Strengthen Parent-Child Relationships Through Cooking & Food

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Hi everyone, welcome to the show. I’m Dr. Nicole, and on today’s episode, we are talking about how to strengthen the relationship with your child, improve their mental health, and support their development by getting in the kitchen and cooking together. Now you might be thinking “there’s no way cooking with your kids can really provide all those benefits, but stick with us because you are about to learn how and why this is completely possible. Spending time in the kitchen with kids not only supports their development and functioning now in the present, but into the future in their adult life as well. Our guest today is Chef Kibby, and he’s going to share his personal and professional experience with us around all of this. Let me tell you a bit about him.

He’s a professional chef, parenting strategist, public speaker, and online content creator. He has combined his 25 years of food experience with 14 years as a biological, foster, and adoptive parent, to create a personal brand dedicated to demonstrating the connecting power of cooking and eating with our children, a mindset he calls “Cooking is connecting.” He has a YouTube channel, podcast, online courses, lots of other stuff we will get into. I’m really excited to have Chef Kibby with us today. He and I initially connected online—on social media, I love the work he’s doing. If you have listened to the show at all, you know that this so aligns with so many of the things that I talked about. So, Chef Kibby, welcome to the show!

Chef Kibby

Thank you so much for having me, I love your show, I listen to your show, I have been served by it so many times. And it’s so great to be on the other side of things and be able to turn around and serve the others in your audience. So thanks for having me.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Awesome. Really excited to dive into this. You and I were joking before we actually started recording, that the challenge here is going to be fitting everything we want to talk about into one episode. So I want to have us dive right in and really start with you sharing the journey of how you went from being a caterer and a culinary instructor at a local college, to focusing on parenting strategies and speaking at conferences on mental health and doing the stuff you do now. Talk to us about that journey.

Chef Kibby

I am a little bit of a unicorn in the space, I must admit. I am not a mental health professional or a licensed clinician, I am a chef, I do have certifications in that. And so what makes me interesting is kind of the journey that I have been through to get me to this point. For those that don’t know me, I am a biological, foster, and adoptive dad, and that is very near and dear to who I am as a person. But to be honest, I wasn’t always doing a very good job at it. And in fact, while my wife and I felt called to bring in children from outside of our family of origin, it brought with it a significant amount of behavioral and relational challenges that I wasn’t fully prepared to deal with. And with that came a lot of shame and guilt, and if I’m being quite honest, a lot of kind of hiding away from these issues, and hiding in my profession as a professional caterer, as a culinary instructor, I could kind of escape from some of the butting heads that I was having with my children, and literally just pray for my wife, “God, please enable her to be able to handle these children because I’m doing everything I know how to do, and it’s just not working.” And that was working okay for me until about March or April of 2020 when COVID happened. One of the things that went away, pretty much overnight, when the pandemic shut everything down, was meeting in large groups and eating together. And that’s my catering business. And so that went away practically overnight, and with it went away a big part of my personal sense of identity as a man, as a chef, that was taken away from me, and also this kind of escape route that I had to try and get away from these relational issues I was having with my children. I was back in my home and having to kind of face the music, if you will. And the best way I could do that was well, first of all, to get back into my home kitchen and go to that place where I felt I had some sort of control in my out of control life, while at the same time, much with the help of my wife and her family, seeking out family counseling and reading books and checking out podcasts and really being served by this wealth of knowledge that is out there right now for parents and for caregivers, with relation to attachment theory and the relational neuroscience and interpersonal neurobiology. There’s just so much fascinating stuff out there. And as these two parts of my life were coming together, kind of the trauma informed care and getting back in the kitchen, it all just kind of intersected in my life and in my kitchen, in an interaction that I had with one of my children that really opened my eyes to something that I wish I could have seen some other way. But it took the pandemic, and this really depressing part of my life to bring me to this point where I fully understood that what my child needed this whole time, and what I needed to understand and see in my child was that they were hungry. And not just hungry for food, not just hungry for pizza or for snacks or for soda pop, or whatever it was, but hungry for connection. Connection within themselves and connection with me, connection with the world around them. And that the language that I could use, to speak that connection into my child’s life, into their mind, into their emotional well-being, was by allowing them into this world of cooking and eating together. And once I began to see that, everything began to change for me.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It’s beautiful, I so appreciate you sharing all of that. And I think there are so many parents listening who can relate to what you talked about around how it feels, as a parent, to be in the midst of these struggles with your kids, and the very real emotions around that, and the desire to avoid and hide from that. So many people who can relate to that. And yeah, it would be nice if it hadn’t taken a pandemic, right? You are like, “I could have done without the pandemic part”, but how your professional life and your competency there, and your strengths there, and your love of that intersected with a really challenging part of your life with your kids, to present this opportunity for really meeting the needs of both you and your children through this vehicle of cooking. It’s really just such a lovely thing.

Chef Kibby

And it wasn’t something that I would have seen otherwise, or at least it would have taken a whole lot longer. And also, I have to be absolutely honest that it wasn’t me pursuing my child that really began this process. This mental change in my mind really happened as a result of my child approaching me. In fact, I can remember the moment distinctly. I mean, I can put myself back in that moment where I’m standing at the kitchen, chopping up cauliflower, I even know exactly what I was doing because I took pictures of it afterwards, and my child came up to me and asked me this question that I never would have imagined her asking. And this is a child, remember, with whom I had a not-so-great relationship. She came up to me and she asked me, “Daddy, can I help you chop your vegetable scraps?” What are you talking about? I mean, these are scraps that I’m not even going to be using. We are going to end up throwing them into the compost or feeding them to the chickens the following morning. Not to mention the fact that she would be in my space, the place where I received my comfort and my sense of control. To invite her in to be chopping alongside of me, there’s a lot of hesitation, a lot of worry and a lot of anxiety that kind of popped up in my mind, but for some reason, in that moment, I said “Yes.” I said “Sure, kiddo. Let’s grab you an apron. Let’s grab you a cutting board and a knife that’s appropriate for your level of skill at this particular moment”, and “sure, let’s do it.” Let’s put aside, mentally, the distraction that is going to be to me, how it’s not going to be all that helpful for me as far as getting food on the table at any particular time, how at the surface, it doesn’t seem like anything productive for her as well. But as we began to do this activity together, I began to see the hunger for connection inside of her to connect with me, to mirror, to activate those mirror neurons. She saw what I do, she saw how I hold myself and how I hold my knife and the productivity with which I’m doing these activities, and she was aspiring to be me, and she was aspiring to be with me and to share space with me. And I’m really glad that she did, because not only did I change because of it, but my perspective of her changed because of it as well. And for parents and caregivers, like you said, who are in the trenches and experiencing these relational issues, whether it be because of them caring for children from hard places through foster care or adoption, or children with other underlying neurological conditions or just living in a post-pandemic world where we have all been experiencing disconnect, to know that there’s something right underneath your nose, especially if you are listening to this in the kitchen, that you can use to begin to create connection in your relationships. I just can’t help myself but want to share that with everybody who wants to listen.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It’s amazing. We think about, as the adults, needing to guide everything, have everything figured out, be the impetus for change, and yet sometimes it’s our kids who are the best guides and teachers have that, right? “Dad, can I help you cut the vegetable scraps?” That bid for connection, basically what she was saying there was not “can I help you cut the vegetable scraps?” But “Can I spend time with you right now, while you are feeling what you are feeling right now? You seem to be feeling good and calm and regulated. Can I spend time with you now in this?” And she inherently just knew.

Chef Kibby

Yeah, to experience that co-regulation that all children need, to share that regulating power. And it opened my eyes to the regulating power that I can have in my child’s life if I’m just willing enough to be vulnerable and to be curious about what’s going on? What are the needs that are being expressed behind my child’s behavior? And in between relational difficulties, how do I create a safe space? How do I create a consistent activity where I am communicating to my child, not just in words, but in something incredibly embodied? And I don’t think there’s anything more embodied in the human experience than food. And to give that to a child, the benefits have been, in my life and in the lives of families that I have worked with and in the agencies that I have talked to, it goes well beyond the kitchen.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s right. Absolutely. You talk about “Cooking is connecting”, and I’m assuming that this is really a big part of this piece of co-regulating, of spending this shared, focused time together on something. Talk a little bit more about that, about how you see cooking as connecting.

Chef Kibby

I very much see myself as a virtual student of the experts in relational neurosciences, I know you share a love for Dr. Daniel Siegel and his work, Tina Payne Bryson, Dr. Curt Thompson, there’s just so much great research out there. And the more I have read about relational neuroscience and attachment theory, the more I see that this inherent trust that I have always seen in food as a professional in the industry for over 25 years, that the sacred trust that the food that I’m touching, someone else is going to take and put inside of their body, I have always seen that there’s some connection there. But when we look at it from the standpoint of childhood and attachment, we begin to see that cooking is the first way that we begin, from the moment we are born, to connect with another human being. It is that one area of our lives that we are completely and totally reliant on someone else to give that to us. And it’s in that process of feeding and being fed, which gives us not only this experience of the five senses of see, touch, taste, smell, and hearing, because you do hear as you are chewing as well, but the experience of what that food does to our body. It helps us to connect within ourselves, to understand the impulses and the signals that are coming from different parts of our body, to begin to understand how our body works, but also to connect with other people and to begin to build trust that is essential for our own survival, both when we are infants, but also this emotional connection that we need to be able to have trust for other people in order to survive and to thrive and to be resilient. And then to also be connected to our environment around us, to know what’s safe and what isn’t safe, to know “Where can I get my needs met? Where am I not going to have my needs met?” When I say cooking is connecting, it’s not just this kind of mystical, kind of woo-woo thing. I really think that food connects us neurologically, physically and relationally. And when we can begin to see this activity with which we can take part on a daily basis, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on your current lifestyle, we can begin to see that there’s something deeper to it, and that there’s deeper potential that we can have to it if we begin to take on a different mindset. And that was just as much a challenge to me as it is to anyone who’s listening, because as I already said, for me food and cooking was a personal expression of my ability and my self worth, and the ability to post a picture on Instagram and to get those likes and comments, it was really good for me. And I had to sacrifice some of that, in order to see the bigger picture and the deeper fulfillment and satisfaction that I could have by sharing these activities with my children, to see the connecting power that can take place, and to experience, like I said, a deeper sense of fulfillment for me in and around food and cooking.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Wow, you touched on several things there that really even expanded my own way of thinking about this. And I love that you are talking about connecting on a couple of really important levels: Connecting on literally the neural connections needed for processing, for functioning, for building a brain that works the way that is supposed to work. So connecting on that level, but also connecting on a relational level and how intertwined those are. You actually, in children, can’t have one without the other. You need the social relational caregiver connection in order to build the brain connections, and you need to be building brain connections in order to have a supportive good — So I mean, it’s really beautiful how it’s intertwined. I love how you talk about that. We are going to get into strategies, but listen, if you are a parent listening to this, and you are like, “Okay, fine. But I’m not a chef, I don’t cook gourmet meals. I don’t know if this cooking thing applies to me.” Before we move forward, Kibby, I really would like to have you sort of define or frame up for us: When you talk about cooking, what are we talking about there? Because I think you are a very accomplished chef. I think when people hear cooking, different things come to their minds on what that is, depending on, probably, their own growing up experience, their experience of how they were fed, how they’re now feeding their children. So let’s get us all sort of on the same page, because I think when you say cooking, we are talking about a broad range of things related to food and eating and preparing and all of that, but frame that up for us?

Chef Kibby

Absolutely. That’s a terrific question, and that’s one of the reasons why up until this point, I have not written a cookbook, and I don’t focus a lot of time on recipes, because a recipe is going to hit me differently than it’s going to hit you, than it’s going to hit the next person on the street. It’s really about the mindset shift: Taking whatever it is that you are already comfortable with the kitchen currently, right now, as it stands, it doesn’t have to be much. I will tell you what, this is hilarious. One of the first things I tell my clients and the people that I’m working with is to forget how to tie your apron. Do you know how to tie an apron? Forget it. Forget how to tie your apron. That way, the next time you have to go into the kitchen, you put that apron over your head and say to your kiddo, “Oops, I forgot how to do this. Can you tie this for me?” That didn’t involve any culinary prowess at all. It may take a little bit of vulnerability, acting a little silly in front of your kids, which I don’t have a problem with. But it’s an act of empowerment, and of allowing your child to do something that in a kind of secondary sort of way does contribute to helping you get into the kitchen. And what’s really neat about that is that it creates a kind of a story gap in your child’s mind, like “This person that loves me trusted me to do this. They literally turned their back to me and allowed me to do something behind their back. I could have done anything with those apron strings and they wouldn’t know it. What else are they going to trust me with? What else can I be trusted with in the kitchen? Is it going to be scrubbing the potatoes or rinsing the produce or setting the table?” I mean setting the table is pattern recognition, it’s following instructions, and those pattern recognitions, that is actually the basis for mathematics. And so you didn’t touch any food as a part of it, but it is a part of the process of getting food from kitchen to table, and it increases their comfort level in being with you in and around the kitchen process, and it increases your ability to trust them in the kitchen. So sometimes we have to find those easy wins, those low hanging fruit, to get both of us to the point where we are willing and able to get to those next branches in the tree. It’s going to be different for everybody, and that’s what’s so fun for me to do this, it’s to first of all be able to show the relational aspect of it and the cooking is connecting mindset, but then to turn around and say, “Well, if you don’t know how to handle this properly, well, you can take my knife skills course and I can easily help you with that.”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Right, right. I think this is so important because what you are helping expand people’s minds to is all of the different things that happen in the kitchen and around food prep. Those are all opportunities. It’s not necessarily what you might think of as cooking skills. Some parents might say, “Well my child really has perceptual motor difficulties, it’s not safe for them to be using the oven or being around boiling water”, or somebody might say, “Well, my child is too dysregulated. I can’t trust them with a knife.” But what you are helping us to understand is that anything and everything related to this realm of getting food in the house, making food, putting food on the table, anything in that realm can be a vehicle and an opportunity for this type of connection.

Chef Kibby

You are absolutely correct. And it just takes a willingness to kind of set aside some of the baggage that we are all holding on to, with regards to cooking and that it takes too much time, or “I am not a chef”, or “This is my place, I love the kitchen, I don’t want to mess that up for myself”, whatever baggage that we are bringing to it, and have the willingness to say that these children are worth it, and that if I’m willing to change my mindset around the kitchen, it’s going to help me to change my mindset around the child and around the relationship that I have with my child. And that’s when we begin to see the benefits.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I think another thing that people might have in their minds around this is “Okay, I get it. This would be helpful. This provides opportunities. But listen, I am so rushed, I get home from work, and I’m just trying to get food on the table. The idea of trying to figure out how to get my kid cooking a home meal with me or whatever”, people might be feeling overwhelmed about the timing of it, and I’m guessing you have some real good input and strategies around that too, because certainly, you are not suggesting that we all have our kids in the kitchen with us at the same time cooking an entire meal together, right?

Chef Kibby

Well, different strategies work for different folks. For me, I’m already in the kitchen on a pretty regular basis, and if it’s not me, it’s either my wife or my mother-in-law, there’s always somebody in the kitchen cooking in our house. And so there is ample space. That’s going to be different for anyone else that is listening right now. I’m not necessarily saying that you have to make drastic changes in your lifestyle in order to begin to see the benefits, the results that can come out relationally. So not that the pandemic was necessarily a good thing in and of itself, as we had already talked about. One of the things that it has shown to a lot of families is just how flexible we can be if we need to be, if we see that there is something in it for our lives. I’m not a mental health professional, I’m not your child’s pediatrician or a doctor, so I can’t say specifically how much of this activity they need in order to get the results that you need. But again, we just need to have some compassion for ourselves and a willingness to make some small minor changes in the way we go about doing this if it means having a better relationship with our kids. And that’s going to be different for everybody, whether it’s cooking more often, or inviting them into the meal planning process, or just continuing to do what you are already doing, but just making little tweaks to it.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, and I think that’s such an important point, I really liked that you highlighted that, that we have the capability to be more flexible and to manage more of these things than we often give ourselves credit for or even want to acknowledge that we have. When I talk with families about that, even around changing things with how they’re feeding their family, and even shifting from things like takeout and fast food or microwavable meals every night, to even having a couple of times a week where they’re doing some amount of cooking in the home. The reality is that most parents, when it comes down to it, they go, “Yeah, I actually can do that.” It’s just hard to think about making those changes. As parents, we are tired too. But to your point, when we understand that actually, it’s not just about getting food on the table, that there is an efficiency here around doing something that we have to do anyway, because we have to feed ourselves and our kids, but also using that as a vehicle for supporting and improving things for our kids. When we can look at it through that lens of wow, look, I can actually get a lot more done through this one activity. I think that provides more motivation.

Chef Kibby

I love the way you are phrasing that. There is an efficiency to it. Because there are so many things in therapy, where yes, there’s a lot of great therapies out there that are very good, but which also involve a large investment of time and financial resources and driving to places, where as this is something that’s literally right there in your house, and you can do, and you can do it well, again, as long as we are leaving some of that baggage behind us and having a more connected mindset around these activities and around the interactions that can and will happen as a result of this. And for those people that feel they don’t know enough or are not experienced enough in the kitchen, another potential benefit that I think your listeners should consider is that another level of connection that you can have with your child is to learn something new alongside them. And so if you are learning how to cook something new together with them, it changes the dynamic from being kind of master/apprentice, parent/child, to really working shoulder to shoulder and doing things together as a team. And you want to talk about connection, I mean, that really levels things up. And then finally, to sit down at the table and to sit across from each other at the table and see the food that you and your child have made together, and for your child to see how your body and your facial expressions are reacting to this pleasant and pleasurable experience of giving our bodies the nutrients that we need and enjoying the food. There is nothing like it for your child.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

So powerful. And what you just said about learning something new together, wow, I really I want to spotlight that and just spend a moment there because there is such power in that, I think for all kids. That leveling of that playing field, that I’m willing to be vulnerable and bring myself to the situation as the adult, not in the role of knowing everything. To say, “We are going to figure this out together, we are both starting from sort of this novice level with this”, I think there’s tremendous power in that. And especially if you are listening and you have a preteen or a teen, that is a great way to connect to them because they bristle and often resist just because of that normal phase of development of “You are my parent, you think you know everything”, whatever. So coming together to do something new and learn something new together, I think is great for kids in that phase of development.

But Kibby, I’m also thinking about parents of kids, where the kids really struggle with making mistakes, with being wrong, with trying new things, that what you are talking about here, of trying a new technique or a recipe, or even just saying, “I never learned how to cook, but okay, I’m going to dive into this. Let’s find a video or a book”, or whatever, that can be such an important entry point for kids who may tend to be really resistive around participating in things because of rigid black and white thinking, fear of mistakes, fear of imperfection, fear of trying something new. That could be a really powerful entry point for them.

Chef Kibby

How often do we get, as parents and caregivers, to mess up in front of our children, not only to model for them proper emotional anxiety, how to deal with ourselves when we could potentially flip our own lids, and deal with frustration? How often do we get to model that for them? Sometimes I don’t model it very well, let’s just be quite honest, but to give our children an opportunity to empathize with us, to say, “My mommy/my daddy/my caregiver, they go through some of the same stuff that I do, and I get to turn around and play the role of “It’s going to be okay.” I mean, that is so powerful.”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, this is just uncovering, even for me, a lot of extensions and ways of thinking about that. I have always believed that cooking was both a powerful and a practical way for parents to work on things with their kids, to build connection, all of that, but really, this is even expanding my way of thinking about that, there’s so many pieces to this that are so great. So we have sort of touched on some of the obstacles for parents thinking about this, “Well, I’m not a chef. I’m not a very accomplished cook.” Okay, we have talked about that. “Well, I don’t have the time, well, we don’t tend to cook that much.” We have talked about that. And now I think we are touching on this other big obstacle, which is parents who say, “This won’t work in my home because my kids are resistive to things/my kids don’t want to do anything/ they won’t do anything with me/If I tell them to do something, they won’t do it. So this is just going to become one more major power struggle if I try to get them to do this with me.” I’m guessing that you have some personal experience around that, maybe with children in your own home. What do you say to parents who go “Yeah, you don’t understand, this won’t work for me because my kids won’t do anything that I want them to do.”?

Chef Kibby

I totally feel you. I mean, again, going back to those teenagers, they can be a hard nut to crack. But one of the things that have been so helpful for me as a part of this mindset, is coming at it with curiosity. One of the biggest benefits that I have had in my parenting journey is learning to be curious about my children, and not just reactionary, but to be curious about what’s going on in their minds and in their hearts and in their autonomic nervous systems when they’re dealing with things, and just in general, to be curious about what makes them tick. What are their interests? What are their curiosities? What do they want to learn? What do they want to try? Because one of the great things about food and cooking is that it involves practically everything. I mean, it’s not just learning how to handle the knife, we already touched on math. It’s science, it’s chemistry, it’s physics. It’s creative art, it’s visual art. It’s culture and history, it’s language. If your child is into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there are cookbooks that are based on different movies. I mean, it’s crazy, there’s so many different ways that we can look at our children and be actively curious and interested in knowing them, and make sure that they know that we know them. There are so many different ways that we can incorporate that and use that as a tool to hopefully invite them into this process, it’s not something that we are going to be able to force on them, and that’s part of the compassion that we want to have in our children, and one of the empowerment things we can utilize in this process is giving them choices, giving them a voice, and letting them have a say in how this process works, obviously, within a certain framework with which you are comfortable. But again, you may have to go outside of your comfort zone just a little bit in order to make this happen. But if you are willing to, I’m telling you, I haven’t talked to anybody, anybody who has not given this concept a try and said, “Wow, I really wish I hadn’t done that.” Because even when we fail, even when a meal doesn’t go well, we are still doing it together, and there’s still that shared experience and that connection that you and your child can look back on and say, “We got through that. We did some pretty silly things in the kitchen, didn’t we?”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, I love it. And I think, your point about curiosity, about figuring out how they are going to engage with it, whether it’s a certain thing that they maybe want to make. Maybe it’s not something you would normally serve. Maybe you are like, “Listen, I don’t allow a lot of sugar” or whatever, but maybe you say as a starting point, “Pick a dessert you want to make,” to your point about: Find a way to hook them that helps them feel interested and their opinion matters, and like you are interested in making this something that is interesting and enjoyable for them. I think that’s so big. And the other thing I love about cooking or spending time together in the kitchen, is it’s so infinitely able to be scaffolded to whatever level the child is at. So if you are listening and you are like, “Well, I have a child who maybe chronologically is 12, but developmentally is 2, they’re not going to be able to make a recipe”, well, even kids at a toddler developmental level can help with stirring, can help with pouring, can help with carrying things, can watch and learn from that. And if you have a child who is reading and really engaged and can follow instructions, then sure, pull out the full recipe. But there’s an infinite number of ways to scaffold this process to start with where your child is at, both from a skills perspective, as well as a willingness perspective, and then to grow from there. And I think that’s really the key, isn’t it, Kibby? To hone in on each kid where they are with their willingness, their skill level, their interests, and start where you need to start for them and then just grow it from there.

Chef Kibby

That’s definitely a result of that curiosity piece that I was talking about before. And again, as a foster and adoptive child, I can definitely resonate with that scenario that you just painted for your audience. That is very often the case. Sometimes we do have to be a little bit creative. And one of the ways that we can be creative can be through just inviting your child to be in the kitchen with you, again, to begin to build that neurological framework of “This is a place where I am allowed to be, this is a place where I want to be in order to see new things and to experience new things, maybe taste something of what mommy or daddy is making throughout the process”, maybe involving some food related play. I mean, I don’t have to tell you that Melissa and Doug have so many great food related toy activities, and sometimes at conferences and workshops, I will bring these different food cutting sets and sorting sets and these things to show parents how they can use toys to begin to simulate some of the interactions that they can have once they’re ready and able to begin to handle an actual kitchen knife or handle food for themselves. And also to your point, I just want to say, one of the best things that we can do for our kids is have them gather up our ingredients for us, or in the chef in the culinary industry, we call our mise en place, everything in its place. Perfect example of this is whenever I’m making granola, and I love to make granola with my kids, I can just say, “Hey, girls, let’s make some granola.” And they’ll just fly out, and they’ll go their separate ways. They’ll go to the pantry, and they’ll go to this area, to that area, and find all these different ingredients. And so to be able to recognize what ingredients look like, what they’re packaged, in, how they’re stored, where they’re stored, are, again, those fun foundational building blocks that will go into building their attachment to, and connection with being in the kitchen with you. And so there really is no too early for getting them involved.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, I love it. And even from the standpoint of watching. If you have a super resistant kid, you just say, “Oh, well, here I am.” You do your thing, and even if they’re off doing their thing, just let them observe or you say, “Okay, well, I will just leave the tomatoes and the knife over here, I will leave a couple over there for you, if you decide you want to come and mess around with those, fine, and then you go about your business”, and you just leave the opportunity there. I have seen it many times with families over the years, where just by providing that opportunity and not being demanding or insistent on it, but just leaving it and letting them approach it as they feel comfortable and safe to do so, that that can provide an opening as well to them being willing to trust the process of engaging more.

Chef Kibby

And it’s just going to take some time. It’s not going to happen overnight. Every child is different, and every child-parent relationship is different. But it is my sincere hope that through being here on your program, and through my own podcast, and through my online courses, and through the coaching that I’m doing online through my Discord server, to just make myself available to families like those that are listening to us right now, to know that they’re not alone. That this is hard work, but it is important work, and our kids are totally worth it. And yes, there’s going to be some hard days, there’s going to be some challenges, but if we are willing to approach it with curiosity and connection, we are going to make some delicious food together, and we are going to see some development in these relationships.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Beautiful. And that’s perfect as we wrap up here, a perfect segue into what people are absolutely wanting to know, which is where can they find out more about what you are doing, the resources that you provide? Tell them where they can find you.

Chef Kibby

The best place to find me is at cookingisconnecting.com. That’s where you will find information about my podcast and other free resources, and also access to my online community, which I’m doing through my Discord channel, which has a number of different conversations about different issues that we are facing, depending on our different journeys that we are on, along with some deeper levels of access to me as a part of my Patreon community, where folks can hang out with me on a regular basis and talk about what’s going on in their lives and get some really practical, actionable answers to those questions that they’re dealing with.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s awesome. And you are on social media also. Do you want to let people know where to find you there?

Chef Kibby

Yep, you can find me on Facebook and Instagram. I’m sorry, I don’t have a TikTok just yet, although I do have the moves for it.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, I’m sure! Well, I’m not a huge fan of TikTok, so I’m okay with you not having TikTok. But I’m sure you have the moves for it, and if you do, let us know. But what is your Instagram and your Facebook?

Chef Kibby

Instagram, I believe is @Chefkibby. And a Facebook is Cooking with Kibby.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Awesome. And we will put those in the show notes as well for all of you. Chef Kibby, thank you so much for the work that you are doing around this. I just think that the intersection of your professional work and your personal experience and the amount of time and energy you have put into really learning about and understanding the neurological components of all this, the developmental components, it’s just a beautiful thing. And I really appreciate the work that you are doing in the world, and also very much appreciate you spending time talking with us about it today. So thank you.

Chef Kibby

Thank you for being with me. I’m really touched.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And thanks, as always, to all of you for being here and for listening. We will catch you back here next time.