Reception child hunger - what do you feed them in the evening?

[tigerrr]

My son started reception this week and comes home absolutely starving. He has a hot meal at school and an afternoon snack so my plan was to give him "tea" (eg sandwich, fruit, yoghurt etc) in the evenings.

However he keeps asking for more more more. Yesterday he had pasta, a crepe, yoghurt, an apple, and then wanted more snacks so he had a pear, healthy flapjack, breadsticks and Philadelphia, cucumber sticks and raisins! We were running out of ideas by the end!

What do other people offer their reception aged child after school?

i don’t know what the ‘pasta’ you have DC entails but perhaps what you have is very light on fat and protein so maybe that’s why DC isn’t satisfied. I know fat isn’t fashionable but we all need it to feel satisfied, specially children. I don’t mean lumps of cold lard, but full fat cheese or milk, meat, buttery scrambled eggs maybe? I don’t think the food needs to be complicated to be filing. Bacon and eggs with butttered sour dough and side vegetable etc

Wow, what a childhood already at only 4-5 years old.
Normality for many due COL/career paths.
At school /clubs from 8am-5.30 four days a week.
That is full on for such a young kid, adults work these hours.
Doesn't eat with family either.
Only has has a picnic type dinner after days like that , despite being fed at school.
I find it tragic.
A lot of kids don't eat all/ like their school lunch or get distracted by peers and want to play.
Every parent I knew from those days , 2 DS left school not that long ago, gave their kids, and playdates too, a hot dinner every single day.
They are growing, no wonder he's ravenous.
Pasta/baked potato/stew can be prepped and dished out for dinner for one.

Imo and I work in a school kids don't eat much whilst there! Definitely give him a full dinner in the evening.

If time is an issue can you batch cook at the weekend, or save a portion of what you are having and he has it the next day?

Yeah they eat a tonne. Mine was starving at this age. We had:

Big breakfast - usually 2 things like eggs, peanut butter toast, greek yoghurt, porridge, plus fruit

(Whatever they had a school - he always came home with a clean plate sticker, so must have eaten all of it)

He's be ravenous to the point of tears after school, so I would do (and still do) an school snack plate at 3:30 (what an adult would probably consider a light lunch) e.g 1/2 a wrap, cheese cubes, fruit, carrot sticks and hummus or beans on toast and a yoghurt

Proper hot dinner at 6pm with us - we, the parents, had to get used to eating earlier, but found this was good for teaching table manners anyway and now they're older it's a good habit to sit down together

Supper before bed - always toast or porridge

I have found it slows down a bit at around y3 - perhaps they're less active during the day, but if they're having a growth spurt we're back to shovelling food in to them again.

Unless money is an issue, I'm surprised you're asking people whether to give your young child food (dinner) if he is hungry. Are you serious (?) and if so the answer is provide substantial / adequate sustenance.
Yes when children are hungry their parents provide a dinner, sometimes even hot.

People rely on school to do everything.

Did you expect him to go 13-14 hours on just a snack? 530pm to 630am. No wonder he is hungry. This post has unnerved me 😢, thinking that children aren't being fed properly.

Get your teen to cook once or twice a week. We have 4 kids and they all now cook once a week (started at 10 with pasta and tomato sauce and now can all make loads of stuff).
It means they have loads of skills and confidence.
We get one to cook and the rest of us tidy up.
The one who has left home is a great cook now, he says he's met so many people that can barely cook rice and dhal and live of ready meals that it's shocking.

@Peony15 well said

I work on the assumption that no lunch has been eaten because my DC love to chat.

I have a full meal for them each night. I often have batch cooked portions just for them if dh and I don't fancy a huge dinner.

My experience from DD who is a big eater outside of school, is that lunch is an exercise in eating just as much as needed to stave off starvation, as quickly as is humanly possible so they can get as much play time as they can squeeze in.

DD freely admits that they try to get the eating part over and done with in a few minutes.

Plan for a normal dinner and a snack like toast and fruit when they get home from school.

A proper dinner because their 'hot meal' would have been about a tablespoon of food and a thumb sized bit of cake around 12pm.

I was really surprised the first time I heard somebody say they didn't need to give their kids anything more than half a slice of toast in the evening because 'they'd eaten at school'. But I guess it's more common than I thought.

I think it will chop and change,
sometimes my DD1 would get in after school dinners and say mum I don’t want dinner tonight can I have soup or a sandwich and other times of the school dinner was just a JP or baguette then she would be hungry, If she was in growth spurt she would eat more than the adults! My DD2 just started school nursery and I can’t keep up with the food demands at the moment, today she’s had a bowl of ready brek and 2 slices of toast and 2 cups of milk already 😂

Proper hot dinner needed every night.

Last week we had:

• bean chilli with rice and wraps
• pasta bake
• pancakes (he got an award at school which meant he got to choose his tea!)
• vege sausage, mash, lots of veg
• fish and chips, mushy peas

All really simple and inexpensive. Apart from the fish and chips, they're all recipes you can make lots of and they can have extra portions if still hungry. Fruit/yoghurt for dessert.

A sandwich for tea every night isn't enough, it's not really a proper meal and bread every night is really unhealthy.

Can you batch cook at the weekends and then reheat? Winter warm dishes like pasta etc

My DC were always RAVENOUS when they came out of school in the early years, so I would take a snack with me to pick up. They'd eat it on the way home. Then I'd cook a proper hot meal for them at dinner time. If you DC is that hungry OP then a sandwich simply isn't sufficient and his hunger is telling you that.

They need a normal dinner. School portions are small and often not eaten.

Re: pasta - that may not be enough either. Pasta is a high GI food and as the body breaks it down it converts the carbs into sugar. The body then burns through the sugar quickly, causing a spike in blood sugar, but once it has used it up the sugar in the blood then dives and that can leave many people feeling really hungry again. This all happens within an hour or two. You need to serve protein with pasta and not just put tomato sauce or pesto on it.

Totally agree. Bit shocked that it seemed to be a mystery to the OP that her DC might need a proper dinner not just endless snacks. Got called snarky.

The OP has dinner later in the evening with DP. It's not a money issue.

Off the back of some of these discussions- can anyone please suggest filling snacks to pack for after school club for a reception aged child? She'll be there until 5 once a week and we'll all have tea just after 6pm. Obviously it'll be sat in her school bag all day so can't go for anything that needs to be kept cold! I was going to go for standard breadsticks/fruit options but now I'm worried she needs something a bit more substantial!

Slightly different situation - yours does sound trickier! But we do -

7am: wake and breakfast
7.30: (yep it takes that long to eat🤦🏼‍♀️): OH gets 4yo and himself ready, I leave for work.
8.15: they leave the house for school
4.30: pick up
between 4.30-5.30 we either come home and chill or have a club (3x a week).

depending on what we are eating I start making dinner between 5.30 and 6. DD will go in the bath at this point because our kitchen and bathroom are next to each other so I go between the two (appreciate you can’t do this) - but could you plan to cook things that can be left in the oven whilst they had a bath?

6.30pm - OH arrived home and we all eat dinner together
7pm - stories
then between 7.15 and 7.30 in to bed.

I do a meal plan at the start of the week and keep most meals to under 40 min prep / cook time. This week we had:
Feta pasta (this can just be bunged in the oven until you’re ready to cook the pasta)

risotto (not a great one for your situation)

pizza and soup which is a super super cheat one!

Sausage tray bake (another bung in the oven one!) I did it with mash but you could also just stick some roast potatoes in

chicken pie (also not a great one for your situation)

I would maybe sit and meal plan some easy to prep oven meals and use the time they are cooking to bath the kids and then sit down to eat after.

there isn’t anything wrong with what you’re doing tho, I’m giving this advice purely because you said you’d like to sit down and eat together! I do actually find it better for us as a couple too though because then once our daughter is in bed we don’t have to cook so have longer to relax together!

A common misconception OP 😂

We're past reception age now but either a proper dinner when they get home, followed by supper before bed (toast...)

Or the breadsticks etc after school and the proper dinner later.

Can you save a bit of whatever you had the night before? Or pasta if you're in a hurry.

I have "ready" meals for NY 4yo for after school when time is tight.

When I make curry/soup/casseroles
.. whatever, I freeze a couple of kids portions. They get taken out in morning to defrost and just a few minutes in hib/in microwave. So like on Monday DS gets home at 5pm STARVING after gymnastics. So he has protein snack after school (cheese/bits/cold chicken drumstick) and then a warm dinner. Whilst meal heating up give some time to make any pasta or rolls or toast.

Also omelette is always a hit here. Quick and notorious.

Yes hot meal definitely required. We solved the 2 sittings issue by having our tea earlier! Never thought I’d be having it at 5.30/6 but you get quality time and the whole evening then! ( Yes I call it tea !)🤣

He was at nursery and wasn't quite so hungry. Had a picky plate of healthy snacks at home, plus two hot meals at nursery.

His bath time is 6.30/6.45 so it's all a bit tight but I'm going to try and sit down with him myself to eat slow cooker / batch cooked meal.

Those giving hot dinner at home. What's your timings of the day. I have two year old and four year old who has just started school. I want to try and have dinner together but I can't get my timings right. Both DH and I work full time

@oustedbymymate
I changed my hours so I do 8.30 to 4.30. DH does schoop dropoff and then finishes later.
Me and the DC get home about 5.15, I give them a very small snack and then we have dinner at 6. Sometimes DH is home and eats with us, other times I leave his in the oven and he eats later.
DC are ND and can be difficult to get to bed so us eating later after their bedtime just wouldn't work.

@tigerrr we're struggling with this too.
I had hoped that I could give her a snack when she gets home on home days, then eat together at 6pm, but she's a hungry bottomless pit from 3.30-5.30, then just picks at dinner. It's a pain trying to figure out a change in routine!