Has afternoon tea food for a child changed significantly?

I would probably just give a small toasted pancake and a petit filous yogurt. Children's bellies don't need to be full at all times.

He will being having breakfast at home lunch at nursery and then evening meal at nan and grandads so all you need to supply is afternoon snack which to me would be something like fruit or crisps

Like your grown up DC's friend, I would deffo also come to yours for tea.
Sounds lush.

In fact, can you fit me in next Thurs?

Lol I make tomato marscapone pasta and garlic bread. Always goes down a treat at this age

Three fish fingers plus several tablespoons of beans is almost what an adult would eat for a lunch - chuck in half a baked potato or two slices of toast.. thats a light adult meal so yes that is a lot for 4 year olds.

What IS the obsession with hot food - the temperature the food is served at has zero bearing on the nutritional content or energy value of that food!

If they've been running about outside then yes a warm drink or hot meal may be nice, but it doesn't alter the nutritional value at all!

Give them some snacks - a mix of the stuff you normally serve plus something commonly accepted amongst small children will do just fine.

I’d probably do a snack platter then. Cubes of cheese, maybe some little chicken popcorn things, breadsticks, strawberries, apple slices or orange segments, carrots and hummus, little rice cakes etc. Then they can pick whatever they like and leave anything they don’t.

I always did pizza or hotdogs with tomato and cucumber on the side.

If it's not dinner then I'd probably do toasted crumpets or pitta bread then. With hummus / cream cheese / just butter / bit of cheese and some cucumber / tomatoes.

I now want fish fingers! I did that sort of tea for my child back in the 90's and often did it for my neighbour's child when I used to occasionally pick then up from nursery and then school. Always did some for me too as it is a yummy comforting tea.

Both my kids’ nurseries served tea at around 3-4 which was a hot meal and then they would for sure come home and eat dinner again in the evening. I think if they didn’t have that meal they would be starving - and both of mine are not particularly big eaters and very slim! DC1 is in school now and will often eat a plate of leftovers from the night before and having dinner again a couple of hours later. I’d be delighted if you fed my DCs a hot meal in that time!

Well if you can't be arsed just do mini babybels, crumpets and apples and be done with it. That's perfectly normal and you can't be criticised for that.

Quite right i remember going to a friends house as a kid and the meal included kidney beans. I was disgusted.

My 4 year old has lunch at around 12 at school and is absolutely starving again by hometime so I was finding I was using more and more snacks to bridge the gap till dinner. I wasn’t happy with that so moved dinner up to 5pm, or even just before - which works ok for us most evenings although not always depending on where DH and I are both working.

Anyway, my point is that if she’d had lunch at 11.30, and then had to wait till 6pm for dinner (and actually the child on this play date will be eating later than that even - he’s not being collected till 6 so depends on how long it takes to get to whatever these plans are with his grandparents and then get served dinner) she would have absolutely needed something more substantial than a piece of fruit and a biscuit in between.

I would tend to go for something like pitta and hummus and veg, crumpets with cheese or a bit of fruit loaf with nut butter + fruit - but because those are the sorts of things my daughter enjoys so it’s just where my mind would go.

2 fishfingers plus 3 tablespoons baked beans comes to about 240 calories plus contains protein, fibre etc. A banana and a digestive is 178 according to my tracking app, and whilst it’s still fine in my eyes, is more sugar.

I don’t know why people are being so weird about the amount of “meals”! It’s completely normal, if they were at nursery they would have a similar small meal / heavy snack around 4pm. Aged 4 is even more reason to offer the more food not less! They burn so much running about all day.

I would not have been going back to that house if I was served that as a kid!! Having a friend round is for also having treats!!

Agree! You can get vegan nuggets also if you're cooking for a vegetarian kid. And I always have chopped tomato, cucumber, pepper and some berries knocking around (plus some sort of smallish pudding)

@DeepBalonz

Why not, mine have eaten Asian food all their lives, kids exposed to lots of cultures tend to eat well.

I try to avoid ultra processed foods but most kids like simple pasta dishes like cheesy pasta cooked from scratch and served with veg takes about 10 minutes

Cant beat a freezer tea but the MN Hyacinths will feed their little Lord Fauntleroys avocado on crispbread and with a guacamole dip with a lemon wedge on the side.

Cant beat a freezer tea but the MN Hyacinths will feed their little Lord Fauntleroys avocado on crispbread and with a guacamole dip with a lemon wedge on the side.

More frequent eating is fine as long as the portion sizes are appropriate. Lots of 4yo never sit still, so little and often is necessary.

You should! Sometimes kids love new food. My mum wasn't from this country and all my friends loved her weird delicacies and I now make them for my kid's friends who love them too as they don't get that sort of food anywhere else! I'm just judicious in what I serve.

It depends a bit on if that's going to be their main evening meal. If so then anything goes really. Just the normal food you've got as leftovers, or fish fingers, beans, cheese on toast, crudités with hummus and pitta, tuna toastie sandwich? Potato waffles, pasta with tomato sauce...whatever the kids like and will eat. Fun, picky stuff usually would go down well. You could get flatbread and ingredients and they could make their own pizza?