They Got It WRONG: The Hidden Link Between Feeding and Speech Development Ep 126

Everyone talks about “speech milestones,” but few realize that clear talking starts long before the first word. It begins with sucking, swallowing, mouthing, and chewing real food.

In this episode, Erin Hyer — pediatric speech-language pathologist and host of Talking Toddlers — unpacks how modern feeding habits are quietly undermining children’s oral-motor development and what parents can do to course-correct with confidence.

You’ll discover:

• Why mouthing and chewing are essential brain-building workouts
  
  
• How pouches, purees, and processed foods keep kids stuck in baby patterns
  
  
• The simple, God-designed rhythm that connects eating, breathing, and talking
  
  
• Practical ways to strengthen your child’s jaw, tongue, and attention every day

Because when we understand how kids learn to eat and talk, we can help them thrive — one bite, one word, one day at a time.

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👉 Join Erin’s free private Inside Talking Toddlers  community on Thursdays to get weekly quick-win audios and your Top 10 ESSENTIAL SKILLS for Talking

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Disclaimer:

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: contact@HyerLearning.com
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com

Transcript

Erin: 0:00

now let's ask if chewing is this powerful, then perhaps the next natural question would be, what could get in its way? if it's so hardwired in us and we know as parents to let them explore, They're gonna mouth things like I said. Then what could interrupt that? why are so many toddlers having problems with chewing and eating and then talking What are they missing? So the answer has, a lot to do with what I look at as Hello and welcome to Talking Toddlers where I share more than just tips and tricks on how to reduce tantrums or build your toddler's vocabulary. We're gonna cover all of that, but here our goal is to develop clarity because in this modern world, it's truly overwhelming. This podcast is about empowering moms to know the difference between fact and fiction, to never give up, to tap into everyday activities, so your child stays on track. He's not falling behind, he's thriving. Through your guidance, we know that true learning starts at home. So let's get started. When you think about helping your toddler talk, what comes to mind? Reading books, singing songs. Maybe practicing words over and over, but here's a surprising truth. The foundation for clear talking doesn't begin with words at all. It begins at birth with sucking and swallow. And mouthing. Every time your baby puts a toy, his hand or your hand, or even the corner of the blanket in their mouth, they're practicing the same movements they'll need for chewing and talking. So mouthing isn't random. It's a God design stage of play that exercises the jaw, the lips, and the tongue by six months of age when your baby is introduced to real foods. Those same muscles are already warmed up for the harder work ahead. Think of it like training to learn how to become a rock climber or any sport, but rock climbing to me, is a good visual. You don't just walk up to the mountain and start climbing. No. First you have to make sure you're in physical shape, Maybe lose some body fat, build some muscle, build strength and flexibility, build the connection between the brain and the body, some coordination. All of that makes you ready for someone to show you the moves. And with consistent practice, you become. More fluid, right? More confident and skilled, and then stronger over time. Well, speech works the same way. If toddlers don't have the physical foundation, jaw stability, lip strength, and control, tongue coordination, words don't come out clearly. And yet too often children with unclear speech are rushed into word drills long before their mouths are even ready. I see it with well intended teachers and parents, and even grandparents, but also speech language therapists like myself, where they're missing a whole plethora of skills, getting them ready. For real clear speech. So without the pre-training, first daily exercises through natural suck and swallow, whether it's breastfeeding or bottle feeding, frequent mouthing and exploring. That's why I'm always nudging you guys. Let them explore. Then building that cooing and babbling with you, the primary caretaker, your entire family. That builds that social communication, but it's also timing and organization of motor planning, listening and, and imitating another per person, right? And then there's that purposeful introduction to solids led by you, It's all the same as learning the preparedness to rock climbing, right? But without that strength and coordination, and without practice, some of those precursed moves, you won't be ready. So without the physical foundation of the jaw and the lips and the tongue, we need that strength, the coordination and control. Then words have nothing to grow on, nothing to be built upon. So I want you to really think about what goes into your daily life in those first 12, 16, 18 months. Getting your child ready to articulate, to speak, to produce clear words from the get go. Many, many two year olds are pretty darn clear, right? So that's why I want us to take a closer look at what's really happening in those early months, because once you see the sequence, the pattern, and how they're all connected, you'll never look at mealtime or speech playtime the same way again. So if you're new here, welcome. I'm Erin, Hyer pediatric speech language therapist with over 35 years of early intervention, and back in an earlier episode, actually close to three years now. I first shared the link between chewing and talking, and since then I've heard from so many parents and grandparents who are still struggling with picky eaters or unclear speech or slow talkers, mealtime battles, all of that, and. Y you're feeling pulled in 10 different directions because there's a lot of noise out there. There's a lot of misguided information, and I wanted to come back and revisit this because I, I wanted to be clear, right? I wanna help you see the dots and then connect the dots and then make some practical advice, because the truth is this message I feel in 2025. Is more urgent than ever, and I think it's no accident that this conversation comes up As a country, we're waking up to the need of how do we raise healthy children? And yes, it does fall under the umbrella of Make America Healthy again. Because honestly, I think it starts with our kids. And once we. As a family, have children and we're looking at them like, how do we protect you and guide you and and nourish you? Then the whole family can turn some perhaps bad habits into good habits. So I think mom and dad and grandparents, you all are in a perfect place, the perfect time to prevent these issues before they really take root. And that's a big piece to my mission here. you don't need any more noise or chatter, right? You need clear, solid guidance, a clear path, some dos, some don'ts, make it less complicated so you can really implement. So in this episode, we'll dive into why chewing matters. For talking, And how it builds that foundation, those precursor skills for speech, like I said, attention and self-regulation and all of those pieces fit together for your 1-year-old, 2, 3, 4, 5-year-old to really build their, their language and social communication, their thinking and reasoning, and. And then, you know, take the ball and run with it. Right? In a separate episode, we'll look at something that I think is a huge problem right now it's, I refer to it as the pouch problem. Why commercialized purees are holding kids back and how you, mom, dad, and grandparents can confidently break free from that. But for today, let's start at the very beginning and walk through the sequence step by step, right? So you can get this picture of how feeding. Yeah, and speech development really unfold together and support one another. So babies are born with a set of survival reflexes, and I'm sure most moms and dads out there understand this, right? They have that sucking reflex, a rooting. And the swallow reflex. But there's also chewing. Chewing is a reflex. And so even with newborns, if you take your little pinky finger, a clean one, and you press back on their back molars, their gum line, right? A newborn, they'll bite, right? That that reflex. But these automatic patterns help really to calm your baby, right? Just it's self-soothing, sucking, or biting or chewing, and that is begins to wire their sensory systems. That's where self-regulation comes into being able to process different sensory inputs, auditory, visual, tactile, and proprioceptive. How does my body feel in space? But here's what I think most parents, and even, you know, caregivers don't realize the way that these reflexes unfold and the sequence of development matters big. It's, it's, it always starts with the jaw, right? And so, yes, you have the torso and you have have the limbs. But when we look at eating and talking. It, it really has to stabilize itself in the jaw. So first the jaw has to build strength, and with that strength then they can stabilize. And that stability then allows what we call disassociation, which is the ability to hold a muscle and move tiny muscles in isolation around it. Right. And I've talked a little bit. In the past about this, right? We stabilize our torso and we can move our limbs, right? We stabilize our torso and we can move our head, and then we stabilize our head and we can move our jaw, and then we stabilize our jaw, and we can move our lips, stabilize our lips, and we can move our tongue. That's the developmental hierarchy. It's not random. There is a sequential process to all of that, but without strength and stability. Everything collapses, right? Just like if we don't have a good, strong core. We're not very good at climbing the stairs or running up a hill, or we're not very good at swimming. We're not very good. Even at sitting up in a chair for long durations, we get tired easily. Well, the same thing happens with speech, right? Speech sounds run together. They get mumbled in our mouth because the jaw isn't strong or stable. The clarity gets muffled. Some kids do have a lot of saliva in their mouth because they don't even have this sequential pattern to, oh, I feel saliva collecting in the back of my mouth. I better swallow it and clear their throat. So all of these developmental skills work together. But if a child is mumbly or, unclear in their speech, let's always first look at the jaw, right? Think of the jaw as the foundation to a house. If that foundation wobbles, right, maybe it's on unlevel ground, or maybe you know, it's a little too sandy, or the drainage wasn't good, then the walls. Aren't going to be stable. So your lips and your tongue aren't going to be stable if the jaw is loose. And we, we need stability in order to be precise. And that's what speech and chewing really require per precise movement patterns. So now that you have a stronger jaw and it's stable, next we take a look at the lips. The lips need to be able to close and seal right, and then it needs to be able to move in different shapes because that will change the air flow. So this is where the early sounds like pop pop, the P or the B, B, which is the same motor movement. It's just one's voice and one's voiceless, and then the Mm. And, and I know I've shared in the past that all of those sounds, pop, pop, pop, pop, papa, Baba Baba. Those are just early motor patterns. They're not really calling us mama or papa. We take hold of those, those speech sounds and we use them as our names, but it's really just how the lips are beginning to, to strengthen and coordinate in all of this early motor or early. Yeah, early motor play, right? But then the tongue at the same time, I have always looked at the tongue as the one of the most remarkable muscles in our whole body, right? And it's really actually a system because there are four pairs of muscles that make up our tongue. And unlike any other muscle in our body, it has a point of origin in the back, right? It's attached to the back of your throat. But it doesn't have a point of insertion, so it's not fixed anywhere else. Like our bicep is attached to our shoulder and our elbow, but the tongue is only attached in the back. So that means that it has to develop internal stability, right? Constantly finding a way to stabilize itself to make those finer and finer motor patterns and it has to do that inside our oral cavity. You know, just think of the, the made up word, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, right? It's just rolling from one sound to another. I've memorized that pattern, but it's, it's just. Requires a lot of fine motor skills and motor planning and precision. So at first, the tongue just can, protrude and, and retract, right? That's that sucking pattern. and in order to swallow it it ha moves in this wave-like or snake-like pattern in order to produce that swallow reflux. And that's their primary mode of oral motor movement, right? Because they're, they're on basic survival mode. But later on the tip then begins to elevate. And because they have better stability in the back and in the, in the body of the tongue, then they can begin to move. And if you're watching me on YouTube, you see my little hand gestures, but move the tip up and down. And at the same time, there's a little spreading out of the tongue on the sides those four pairs of muscles start to break up. But here's where I think design meets function. So when you look at a newborn or you know, four, six, eight weeks, they have a lot of really thick fat naturally in their cheek pads. Right? And, and although we think it's adorable, and I do think it's adorable, it's not just cute there actually, God designed to stabilize the jaw and the tongue in those early months. you can't just have this open oral cavity and have the tongue kind of just loosey goosey. Those thick fat cheek pads restrict and help the tongue move in that suck swallow pattern in those early months. But as they begin to coup with you mouth a lot of different things and gnaw things, they actually work out those cheek pads and they get smaller and smaller, building more room inside their mouth or inside their oral cavity. And so all of that exercise, that pre-training I talk about in cooing and chewing, like I said, really is purposeful for a lot of different reasons. It's not just exploratory play where they're gaining information by mouthing things. That's true, but it's also a workout to get their oral cavity. The jaw, the lips, the tongue and the cheeks to be able to work together. So now with, with the cheek pads a little thinner, the tongue actually has more room in the mouth to elevate, to go from side to side to retract to really increase the air flow. So now when I change the shape of my jaw, or my lips, or my tongue, then the sound that comes out. It can change. So we can go from, Ooh, only by moving my lips. Right. and so there's a lot of. Oral motor play in these that first year of life to really prepare them for the right shape and function of their whole oral device, right? So this fine tuning is really what gives clear speech later on. And that's how all of these pieces fit together. Without these patterns, kids awfully often struggle, right? Not because they can't talk or won't talk, but because their mouths aren't strong enough, they're not coordinated enough. They then have a lot of that pre-training. So that's. Also why when I first meet any child, one of my very first questions is about their feeding history. Yes, I, I'm interested in their nutrition and all of this, but I also ask, did you have any, early feeding issues, latching problems if there were breast fed, or did you have to go through a lot of different. Nipples to find the, the one that worked. was there a lot of spitting up or coughing or gagging or choking all of this during your feeding periods. Those details matter to me because it all fits together. The earliest feeding experiences are part of the same system that eventually supports clear speech. You can already see how much is happening inside your baby's mouth But chewing isn't just about the mechanics, it's also neurological. Right. So every bite wires the brain, right? it's a soothing mechanism, but it's also helping them with motor planning and coordination. Every time that your baby chew on something, It, it nurtures their ability to attend and focus. It also builds that breath control and self-regulation. All of these pieces are fitting together as they're mouthing things, right? Whether it is their own hand, or like I said, the, the end of a blanket or, uh, rattle or on your clothing, right? But that's why kids who chew a lot and have a lot of good practice, not just with a pacifier,'cause pacifier is just sucking, and that's, that's a different pattern than actually chewing on things and, and moving things in their mouth. They typically have. Better articulation and they have typically fewer eating struggles, They seem to have better focused and and ability to switch gears and transition. And yes, that means that they have fewer tantrums and. Uh, a couple of episodes, I talk a lot about what happens in the emotional mind, right? And, and where your child is when they do have those meltdowns. But chewing is part of that self-regulation in action, right? It calms the whole nervous system. It organizes the brain, it gives toddlers the stamina if they feel grounded, if they're, uh, they're. Able to attend, then they can listen, right? And then they can play and engage. They can learn in real time. If something doesn't work, oh, let me make a a little switch. Or if somebody takes their toys, not a big deal. I have more toys over here. All of these real life. Abilities, social skills come into play if they're feeling grounded and regulated. And so all of these pieces fit together. because US adults, and I've shared this hundreds and hundreds of times, we know this already instinctively, right? Because that's why we. We chew gum or some people chew on their nails, or if you're stressed, you might chew on, ice cubes, we chew on the straw, right? All of these chewing help us kinda work through the stress or work the problem out. Yes, some of it becomes a habit, but we go there typically when we're trying to work through something. And that's just part of our human nature. That's why kids will suck on their thumb naturally. Right? Or mouth kinds of things. Yes, they're looking to learn, like I said, but that repetitive oral movement. Is calming, is grounding. It does help them engage in the moment. So chewing is one of our body's built in ways to find that to, to center ourselves. So now let's ask if chewing is this powerful, then perhaps the next natural question would be, what could get in its way? Right. If, if, if it's so hardwired in us and early on we know as parents to let them explore, They're gonna mouth things like I said. Then what could interrupt that? So why are so many toddlers having problems with chewing and eating and then talking right? What are they missing? So the answer has, I think, a lot to do with what I look at as the modern convenience lifestyle, which includes different foods, especially in those early years that we're laying the foundation for everything. So I think here's. The challenge, modern convenience foods disrupt this whole natural progression of growth and development. That if we take a look at, especially if we walk down the the grocery store aisle and look at the children's aisle with the squeezable pouches, And then the jars and jars of purees, all of those things, Non chewables really just fill their tummy quickly, but it really extends this whole puree period and, and I've shared with you all before. That pure aren't even necessary, because I think it becomes a slippery slope and literally it robs your child a practice that they so desperately need. And I think, the food tends to be more addictive and easier and a quick fix it, it satisfies the tummy a quick. sugar hit to the brain even if there is an added sugar. When you puree the food and add applesauce or carrots, it tastes sweeter, right? So we're keeping our kids in extended developmental periods and not moving them into chewing more solid foods. it goes hand in hand, not just with the pouches, but also the ultra processed foods that, again, fills, fills up so many of our toddler's diets, whether it's the, the baby crackers or protein bars, or soft breads or pasta, packaged food, snacks, instant microwavable stuff, all of that. not only it lacks in nutrients, but it doesn't provide the actual chewing the first step of digestion, which is mixing it with your saliva and chew, chew, chew, chew. So even though kids could kind of, you know, do a pseudo chomp once or twice, there's no real resistance in the prepackaged foods and most of it just dissolves in their mouth. So there's no real workout for the jaw. There's no need to really close the lips then, and then the tongue doesn't get its opportunity to literally masticate, right? You chew, chew, chew, and then the, the tongue sweeps up the food and puts it into another ball. We call it a bolus, right? And then choo chew and then sweep it up again. That's a lot of organized practice inside the mouth. So let's, let's just look a little bit more into the science, because again, I, I dive deep into this. So you get this, this broad picture It's not arbitrary, it's not haphazard. it's designed to work together and requires practice. Right. So I, I wanna just dive a little bit more into the musculature because that's what you're working out, right? This is how I think it, it all matters and fits together. So there's a big muscle in our, in our jaw, it's called the masseter. And it, it's what makes, you know, people's face have that square line, right? Uh, along the, the jawbone, but it's one of the strongest muscles in the human body based on its size. And the truth is it can generate forces up to, I don't know, 50, 55 pounds when we bite down in our front teeth. That's pretty powerful. Also, the, the tongue muscle. Every time we, we push up against the, the back ridge of our upper teeth when we produce a swallow that pushes five pounds of pressure and we, you know, swallow up to 2000 times a day. But all of these musculature have to work together through and, and strengthen and coordinate through practice. But like every other muscle. It only develops when it's challenged. So when we're looking at our masseter muscle, it needs to be challenged through resistance, right? When toddlers miss out on that resistance, they lose the opportunities to strengthen that jaw and then build stability and coordination. And so when we're talking about clear speech, if we have a low tone jaw, then we're not gonna have very clear vowels. All of the vowels come from the jaw height. Right. And then we're not, like I said earlier, if we don't have the strength and coordination and stability of the jaw, then the lips and the tongue are kind of moving loosey goosey. Everything is connected, so the healthy strong jaw supports lip closure at rest as well. So I'm always suggesting to parents just to take a minute or two or look in your rear view mirror when they're in the back and look at them. What's their posture at rest? Right? Are the lips closed? Are they strong? Are they capable? Naturally resting. And when that happens, then the tongue is resting against the hard palate in the, in the middle of the oral cavity, in the middle of the mouth. It's the tongue isn't hanging forward. Right. That we want the tongue if, if the jaw is closed, so the back teeth are not quite touching, right? I always say to parents, it's sort of like if you could slide a piece of paper between your, your back molars, but the lips are closed and the tongue is resting up against the roof of your mouth, ready to spring into action for any speech sound, or to produce a natural swallow of your own saliva. So all of those pieces fit together. The jaw strength and stability, the tongue resting at the roof of the mouth, the lip closed, forming an excellent posture, balance, and flow. the final piece to this that a lot of parents don't quite understand. Uh, speech pathologists don't either unless you go digging deep, but. All of this proper positioning, strength, and coordination. This is the position that also sets your child up for nasal breathing, and that's one of the most critical pieces to this whole discussion because it's the healthiest way to breathe. That's our natural filter system. So when we have a stable jaw. Holding everything in place and the lips are closed and the tongue, the tongue is snug against the roof of the mouth. Then the airflow through the nasal passage is open and clear. And in another episode I'll go a little deeper, but here's the short version. When oral structures are weak. Kids often fall into open mouth breathing, and this has become very, very common. And unfortunately, it's now looked at as a relatively new normal. But the truth is when we allow our kids to become mouth breathers, chronic mouth breather. I mean, if they just have a cold for a couple of days that's a whole different thing, but we're looking at chronic that this becomes habitual, then that can impact facial development. It contributes to crooked teeth dysregulation because they're not getting the not nitric oxide. The air isn't being filtered when you're a mouth breather it disrupts your sleep patterns, and then that increases your chances for more frequent infections and allergies, and the list goes on and on. I think, again, we have to look at. Structure and function, and it's truly a God-given design. When you start looking at how the pieces work together and how we as human beings grow and develop these skills, so it's not just about eating and talking, although that that's kind of. The output, right? But each part working together is preparing for a healthy lifestyle, right? to reduce the chances of allergies or infections to build. Healthy sleeping patterns, and that all prepares them for good, solid talking and social communication. And then that allows them to learn in any environment. So all of these pieces are always fitting together. And I'm not just picking on purees right now, but this is a big piece. I just had a discussion with a room full of moms who had, you know, I don't know, eight or 10, five and six year olds, or five and six month olds, and we were talking about introducing solid foods. And I told them, just skip the whole puree quote unquote stage But they were never necessary, not a hundred years ago, and not today. Our, our kids' needs haven't changed, If you think back 50, 80 years ago, family's just mashed up the sweet potato with a fork and then gave it to them in a bowl, right? Or maybe some soft squash from the table. They, they knew instinctively how to, how to stew up the meat. So they're mashable between your thumb and your index finger, You want them soft enough, but that's perfect for your baby at six months with no teeth, but very, very hard gum lines, right? The teeth are just below the surface there. You've given them six months of chewing, so their masseter muscles are ready, right? But. a hundred years ago, no blenders, no commercial jars. If you dive deep into where Baby Foods Gerbers came from, you know, in the turn of the century, it was all commercial. But prior to that, people just made real food from the family meal. Right. Real texture, real resistance. A variety of of tastes. But when toddlers skip this, chewing resistance opportunities, right? With a wide variety of foods. Yes. In the beginning they're going to be dente, right? Softer. More softer than harder. But there's still going to be some resistance, but. If we just give them pureed foods, then they miss out on thousands of reps. Right? They're not, they're, we're not preparing them physically to become a good chewer and eater and swallower and talker and breather and all of that, We're impacting structure and function, right? Reducing healthy breathing through the nose which then disrupts sleep, which then disrupts growth. It becomes this domino effect in a heartbeat. I've seen it hundreds of times. instead we want to avoid. articulation, delay, right, or picky eaters or poor attention span. We can avoid all of that. We can also avoid the meltdowns and the chronic mouth breathing. All of these things might appear casually once or twice if, like I said, if they have a, a common cold or if, they're going through a phase and they're just not interested in eating today. Okay. But it's not gonna be the normal, it's not gonna be chronic, it's not gonna be their eating habit, right? I know this can feel like a lot, and, and so I, I wanted to look at the science, that biology, I want you to understand how the pieces fit together. And before I ask you to kind of do some reflection, right? I, I want to think about this. That is not about guilt. It's not about shaming anybody. We're all just learning, right? And we don't know what we don't know. And that's why I keep coming out on these episodes because I wanna tell you the truth. I wanna clear up some of The lies and distortions that have been fed to us, no pun intended, but you mom and dad, and even grandparents doing it the second time around, you're learning on the job and you know, most of the grandparents are my age in the sense that. We didn't have quite the same questions. I think the f the food industry wasn't quite so insidious and we didn't have a lot of the noise with social media and whatnot. And so I think there's this internal battle going on because the external world is, is fighting with one another louder and, with more compassion, none of us do this perfectly. And, and I've shared with you all before, I did a really bad job at helping my daughter, move away from her thumb sucking. So we had seven years of a lot of issues around that. So. It is learning through a lot of trial and error, and I'm trying to give you some clear anchors so you can really evaluate where are you today, and then how do we move forward. So with that in mind, I want you to think about this. What did your baby's first foods look like? So maybe you're dealing with a 3-year-old. I want you to look back and say, okay, how did I handle those first 6, 8, 12 months? Did you lean into jars and pouches or did you smash up food from your plate? Were you not going to, get sucked into eating or, or. Cooking different meals, or maybe you're, you're holding a, a baby who is just breastfeeding right now. Okay? So you're ahead of the game. were you thinking about jars and purees? And you see it all around with other friends and family. You see it on the commercials, you walk in the grocery store, you see it. Can you choose differently? Right? then as your toddler has grown. did you cave to some of their fussiness and not give them enough opportunities to practice chewing? Or did you end up leaning more into the convenient snacks? Especially in the car or in transitions.'cause I think that's the easiest place to just, throw a few things in your backpack and let's go. I want all of us to be much more mindful of the food choices we make, that if you have an older toddler or even a preschooler, do you still default to some of these soft foods and quick pouches instead of real chewing? And, and I've talked a lot about how can we get them more interested in a variety of foods. So just start asking yourself some of those personal questions. And then honestly take a lovingly look around your house, look in your pantry, look in your fridge, what kinds of foods are you leaning into, and how can you. Turn those around if you find yourself in more of the convenient packages, Do you lean heavily into those ultra processed soft foods because you're worried that they're not getting enough calories, and are you open? To swapping out a few items or maybe restructuring your grocery list and, and shop more on the peripheral, because every single grocery store, the aisles have the processed foods, the single ingredient, you know, the meats, the, the produce, fruits and vegetables, the cheeses, the milks, the yogurts, all of those are on the peripheral of any grocery store. Could you meal prep and if you do feel like you're meal prepping. take a, a, a clearer look on that and how could you switch it out even more. And if you're not sure where to start, that's okay. At least you're opening your mind to asking some of these questions. You don't have to figure it out all at once or all alone. Reach out to me. I get questions all the time. I get great emails, and I'll share with a few of them. from grandparents a lot, but a lot of moms and dads, right? One dad, felt a little left out and he goes, I, I wish that you would include care tech caretakers across the board. I include you, but. Sometimes I focus on moms first because typically nine times outta 10 we're in the driver's seat, at least for those first three, five years. Not to say that dads aren't important. They are, and all parents are important, I can speak to moms because I am a mom, right? But reach out to me. I can help point you in this direction or that direction. I can provide sample food lists, which I think is an upcoming episode in my new Thursday, talking toddlers for my email. insider group. And if you haven't joined, then please do, there's a link down below, But this is about awareness, right? And making small shifts not looking to be perfect and knowing that it's going to be a process. Because once you begin to see and understand how the pieces fit together, then you can make the changes, right? And, and nobody's going to make lasting changes if you try to change too much too soon. in the end, your child's brain, their body will respond to all of this and the more you can kind of pull them in and, and be an active participant, a participant in grocery shopping and cooking and cleaning and putting these things together and setting the table, then they'll be more engageable with all of this. so your takeaway today is chewing, is talking in disguise. Think of it that way, right? It's not optional. It's not just about calories or survival. It's really about building that physical foundation for clear speech. Better self-regulation and lifelong healthy habits. It's all interwoven. the bigger picture is, I think, and I've mentioned this earlier, but. We want our children to be healthy, and that fits into this, this movement of make America healthy again. But I really think it's make America's children healthy again. It starts in the kitchen around our tables, in the grocery stores. Every meal is an opportunity to build strength and clarity and connection and. I know you've heard this before, but I really think that it's true that you are your baby's first and best teacher. You'll always be, and you're not in it alone. I'm here. Reach out to me. I. Join my inner circle and we will watch your baby grow and learn and connect and thrive. God bless you. Thanks for spending your time with me, and I'll see you in the next episode of Talking Toddlers.