Don't Make Your Kid Finish The Soup.

Welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast! This is a newsletter where we explore questions and some answers around fatphobia, diet culture, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. I’m a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture, and the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia.

Today I am chatting with my good friend and neighbor, Melinda Wenner Moyer. Melinda, welcome.

Melinda

Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here.

Virginia

For folks who don’t know Melinda, she is a science journalist and author of a brand new book coming out a couple days after you listen to this, called How To Raise Kids Who Aren’t A******s. And she writes a really fantastic Substack called “Is My Kid the A*****e?”—much like the subreddit, Am I the A*****e?—where she helps us navigate these really tricky parenting questions.

I wanted to bring her on today because a) her book is wonderful, and you should all go preorder it. But also because Melinda does a really great job breaking down the science on parenting to help us understand why our kids do the things they do and how the choices we make influence their behavior. And I found as I was reading the book that I kept thinking, oh, this is also about food. Oh, this is also about food.

Melinda is actually the first person I’ve had on the newsletter who’s not fully in the diet culture space—not that she’s a pro-diet culture person!—but it’s cool to see someone else’s work in a different genre overlapping so much with the conversations we have here.

So the book is really doing two things. I’m sure you’re getting all kinds of reactions to the title—it was a great opportunity to teach my own seven-year-old the word ‘a*****e,’ so thank you for that. But really, what you’re saying is: Parents need to understand that sometimes kids have to be a******s. It’s a part of growing up. They don’t have the skills that we think that they have. And they’re just going to be a******s sometimes. But at the same time you’re helping parents raise kids who don’t grow up to be permanent a******s in the sense of Donald Trump or Brett Kavanaugh. So can you explain that distinction a little bit?

Melinda

There has been understandable confusion about the title and what I actually mean by ‘how to raise kids who aren’t a******s.’ What I’m really saying is ‘how to raise kids who don’t grow up to be a******s.’ Because as parents, it’s important for us to manage our expectations, and to realize that there is no such thing as a perfectly behaved kid.

There are so many reasons for this. Kids’ brains and bodies are so very different from ours. The part of the brain that is responsible for planning and self regulation, and rational thinking, in general, is just not developed yet. And it doesn’t fully develop until kids are in their mid-20s, actually. So kids just don’t have the skills, like you said, to do adult-like things, like follow directions, or stay calm when they’re sad or angry. They also don’t have the muscle tone to do things like sit still at the dinner table for 30 minutes, which I learned when I was reporting my newsletter a few weeks ago. So they’re going to be doing things all the time that are out of line with what we would expect of adults and what we consider “good behavior.” And that’s because they really just don’t have the capacity for those things yet. So yes, kids are going to be a******s.

Another part of that, too, is that a lot of what we consider good behavior is learned. It’s not innate, and it’s based on customs and traditions. These are cultural expectations that we have to teach. And it takes a long time. So, for instance, what could be more unnatural than using a fork? Our kids are not born knowing how to use a fork or napkins, that’s kind of a weird concept. Why not use your hands?

These are customs we have to remember that are not natural and the way that kids learn about these kinds of customs is in a way by breaking them. They have to break the rules in order for us to know that we need to teach these things to them. They’re opportunities for us as parents to learn about what we need to work on with o...