Cooking is Connecting

In today’s episode of the Cooking is Connecting Podcast, I am giving you permission to remove distractions - good and bad - from your mind and your environment so that you can be fully-present with your child and able to offer to them your undivided attention and compassion while spending time cooking and eating together..

In order to truly grow your child’s trust and felt safety, compassion needs to be seen and expressed in relationship — and nothing hits home like the deeply-embodied sense of the body’s most basic needs being met by someone taking the time to prepare food for them. In other words, your child should see you cook.

As we begin this series on compassion in and around the cooking is connecting mindset, I think it's important for us to start with ourselves and how we can show ourselves compassion as a way of helping us to prepare for to be more attuned and present parents and caregivers for our children.

In today's episode of the podcast, we begin an extended series on the first of five mindset shifts that need to happen in you for you to take full advantage of the shared act of cooking and eating together with your child to create deeper, more meaningful connection. We're going to begin to talk about compassion -- what it is and how we can develop it in ourselves and in our parenting relationships.

We begin Season 2 of the Cooking is Connecting Podcast by introducing you to the idea of the Mother Sauces of Connection: five mindset pillars that have practical, meaningful applications in the shared act of cooking and eating together with your child.

As much as we all seem to rely on social media to connect with others, I personally don’t feel like it’s doing a good job of living up to the expectation of creating meaningful conversations.

I want to connect with people like me - who are trying to do their best for their children and families, sharing what’s working and getting answers to what’s not working, without getting bogged down by ads and algorithms. Is that too much to ask?!

Thankfully, I’ve discovered a place where you and I can gather — without the ads, without the algorithms, without the noise — to talk, to listen, to learn, to share, and to encourage and support each other in this unique journey of parenting. I’m going to share what I’ve found with you in this episode along with what you can expect from the Cooking is Connecting Podcast in 2022!

In the last two episodes, we've spoken in great detail about what happens when the attachment cycle goes well -- but what happens when it gets disrupted?

Today, I will attempt to unpack some of the clues that my feeding attachment and regulation theory can give to you as you seek to better understand these issues in your family dynamics and embrace the kitchen as a way to perhaps try the new course for your child's mental and emotional development.

After last week's deep dive into the Attachment Cycle -- and the introduction of my Feeding Attachment & Regulation Theory -- it's time to take the cycle to the next level.

The wait is finally over: I am now going to discuss the Attachment Cycle and what it reveals to us about food and the place of feeding and cooking in the way we develop connections with our children.

In today’s episode, I share with you 4 ways in which the shared act of cooking and eating with your child can be used to build empathy in your parenting.