Blind Plea - Talkaboutable Sneak Peek: Tips for Picky Eaters

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

Get a sneak peek of Season 2 of Talkaboutable, hosted by child psychiatrist Dr. Susan Swick! In this episode, Dr. Swick sits down with a mom tackling one of the most universal parenting struggles: picky eating. Listen in as they explore her son’s food anxieties together and create solutions that will help him feel more excited about mealtime. Follow Talkaboutable to hear the full episode, plus conversations on everything from ADHD to sibling drama to grief and all of the other challenges that come with raising kiddos.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lemonada. Hi, this is Dr. Susan Swick. I'm a child psychiatrist and the host of Talk About a Bowl. And this season, I'm sitting down with parents and with experts together to tackle the messy, amazing, exhausting, and everyday challenges of raising kids. I'm going to play you an excerpt from episode one. This episode is all about picky eating. one of the most common issues that parents can face at the dinner table and with kids of all ages.

If you like this preview, follow Talk Aboutable to hear about everything from picky eating to sibling drama to ADHD and many other small and big challenges that we face as parents. I hope you'll join us. Right now, I'm working with him on his toothpaste. His toothpaste that we have been using since he was a baby is no longer. longer being made, you know, discontinued. So I am, oh, yeah, it's a tragedy and we're really, like, struggling with this strawberry flavored and it's going to be strawberry flavored. But his concept of the two are, like, so different.

They are completely different toothpaste and they smell different. He can smell the difference from a mile away. He's like, that's not my toothpaste immediately. So, wow. Yeah. Got it. My pediatrician joked, I mean, I don't know how much of a joke it was, but that kids like this become Somaliés because they are just so incredibly attuned to these taste differences. I would love for that to be the outcome.

I'm Dr. Susan Swick, and this is Talk Aboutable. Today I'm sitting down with Catherine Turner, who lives with her husband and their two sons, Amil, who's eight, and Julian, who's three. The meal's dealing with an issue that will be familiar to a lot of parents, picky eating. His list of acceptable foods has only gotten shorter over time. And while he's healthy and hitting his growth milestones, Catherine wants to help him develop strategies to explore new foods, one bite at a time. This is a conversation about bringing curiosity into the anxiety of trying new things and recognizing how a super sensitive palate can actually be a superpower.

Thank you so much for joining me. I'm really excited to learn about your family. Yeah, thanks. What is the challenge that's on your mind? What is the pebble in your shoe or keeping you up at night? Yeah, thank you. You know, Emile is a very unique individual and I love everything about him. But I think that one of the pieces that I don't necessarily feel like I have a good handle on as his mother is figuring out how to feed him enough nutrients to have him grow as a healthy individual. And this has always, this has been an issue from the very, very beginning with him. Food is not something that he has, I guess, come up with a positive relationship with. It's necessary. He feels hunger and he eats, but it's definitely not a pleasurable experience necessarily.

And he eats until he's not hungry and then he's done, right? There's not a, oh, this is so delicious, I'm going to keep eating it kind of mentality. And it started at birth, basically, which is sort of amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a pure distillate. He's purely this way. This is from the moment. Yeah, yeah.

And so, yeah, I mean, I think that's my challenge right now, is figuring out how to get him to eat more and well. Yeah. So a foundational piece of raising our kids. right, is making sure they're sleeping well and they're eating well, but it sounds simple. It's not so easy. Let's put a little more meat on the bone, as they might say. And you said, he eats just until he's full. Does it take a lot of prompting and coaching or pleading? Paint me a picture of what meal time is like. So along with just having a very limited diet, right? Like very unique food. food choices, it is a struggle just to get him to consume the food that he has chosen or that we

have made him that we know that he likes, right? So we have to keep prompting him to eat. Come on a meal, let's eat. It's dinner time, let's eat. Can you come back to the table? Can you eat? And I know some of that is ADHD related potentially, like just the, you know, focusing on any task and sitting for any task. It's difficult for him. But this is sort of getting to, you know, and I would say he doesn't necessarily even eat until he's full. He eats until the hunger pains are probably lessened. And then it's very hard to get him to eat more. And then he'll be hungry again, you know, like 30 minutes later, right? Because he's not filling his body enough. Yeah. Tell me what's on his playlist. Okay. This is a short playlist. It's a particular dino nugget from a particular

brand. It is casadillas, but only certain casadias. He likes the ones that we make at home, and then he likes some of the restaurant casadias. If it has too much cheese, no way. That has different cheese, no way. He likes plain pasta with butter, but no cheese. We've finally gotten him to eat like a marinera sauce. So he will eat this marinera sauce, but it has to be made like at home. My husband sort of doctors it up with like some honey and salt and that's it. He will eat that on pasta and he will eat that on, we call it red bread, which is just non, just like a like basically flat bread with some marinera sauce on it. He'll eat that. He will eat pizza,

Sometimes pretty reliably cheese pizza, but sometimes he picks the cheese off. So he's just eating the bread and the red sauce. He'll eat mac and cheese, but usually it's only my husband's mac and cheese that he likes or those just terrible four-you cups that he can make. I think I've listed them all. I think that's it. Wow. That is a short list. That's a short list. What does he eat for breakfast? Oh, that's true. You know, he will consume bread as much as possible. He will have pancakes and waffles plain. So that's what he usually has for breakfast is pancakes. All right, I'm getting the picture.

This is a kind of classic picky eater diet, sort of the white diet. But you got some Maranara in there. I'm impressed. Yeah. Sometimes that's a big deal. So you said also that he gets home. soon after meal if he doesn't eat so much. Does he know he's hungry or does he just get cranky or short-tempered or? Yeah, he's pretty clear when he's hungry. He definitely, like, I'm hungry.

And it's sort of a statement, like I ate 30 minutes ago and I'm hungry again. I'm really sorry, Mom, like I would like more food as opposed to this sort of statement of fact. So, but he is aware of it. And it sounds like he's a little apologetic about the fact that eating for him is a production. I think he realizes that it's frustrating for us. Yes. He does realize that. And he is apologetic about it. But there hasn't been a way to figure out. Like, I've used that sort of feeling to try and encourage more choices. Yeah. But that hasn't. It doesn't. It doesn't work. going to go that far, it seems. Got it. Got it. Do you have, beyond being, you know, worried that he's not getting a balanced diet, when he sees the pediatrician, is the pediatrician worried? Is the

pediatrician worried he's not growing enough? He's, he's small, he's too thin. Any translation into slow growth? No. And this has been part of sort of like our hesitation, right? is sort of the pediatrician is saying he's growing, like he's very, very skinny, but he's tall, his brain is developing the way that it needs to be. Everything else is okay. Like, he's very skinny, but so are both of his parents. So it's kind of his body type too, but it's hard because we want to make sure that he's getting what he needs. And it also is impactful on the rest of our family, right? our choices of where we go to dinner are limited and how we engage with other families is different. And yeah, it's a challenge.

Okay. And if you had to describe, would you say that he is really sensitive to the look or the feel or the taste of food and resists trying new things, that he's just really particular? or is he worried, does he talk about or demonstrate worry about getting sick or sort of the results of eating? It could be both, but what have you sussed out? It's very much on the visual, if it looks different, if it looks like what he's used to or not. And texture matters and taste matters. He's very aware of difference. Slight differences. Like right now, I'm working with him on his toothpaste. His toothpaste that we have been using since he was a baby is no longer being made. You know, discontinued. So I am, yeah,

it's a tragedy. And we're really, like, struggling with this strawberry flavored. And it's going to be strawberry flavored. But his concept of the two are like so different. They are completely different toothpaste and they smell different. He can smell the difference from a mile away. He's like, that's not my tooth-faced immediately. So, wow. Yeah. Got it. My pediatrician joked, I mean, I don't know how much of a joke it was, but that kids like this become Somaliés because they are just so incredibly attuned to these taste differences. I would love for that to be the outcome of all of this.