After nursery snacks and Pip lolly addiction!

[perichickenwings]

My child is 3 and when he comes home from nursery he's often hungry, even though he has two meals and snacks there. The last meal is at 4.15 and I pick him up at 5 with bathtime at 6.30pm so by then he's hungry and I usually give him a snack.

Just looking for new ideas for suitable snacks to offer at this time of day to broaden his eating as it gets boring.

He currently has:
Bagel with cream cheese
Crumpet
Fruit
Yoghurt

Ice lolly - this is a bit of an issue as we buy those Pip organic fruit juice lollies but recently we got a new fridge freezer and now the freezer drawer is at the bottom and he can help himself! As a family we don't have things like biscuits, crisps, cakes or chocolate in the home at all so this is his one "sweet treat". I used to allow him one in the summer but now he keeps going back for more and it's causing an issue! I've said no but it's a battle I don't need.

I can't find a child lock that a 3 year old can't get into for my new freezer so I'll just have to stop buying them at all but then he will have no sweet treats at all. I guess that's ok. But some more exciting ideas for these post-nursery snacks would help to distract him I think!

Any ideas??

• anything on toast: egg, cheese, beans, peanut butter hummus etc
• wrap pizza or bagel pizza (good way to get a few veg in too
• broccoli and cheese muffins
• egg muffins with veg and cheese in
• homemade carrot cake muffins
• small amount of last nights dinner
• ham and cheese roll ups
• roll up soft cheese and cucumber sandwiches
• picky plate of crackers raisins grated cheese and veg
• Greek yogurt and granola with some fruit purée

Don't buy the lollies then. He doesn't need a sweet treat. Surely he needs a proper meal before bed ? Other Healthy ish snacks are oatcakes and peanut butter, home popped plain popcorn ( with cinnamon for flavour), a boiled egg, a homemade pancake and butter, a small omelette, small serving of beans on toast.

He needs dinner after nursery, what they give isn't enough and there are tine constraints to eat it.

Does he have dinner in that window at home? They have tea really early at nurseries.

I would just give him some of your dinner!

You can freeze those yoghurt tubes - e.g frubes. They come out really well and might help replace the ice lolly addiction.

Nursery tea isn't enough for a proper meal - you need another one at home.

We gave snack tea type meals e.g. baked potato, beans on toast, egg on toast, small amount of pasta with cheese or tomato sauce or just a small portion of the adult meal. And then plain yogurt or fruit (or plain yogurt and fruit). Or we might go mad and have something like Angel Delight or jelly.

I'd stop buying the lollies, but your child also needs to learn that they can't just help themselves to sweet treats out of the cupboards.

Yes I was going to say, I think he probably needs an actual dinner at home at 6-6.30pm. Nursery dinners are more like snacks imo.

ice lollies, if you don’t want him to have just say they aren’t available in winter.

Is your dinner ready by 6:30? If so sitting down as a family and eating dinner might be nice ?

You can get ice lolly moulds, just make some with juice and water, or blitzed yoghurt and fruit.

Our nursery child has breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. We pick them up at 1800, then snacks are toast, or apple and cheese, etc.

Yes we've done that. Plus the Pip ones are just juice anyway. But endless fruit juice isn't healthy.

I bought them as a summer treat (alternative to refined sugar lollies with E numbers etc) and it worked, but now that he can reach the freezer it's becoming his go-to snack.

My DH gets home later so it's not do-able but I can sit my son at the table with a proper mini meal eg beans in toast. It hasn't really occurred at me to do so as I can see he's having 2 hot meals at nursery already. But if he's still hungry I guess it's fine.

I just gave mine weetabix if they were still hungry after nursery, they went to bed at 6- 6.30. They had a hot lunch and tea.

Why don't you save him some of the dinner you ate from the night before?

How about breakfast cereal? My kids have always eaten that near bedtime if they're hungry. Just plainer stuff like weetabix or rice krispies not anything chocolatey.

Great comments about food

Put a child lock on the freezer

Your 3 year old shouldn’t be just helping themselves to food. When they take a lolly, take it back off them and say no!

At three he'll forget about the lollies pretty quickly once you stop buying them, so don't worry about that. Just let him finish the box and explain there are none left. Maybe say they are hot weather food and you'll be able to buy more next summer? He'll have no real concept of time anyway!

Food suggestions: I like to keep a bit of leftover grown-up dinner from the night before, and just stick it in the microwave for toddler before-bed supper. So quick and easy, and tends to be healthier and have more protein and veg in it than typical snack food does.

Yes I'm sure he'll adjust once we've finished the current box of lollies.

I think I'll tell him he's going to start having dinner now he's a big boy and he's so hungry.

The dinner from the night before won't always work as we like very hot spicy stuff and he's a typical preschooler in his tastes, but it could work with more plain stuff. I'm sure things like beans in toast will suffice though as he does allegedly have two hot meals a day at nursery! Eg yesterday it was pasta bolognese with garlic bread and pudding, and then macaroni cheese with broccoli followed by peaches.

Oh yeah, I didn't mean that he necessarily needs more than beans on toast etc. Just that I find it really convenient not to have to think of and put together suitable snacks. Leftovers take most of the thinking out of it at the end of a long day! Toddlers don't generally mind a bit of repetition ime, so I sometimes serve up the same thing a couple of times in the week, but on non-consecutive days. Depending on exactly how spicy it is, we even sometimes get away with spicy food with some yoghurt stirred in.

@Sammysquiz - why? I let my 3 year old help himself if he wants something. What age do they have to be before they can help themselves?

Many families have a fruit bowl and allow their children to help themselves whenever they want from an early age.

It's pretty unusual to let a child as young as 3 free range of all the food in the house. Both on a health basis (do you want your 3 year old eating a whole multipack of crisps) and on a practicality basis (a 3 year old unilaterally deciding to make toast or even cereal with milk unsupervised is probably not a great idea).

I would say we'd got at least to secondary school age before we were at the free range point and even then, I'd have put boundaries in place if snacks were vanishing at a rate of knots.

We have no crisps, biscuits, cakes, chocolate, sweets or puddings in the house so the only thing he's tempted to help himself to was the ice lollies!

I would feed him a proper meal. Mine always had breakfast at home, then morning snack, hot lunch, then cold tea at nursery, then pick up at 5, came home for a snack, and then a hot dinner before bath/bedtime.

Just cook one meal, either heat up for you/dh later, or save leftovers from night before to offer for his dinner. We always had dinner altogether a bit later (6:30-730pm), but if you don't want to do that, just save some in the fridge for the next day so you aren't cooking 2 lots.