. If we have something that we feel is huge, scary for us, if we look at the whole big thing, it's terrifying. I remember years ago. I'm not very comfortable with heights and we went on a cruise with the family. And the first thing that the kids wanted to do was climb the rock climbing wall.
I'm like but what? There’s all this other stuff to do! We don't have to go on the wall! But they wanted dad to go with them, you know. And if I looked at the wall as a whole I literally got sick, but when I got up close to the wall, I realized if I just put my hand a couple inches above my head and grabbed that hold it was fine. And then if I grabbed the next little hold that was fine. The next little hold, the next little hold. Baby steps. And I think that… by the way, I did make it, I rang the bell and I did not die so it was good.
Margie Boswell: And we got some great pictures.
Joshua Boswell: Yes, we got great pictures of me sweating to death, but it's all right. But the point is, I love what you're saying is that we don't have to overwhelm ourselves or think that it's a colossal, huge effort to teach our children how to cook effectively and to create that confidence and that creativity and these abilities in our children. We can do it tiny little steps of the time which is so powerful what you're saying Katie.
Margie Boswell: And it's installing in the children that confidence level that they can do it. They can make those little steps and progress and one day learn how to do a whole meal.
Katie Kimball: Yeah, and every step gets easier too. Probably I'm assuming you found, maybe not because you got higher, but on your rock wall, psychologists also identify what they call the Confidence Competence Loop.
Joshua Boswell: Yes.
Katie Kimball: And it just means if you are competent in something, how to do X, it gives you some confidence and confidence feels so good, right? The endorphins get flowing which makes you want to come back to another Y, you know, learn another skill and that gives you more competence which raises your confidence. Clearly they did not think about the tongue twister they were creating when they named that one.
Joshua Boswell: No, no they did not.
Katie Kimball: The good news for parents is that if we can just sort of get started, get that Snowball Effect going of the Competence Confidence Loop. It gets easier every time you want your kids to learn a new skill. It's really powerful.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, exactly because if you teach measuring on one thing then it's easier to translate that. It's like well, I did a teaspoon but a cup? Okay. I'm scraping this off… So you build on that and build on that. It's beautiful. So what have you seen as a good place for parents to start with these baby steps? And then I want to talk about the team aspect here in just a minute because I got two specific questions on that. But where's a good place for parents to start? Is it just somewhere in the kitchen? Is it with other tasks around the house? What have you seen as a great starting point?
Katie Kimball: I mean, I would say the kitchen, I'm the kids cooking teacher.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: So that one’s an easy one. But in general you gotta start where your kids are. So if you've got a three or four year old, it is measuring a teaspoon of salt. If you’ve got a 12 year old, you're gonna get the eye roll.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: If you say I'd like to teach you to measure a teaspoon of salt. So it's what's going to be motivating. What is your child asking for? If they're below five, they probably are intrinsically motivated and asking, Mama, can I help Dad? Can I do what you're doing, right? And so you need to use, for the little ones, I say use the “yes, and” because it's actually a really bad time to teach kids anything, even a baby stuff as simple as a teaspoon of salt right before dinner. Like that is the stressful hour, assuming that most people have places to go after dinner. You are time limited. And so to invite a child into the kitchen for a stressful experience. I don't know, common sense just says, that's probably not the best idea. That's gonna teach them that the kitchen is a stressful place. So you say, yes and. Mama can I help? Yes. And I'm going to teach you this tomorrow after morning snack, honey. Right? Plan it in for a time when you don't have a time pressure. Ideally, I always say after snack after lunch after breakfast because they're well fed, and they're already in the location.
Joshua Boswell: Nice, yeah.
Margie Boswell: There you go!
Katie Kimball: So they're much happier. They're ready to slide right into… you know, a kitchen skill. With them with the older ones, they're probably not asking to help anymore.
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Katie Kimball: Unless you have these exceptional kids who somehow held on to that. But with the older ones, it's how can we motivate them? So it's usually something dangerous or something they can show off, right?
Joshua Boswell: Right, yeah.
Katie Kimball: So we want to start with knives, of course.
Joshua Boswell: Yep.
Katie Kimball: That’s a big one. Or cooking for a crowd. Like if you're going to a party or a potluck or something, trying to get those big ones pulled in so that the praise is genuine and not even created by you.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: All you have to do is say, Oh, guess who made the guacamole. It was actually Paul. I didn’t do this.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: All the people at the potluck rain the praise on the child and that raises the confidence. And causes them to hopefully want to come back. But I do love starting with knives just because they're so practical. They're so necessary. Like… what do you make that doesn't use a butter knife or paring knife or a chef knife? And they're really motivating for kids because it's so cool and so dangerous right?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, right.
Katie Kimball: Which is scary for parents. But if you implement the skills properly, it's actually not that dangerous.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: But it's highly motivating. So I would love to give your audience our favorite class is the knife skills class. I don't know if you've gotten to that one.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: But if they go to www.KidsCookRealFood.com/happyfamilyclub they can get that free 10 minute knife safety lesson for kids ages 2 to 12.
Joshua Boswell: Yes. Awesome!
Katie Kimball: Because that's kind of one of my things is we teach the same ways to hold the knife and ways to hold the food with that butter knife and our two year olds, and that chef's knife with our 12 year olds.
Joshua Boswell: That… so first of all, that's very generous of you. I did not know you're going to do that, and that is awesome. And I can tell, so anyone listening to this, the reality is that knife skills thing is awesome. It teaches, it breaks down, it's so very… and we have gone through it, just so you know. But it breaks down these complex knife… that might be dangerous otherwise into very simple practical ways.
And Katie, you give these cool little analogies and paraphrases. Like little sayings that go along with each thing and it's awesome. So thank you for that gift. That's cool. So we'll make sure to post that. And I think that…
Margie Boswell: Our children still do the bell pepper trick that you have with the knife. It’s great.
Joshua Boswell: Slice the pepper, throw the core away. It's beautiful. I really, really appreciate that. Now let's go to the teamwork because I'm looking at time here. But let's go to the teamwork thing for just a minute. Teamwork's an amazing thing because it requires us to kind of participate with everybody in the room without, you know, fighting. As soon as you get contention and wars and battles going on, teamwork’s done.
Margie Boswell: Yep.
Joshua Boswell: It’s like… you're now on the battlefield, the teamwork’s out the window.
Margie Boswell: But you have this common goal of you want to eat something delicious at the end. So you're a little more motivated, right?
Joshua Boswell: Well so, I want to hear your insights and I want to hear from two perspectives. One, how do you teach the children that collaborative teamwork environment and two, which I think I run across more and that is how do we teach the parents to let go. Because I… I talked to somebody the other day. Our son, he's 11. He made a pie and chocolate chip cookies for this church activity. And same thing happened. He made it. Everybody loved it, the confidence poured on. But I was telling their parents that he did and they were like, how did you let your kid loose in the kitchen? I could never do that. They make a mess and they spill things and they don't measure exactly right and it's not perfect. So number one, how do we encourage the children for that collaborative effort? And how do we encourage the parents to create it….
Margie Boswell: Allow it.
Joshua Boswell: and to allow it and let go? What's been your experience?
Katie Kimball: Well I'll start backward because I just want to reflect what your church friends said is, how do you possibly do that? And I just think, how can you possibly not?
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Katie Kimball: Because at 18 we're gonna let them go.
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Katie Kimball: So I think it does a real disservice both to the kids and to us as parents who kind of want to do a good job at the end of the day to not let them do anything for 18 years. And then what? Do we boot them out the door and say, See ya, good luck? Like that is a really… there's no baby steps to that. They've got to learn everything all at once. And so I would much rather them have failures and make mistakes under my roof when the stakes are not that high, I’m there to back them up, I'm there to talk them through it, right? And you know, these same parents who say, I could never do that… and I just talked to one actually last week. I was volunteering in third grade at my kids' school. And I mentioned, I met another mom who had five kids.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: I have four she had five and I was just kind of joking with her… and she worked part-time as a PE teacher, and I said, So you don't sleep much, huh?
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Katie Kimball: Yeah, it's a lot of people to feed. I mean somehow we got on food. She didn't know what I did. She still I don't think does.
Joshua Boswell: She's gonna come across your blog here a little bit be like, Whaaat? That’s who I was talking to?!
Katie Kimball: I know, right? And she said, Well feeding them all is really hard. And I said one thing I love about having so many kids and they're getting older is that I've got three kids now who make one meal a week. And she kind of stopped…
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: And looked at me and she said, I don't think that would ever be happening in my household. And there was such an angst and a hesitation there and I wanted to be like, Honey, let's step into the hall and have a chat. You can do this! Like no… we have to help with the third grade craft that is meaningless, but…
Katie Kimball: I just want to sort of grab all the parents by the shoulder and look in the eyes and say, Listen, you are the same parents who are stressing out and being overwhelmed and complaining about all that you have in your plate and the mental load, that especially as women we carry all the stuff you see on social media. And probably complaining about your kids acting entitled. I appreciated that you use that word already too, Joshua. What in the world? We need to create a culture where our kids can step up. Where we can raise those expectations. And are they messy? Yes! Am I messy when I open a bag of flour in my kitchen? Yes I am! No one is not messy the kitchen. And so I will say that the silver lining of that is I dishes, worst chore ever. But I actually do dishes with joy when my kids have cooked.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: Like it's a whole different feel, right? Completely transforms the hated tour of doing dishes. So there are very few, very small… they feel big, but they're very small and inconsequential reasons not to let your kids cook. And there are massive motivating reasons to do it. Namely their end right, their own adulthoods being a little bit smoother and easier because they already know some of the skills they need. Your family life being a little easier.
So that plays right into that family responsibility. Yeah. How do we get kids on board? I will say it's a constant work in progress. And I'm sure you know that too where you're constantly like, Oh we got to re-motivate and remind and I think a couple of good steps include building a culture of gratitude in your house. Prioritizing family dinners so that you are feeling connected. And just making sure, too, that you can give them little anti-entitlement gifts. Those would be my three. So culture of gratitude means you always thank the person who made the food whether it's the adult, whether it's the child. You know, if it's the child obviously trying to pump that up a little bit more.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah…
Margie Boswell: Yes.
Katie Kimball: And make sure that every person in the house is thanking the person who cooked. That's huge! That's really important to know that we acknowledge their effort.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: The family dinners can't be understated, right?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: Research tells us that more so than time spent in school and time spent on homework, family dinners fuel academic success. First of all family dinners are a protective factor against drugs and alcohol, suicidal thoughts, depression. If you want your teens to not worry you at night, right? If you want to sleep when your kids are teenagers. Family diners are the most effective thing you can implement. Good news, baby step fashion, the research proven benefits start at two meals a week.
Joshua Boswell: Amazing
Katie Kimball: So it does not… yes five is better. Great. But you don't have to be like, Oh great, Katie Kimball just told me I have to eat dinner every single night with all my kids who are so busy and have packed schedules. No, you got 21 meals a week. It doesn't have to be dinner, PS.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: Two meals a week is where the benefits start, they only grow from there. And it is so important to have that time to… and hopefully to have an non stressful time, which is one of the reasons I got into picky eating and did a lot of picky eating training. Because parents were like, yeah, but Katie the dinner table’s horrible.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: My kids don't eat the healthy food. So that's kind of a whole other topic, but I don't want to forget my anti-entitlement gifts.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: Really really cool factor when kids are taking responsibility, right? For example, my kids, three of the four, my youngest just turned 9 this week. Three of the four have packed their own lunches for quite a few years. And so there's definitely no entitlement to their lunches.
Joshua Boswell: No, right.
Katie Kimball: But take any other 12 year old or a 15 year old in modern American society. Most of them like, lunch is just kind of show up.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: Whether they're purchased or packed. For my kids that's not the case. And so I get to give them little gifts. When they are… you know, if I have a little extra time, I'll make a piece of a lunch and put a Post-It on the fridge for my early risers. Right?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: O8r especially if I kind of read that… I mean ,my daughter is a sophomore right now. She's a very high excelling student when a perfectionist…
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: But it's also really hard for her. She says that. I hate that school is so hard for me. And of course it was “easy” for the brother above and the brother below.
Joshua Boswell: Right!
Katie Kimball: So she's like ah… It's so hard. So anyway, her stress level can get really really high. When I feel that I will figure out little things I can do. I've been making her bed a couple times a week.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: Just because I know that that will settle her when she walks into her room, even when the rest of the room is kind of a mess and it's driving her nuts. I can make her bed, right? I can put frozen blueberries in a yogurt, stick in the fridge and pull a little post it on it, This is for you.
Joshua Boswell: Right
Katie Kimball: That's the anti-entitlement gift where now, instead of the kids expecting it, it's extra. And it's a little show of love.
Joshua Boswell: And it is a… and I would say a huge show of love. I mean we know… like, I've seen lots of research on this too. It's like, when someone's not expecting something, the levels of love and connectivity they feel when it's a surprise is off the charts. This is why we love surprise birthday parties so much.
It's like, didn't expect this and look at all this! Or we love the little gift at Christmas or the surprise date night. I've had a… I’m gonna pat myself on the back here, but I love grabbing Margie and saying, oh let's go out to dinner and then instead of dinner, we go away for the weekend or I stick her on a plane, or we go on a cruise or, you know…
Katie Kimball: Aww…
Joshua Boswell: We've done all these fun things. It's like this is a romantic time. And Margie enjoys those way more than… I think you do…
Margie Boswell: Yeah I do! I definitely do!
Joshua Boswell: At any rate… but it's that surprise thing. And I think we're touching in the realm of parent-child relationship, especially with teenagers. And there are so many little sayings that people say it's like, the terrible twos and terrible teens and, Oh my kids are just a mess and these friction relationships and stuff. And what you're talking about, Katie, is… And what's amazing is like, look, teach them how to cook. Eliminate the entitlement mentality surrounding that particular piece, and now we can give gifts of love that just strengthen the relationship.
And the inverse is true as well. If we keep giving them stuff when they have entitlement mentality, we're damaging the relationship. Every time. Because they feel more and more entitled, less and less grateful. They start seeing you with contempt and it just spirals downward. And what you're talking about is this upward beautiful spiral. So I love it. It's really really cool.
Margie Boswell: Just the connection…
Joshua Boswell: And I've never heard that, the anti-entitlement gifts. It's such a beautiful phrase. I'm gonna quote you for the next three times I speak and then I'm stealing it. Just kidding. I'll quote you every day. It's beautiful.
Margie Boswell: So great.
Joshua Boswell: I want to roll back to something… and then we're probably getting close to needing to round up here. But I want to get back to something you said. And that was… You didn't say it exactly like this, but I want to hear your thoughts on the relationship between involvement and preference. Involvement and preference. Because you touched on picky eaters, and we’ve found that our children do have preferences, but gosh when they're in the kitchen cooking with us, a lot of these stereotypes… For example, I'm not sure our children would ever think about going to a restaurant and ordering the “kids meal,” right? The macaroni and cheese, pizza and hotdog right? Isn't that the kids' meal everywhere in the world for every restaurant? Like what is this?
Katie Kimball: It's permutations of cheese and bread. If you look at every one.
Joshua Boswell: I know, exactly! Fake fats, fake carbohydrates. Anyway, won't get into that. So I would love to hear your thoughts on that relationship between ownership and preference, and what happens, not only to the child, but in the dynamics between you and the child and that situation.
Katie Kimball: Yeah, it's a relationship between both ownership and preference and I like how you stated that but also exposure.
Joshua Boswell: Exposure.
Katie Kimball: And preference. And pressure, a lack of pressure. Gosh there's so many good reasons. If you have a child who you would label as a picky eater, by the way, I would counsel you not to use that phrase, especially in front of your kid.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: You might label your kid as a picky eater. So many reasons to get them into the kitchen. And the first is that removal of pressure. So when our kids are at the table, and this is why some family dinners are very stressful. And again, one of the reasons I got into picky eating training and training other parents how to solve the picky eating problem is because I know if the kids are not eating and the parent is just stressing out about it. They say that parents of picky eaters are as stressed as parents of kids with cancer.
Magie Boswell: Oh!
Joshua Boswell: Yeah. Crazy.
Katie Kimball: Which it seems crazy, but when your kid isn't eating well, you think like, your brain kind of runs off by itself to, Oh my gosh, now they're going to be sick and underweight and they're gonna die.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, right. It goes really fast, doesn’t it? That's like wow.
Katie Kimball: Yes, really fast. And so we're very concerned and then we act from our stress, right? We speak from our stress. We say things like, If you eat that broccoli, I'll give you your dessert or, Just eat three bites or… there's all sorts of subversive ways that we are pressuring kids to eat. And that doesn't work. It's a lose-lose situation because technically we can't follow through. We cannot, respectfully at least, make a child's jaw move and force them to swallow.
Joshua Boswell: Exactly, right
Katie Kimball: So it's a lose-lose situation. And so what parents need to do is remove that pressure. It's all sorts of strategies for the table, but I'll try to stick to your question. When kids are preparing food, there is no pressure to eat. There’s not even perceived pressure because if kids have ever been pressured to eat, the moment food hits their plate at the table, the perceived pressure that they will now have to eat it is there.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: Even if you're using all the right words as a parent. So you get them in the kitchen the pressure is lifted and they can interact with food with a little more curiosity and a little less fear.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: That's massive. And then the exposure is also massive. Brain science tells us that each child, each person, needs a specific sort of amount of exposure to a certain food. And for a lot of kids maybe it's two or three times, right? You're feeding your toddler, They say, Oh… don't give up on peas after the first try. Give them 10 tries or whatever, but for some of our kids, especially highly sensitive kids who maybe… they feel their tag’s a little more scratchy than other kids…
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: Or sound is a little more overwhelming, or visual stimulation of especially mixed foods on a plate, it can really overwhelm some kids. And so, if they're coming in with a little bit of a roadblock, a little bit of a physical or psychological roadblock, it's particularly difficult for those kids to make friends with their food. So their “exposure bucket” as I call it, is a lot deeper. It might need 100 exposures or 150 exposures.
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Katie Kimball: That's a lot of little pieces of broccoli to put on the plate. And so what's really important to know is that every exposure counts. It doesn't have to touch their lips. So taking a kid to a farmer's market and having them pick up that produce and put it into a basket?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah
Katie Kimball: Boom. That's one exposure for every type of vegetable or fruit. Having them wash, it even little kids. If you don't want your four year old with a paring knife, they can wash those vegetables. They're not nervous about it because there's no pressure to eat and they're still getting the exposure then hopefully, they can cut them. They can cook them, they can serve them. So you could get up to seven or eight exposures to a food and a single meal.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: Talk about shortening the time for that process, right?
Joshua Boswell: Totally.
Katie Kimball: For that exposure bucket to fill up. So that's incredibly important. And then the ownership is really powerful, right? We are beings who like to close our loops.
Joshua Boswell: Yep.
Margie Boswell: Mm-hm.
Katie Kimball: In general we do not love open loops and kids are the same way. So when they start that process in the kitchen, not only are they sort of getting that exposure. There's another little bit of brain science there, I'll tell you in a second, but they've opened the loop of the food. And the only way to really close the loop is to give it a taste.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: So that could be highly motivating. Plus, you know how food always tastes better out at a restaurant? To us?
Margie Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: That’s actually because when you're the cook, you've already in a way inoculated your senses to that food. You've been smelling it for a while. You might have licked your fingers, you might have tasted it. So when you get to the table, you're like a couple steps down the taste bud pathway.
Joshua Boswell: Right! Yes.
Katie Kimball: So that's a bummer for us as adults and it's why when other people cook for us, not only is it that in-pouring of love, but it's also the first step on the taste bud pathway. We're like, Ah… everything, the food tastes so much better. For picky eaters, that effect is actually really helpful.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: If they're in the kitchen and they're getting a little bit inoculated… And in a way it's boring the system to that. When they come to the table, it's not so big flavor. It's not so overwhelming, because they've already had those touch points with it. So yeah, getting the picky eaters. I teach parents all sorts of strategies at the table and they're really good, but then I always have to say, But… the supercharging process is to get them in the kitchen.
Joshua Boswell: Put them in the kitchen first, yeah. And I think too… As you're saying that I'm thinking about especially when you're teaching a child the process of learning to cook and engaging with food is quite linear. I mean when I cook now, I've got five or six things going on because I like to be sort of a wild and crazy cook, right? But for a child, it's like okay first, let's chop these vegetables.
Joshua Boswell: And it's one vegetable. We're not chopping the broccoli and the carrots and… Joshua Boswell: the call of all the same time. We're doing this one by one and…Joshua Boswell: I think that for what you're saying those exposure points,…Joshua Boswell: it's also not overwhelming process when you drop a plate of food down in front of a kid. Joshua Boswell: It's like especially the sense the ones are I'm laughing…Joshua Boswell: because a couple of our children the same way.Joshua Boswell: It's like if they had tags on their shirts. It's like they're going nuts like that. Thing's got to be cut out.Joshua Boswell: They're so kinesthetic learning and engage, And all right.
Margie Boswell: We had one of our children that just did not want to eat. Like you said, picky eater and we said, Hey, why don't you make dinner for us? And we had progressed to that point where that he could cook a full meal. And so he started cooking dinner every night and he could cook what he liked to eat. And he loved it.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Margie Boswell: Yeah, it really made a difference for him, I think, in his association with food.
Joshua Boswell: And his palate expanded exponentially, right?
Margie Boswell: Oh yeah. Now he'll eat Mexican whereas he used to not eat Mexican. You know?
Katie Kimball: It's so good to hear that case study. I just described it from a textbook standpoint and you guys said, Yep. That's how it works in real life.
Joshua Boswell: Yep, that’s how it's worked in our laboratory.
Katie Kimball: Yeah, and that's how the teamwork works a lot of times as well, when I think about the parents who you and I just have bumped into in the last week who said, Oh… I could never. I could never do that, it’s too messy, too slow. And I get to hear great stories from our members and I can think of a couple times where people would report, you know? They would share their story in our VIP group and they would say, Gosh I came home. I was just so tired. I did not want to make dinner. And one in particular, she had older boys who were 13 and 16. And she said, Boys, I just don't know what to make. Can we… do you think we can do something together?
Katie Kimball: And she reported that in 30 minutes together, the three of them had made some sort meat and pasta casserole, and a side veggie and a cake.
Joshua Boswell: Nice.
Katie Kimball: A cake in 30 minutes? Like, who gets a bonus cake out of the deal? That's pretty amazing!
Joshua Boswell: Right!
Katie Kimball: And she probably was more energized at the end of that process, I would guess, than at the beginning. And the boys are feeling like wow, we can help Mom. It's like the anti-entitlement gift in reverse, you know? From kids to adults and similar situation. Younger kids, the mom was just pressed for time. She knew exactly when her husband would be home, and she had the plan. The plan was good, but the timing was not so good.
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Katie Kimball: And she grabbed her girls. They were four, six and ten. She said, Girls I think we can get dinner ready by the time dad gets home. But only if we all pitch in. Right?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: So one of them is unloading the dishwasher, one of them is cutting the raw veggies for the dip. One of them is cooking at the stove, and then she could kind of manage all of them. And the girls were so proud. You know, they feel so good about that teamwork effort when dad comes in, they're just, da da da da da, Dad I did this and I did that and he's kind of like… Whoa. This is amazing. What did I walk into? And so really… the means… or, the end is very worth the means. And it doesn't take long to get to that success. It's not like you have to get 37 steps in before your kids build confidence before they can make a little small, simple recipe for you.
Joshua Boswell: That’s awesome
Margie Boswell: So great.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah. Well Katie, this has been amazing. I would love to dive deep into the picky eater side. I love to dive deep into the actual techniques and… stuff. But I know you've got a lot of this in your course and in your classes. So before we go there, I just wonder if there is something that you would have loved to ask… Or for us to ask you, or something that you would love to just talk about that I didn’t get to. I just wanted to give you a minute to go like, Oh, you know what, you should have talked about this, knucklehead.
Katie Kimball: Well I probably wouldn’t name call.
Joshua Boswell: Oh all right! Okay, good. Thanks.
Katie Kimball: Let's end with imagining that end in mind. I guess, I talked about starting my own blog way back in 2009 and one of the things I did, I did have a Monday Mission. One new technique every week.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: But I also had what I call the Mental Mission. Because I saw in myself, and I figured that other broken human beings were probably similar, that you can't even always take one step. Like even one step is too soon.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: Sometimes it takes a couple days just to get your mind wrapped around it in the right place. And so I think that's really important for parents to accept as well. As much as we do want to raise our expectations both for our kids and for ourselves, we also need to get a lot of grace in the baby steps. Including sort of those mental attitudes. So when you're finished with this podcast, just think about it for a couple days. Just imagine what life might be a year from now.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: Or what life might be like when your kids are in later high school and really have these competencies and this confidence. And even though we want to imagine the results, We only want to require or create a plan for the action.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: So I say, Require the action, not the results. So, weight loss analogy. We don't want to say, I'm gonna lose 30 pounds. But you can say, Every single day, I'm gonna walk 10 minutes, right?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: Like, that is an actual goal. That is an action that you can take. So you can say, I'm gonna teach one of my kids one skill a week. Or something.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Katie Kimball: It's something very tangible, very doable. And don't… you know. Allow yourself to really think about that and get in the right mindset. Expect some awesome results, but only require the actions. Baby steps and grace in those baby steps, that's me.
Joshua Boswell: I love it.
Margie Boswell: So sweet.
Joshua Boswell: Katie, thank you so much. And I love that sense of grace for our children too. I mean, they're not going to do the recipes “right” every time, especially in the beginning. But it will be something and their confidence their creativity, they're connection, their ability to do it will all go up. So… Thank you so much for sharing all this with us. Now… sorry were you going to say something?
Margie Boswell: No, go ahead.
Joshua Boswell: Ok. I would love… I mean, you talked about going to the site and getting the knife skills. Where else can people jump into your world? Because I just want to get on the bandwagon with you Katie and run around and have every family in the world cooking together! So, how do we do that?
Margie Boswell: How do we do that?
Joshua Boswell: Were do we send people to?
Katie Kimball: All the exclamation points, Joshua. I love it. For sure start with knife skills, again at www.KidsCookRealFood.com/HappyFamilyClub and we’ll make sure that's your affiliate link so that it's a win-win for both of us. Anything about kids cooking is at www.KidsCookRealFood.com, or at kids cook real food Instagram. I try… I'm not a huge social media fan, but I try to get stuff out there of what our kids are actually doing.
I was just thinking, in fact, that my kids now…. Yes, they didn't start out so great, but some of them are better at certain parts of cooking than me. My daughter has gotten really good at baking and frosting cake. And we just celebrated a ninth birthday. And so I did the cake for the first time in a while because she is just stressed. And I'm trying to frost this cake and… she kept coming up behind me and Sort of laughing. She was sort of chuckling at like how poorly I was doing. And I’m like, I'm putting so much love into this cake covered with bugs, girl.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, right.
Katie Kimball: And…she's like, I know Mom I know. Do you want any of my supplies to frost that? I'm like, No I will use my old supplies. So she's way better than me at frosting cakes. My 12 year old is already better than me at time management. Like, starting the meal and actually having it on time, because that's a huge weakness for me. So it's amazing when your kids get better than you. That's what I try to share I guess on Instagram. And then if you are looking for family friendly recipes for that whole idea of like, What the heck is healthy and what's not? And how do I do this as an adult? That's at www.KitchenStewardship.com.
Joshua Boswell: www.KitchenStewardship.com. Beautiful.
Margie Boswell: Okay! Excellent.
Joshua Boswell: Well, for everyone listening to this, I'm gonna give it lots of exclamation points. I just cannot stress enough what a blessing it has been for our family. In all the chaos and all the craziness and all the things that go along with having a large family like we do, I cannot stress enough how powerful it's been to teach them how to cook. And to be with them in the kitchen. And to serve each other in that way.
And the thing about it is, Margie and I were just stumbling our way through this. I mean, we're trying to figure this out because we didn’t know. But you have to. You have, in your hands, right now, this opportunity to learn from Katie who has, in ways I would never even imagine, quantified, simplified and organized the process of teaching children how to cook safely and effectively and healthily. And to have all these other social, economic, mental, emotional benefits from it.
And I’m just telling you guys, I just strongly, strongly, strongly encourage you to go and get the course, go through it and teach your children it'll pay off in massive spades. We see this every day in our family and we believe you can too. So if you're looking to have more family happiness and more confidence and happiness in your children and yourself, I literally think this is a massive, way, way overlooked key to that whole process.
I mean, I think we think about hiring parenting coaches and spending a bunch of money on classes. And usually what we do is we just delve down into the realm of depression and frustration and hopelessness, right? It’s like…
Margie Boswell: Nooo!
Joshua Boswell: I don’t know what to do, and I don't know… Look. It's really simple. This is high leverage. Go into the kitchen, teach your kid how to measure out a teaspoon of salt. Okay, now we're on our way. You're gonna be so much happier. So Katie, thank you for opening our eyes.
Margie Boswell: Thank you!
Joshua Boswell: Thank you for quantifying this process for the world. It's just, what a gift. So, you're amazing. We appreciate you. Appreciate what you're doing for families out there. So thank you very much.
Margie Boswell: Yep, we sure do.
Katie Kimball: Aww… I’m blushing. Thank you.
Margie Boswell: Thanks for joining us.
Joshua Boswell: Thanks for joining us, and we can't wait. Hopefully I'm gonna beg you to do another session at some point. We're gonna dive deep for some other questions I didn't get to so, thank you again for your time. Appreciate it. Okay. Bye now.
Margie Boswell: Take care, Bye.
Katie Kimball: Bye guys.