Can your family afford snacking and random grazing?

[TransAdmiralsAreAdmirals]

DC are grumpy because we don't allow random grazing and ask that they let me know when they're planning to prepare food using high-value ingredients or ingredients which may reasonably form a central component of a family meal.

I buy enough packed lunch items to last them both for the week, and much prefer it if I don't have to buy replacements if someone eats extra bags of crisps or snacks on extra packets of raisins or grain bars or similar.

Ditto preparing snacks between mealtimes: making toast, or bowls of pasta or cereal, or making fruit smoothies, or baking cupcakes.
Mine will get bowls of frozen peas or sweetcorn to snack on, so I often open the freezer to find empty bags.

Or unlimited condiments, for that matter -oodles of ketchup, sweet chilli sauce or mayo etc.

Or raiding the fruit bowl; there's enough fruit for everyone to have a couple of pieces per day but not to eat 3 bananas in a day, for instance.

We eat 3 square meals a day; quality home-cooked / prepared food and always have fruit available, so they're not going hungry. DC1 in particular insists that all their friends have free reins in the kitchen and that their cupboards are stuffed to the gunnels with snacky foods to which they help themselves with gay abandon, citing fridge raids of quantities of items I could never sustain in our home on our budget: I literally couldn't afford to stock lots of grazing foods in case someone feels a bit bored or peckish.

Can you, and do you, keep plentiful reserves of snacks which your DC are allowed to help themselves to?

My kids would have to be starving to even think about rummaging in the vegetable drawer in the freezer and grab a pack of frozen sweetcorn 😂

Yup. Apparently it’s the snack of choice for many, diving into the freezer and munching on down on the frozen veg.

100% … end up with a belly ache!

🤣🤣

I won’t give up, it’s my opinion. Kids complain about everything, my kids are wanting a mobile phone at the moment, 80% of their classmates have them. They’re not having one just because 80% of parents in their class think it’s okay. The OP feels her kids healthily and I agree with her I also believe that statistically a percentage of women commenting differently will either be overweight or have overweight kids whilst telling her she’s causing eating disorders in her own kids!

MN does "naice" snacks now, frozen sweetcorns.

You sound awful.

Kids don't "complain about everything", obviously they have a point. Now you don't want them to have a phone, that's a valid parental decision, it's up to you.

But kids complaining because everyone else is using phones to communicate, discuss their homework, arrange their social life, their meet-ups, their sleepovers and not having a phone means they completely miss out is not complaining "about everything".
They have a point. Still doesn't mean you have to change your mind, but it's not "nothing" for them.

i think deciding not to get your kids a phone is a personal decision, but it doesn’t make them complainers.

the thing about being a parent is you absolutely have control when they are a child and under your roof.

where you lose control is when they leave. And it’s their choice if they come back or keep running. Onky our kids decide if we are good parents, not us. And treating them with respect, explaining our decisions, and not being derogatory about their needs and wishes, is key to being a good parent.

no one is disputing her kids are healthy, although clearly eating frozen sweetcorn was a big risk, this is not about are they physically healthy. Parenting is about much more than keeping them healthy, we also need to ensure they are happy, mentally healthy, and learn many life lessons, including how to moderate themselves.

one day your kids will have phones, and you will be sitting wondering why they don’t use them to call you.

Free REIN as in riding your horse and loosening the reins to let the horse go faster. See also 'rein it in', which has the opposite effect.

The word does not have a 'g' in it.

Yes we have a free for all on any snacks. I sometimes do a top up shop or whoosh delivery for snacks. DH is a snacker as well as both DC.

But we are fortunate not to be worrying about cost of food shopping. If we were on a tight budget then I’d enforce some boundaries.

Frozen peas, however, are excellent, and both my children love them, as do I. Might have some now actually

😂😂😂😂😂

yes
have teens and they are hungry beasts.
just meals is not enough for them.

for snacks they have seasonal fruit, or the make themselves toasties or fried egg noodles.
eggs are your friend
as is bread

I think girls going through puberty do get really hungry, more than culturally we expect them to be. One of mine went through a stage of having two servings every single meal, that has slowed down as she's got older (and yes, she is a healthy weight and doesn't eat crap). Letting teens eat when hungry is part of teaching them to listen to their appetite.

I'm laughing at two things on this thread though:

1. how many people with small children are commenting - you have no idea what's coming and b) how many people say they don't allow snacks then list a whole list of things their children eat between meals (shocker: eating a cheese sandwich/piece of fruit/cucumber sticks and hummus between meals is a snack).

My teenagers complain because although they have free run of the kitchen and can get themselves food whenever they want to, I mostly stock ingredients rather than food!

They'd like unlimited biscuits and crisps and sausage rolls. In my kitchen they can make their own biscuits and sausage rolls, but somehow they aren’t so keen on snacking if that means a bit of effort and waiting.

Cereal/toast/pasta/fruit/veg/soup/beans etc are all available all the time. My teens make things themselves and my under 10 year olds ask me for food.

@SpiritAdder , you are wrong not pedantic.

I bake ‘snacks’ once a week so there’s deliberately always a supply of healthy-ish stuff like oat biscuits and small bead rolls which my DS can have. He always comes home from school starving and we don’t eat tea until 6 ish so that’s a long time to be hungry. Edited to say- doing this is very cheap, but I appreciate that not everyone has the time.

Are your kids also teenagers? Or much younger children? If you don't have teenagers you won't understand how they always seem hungry plus go through a phase of snacking often. It's normal for many, many teenagers 🤷‍♀️ My friend used to make an issue of snacking. If her kids wanted an extra muffin etc she'd say things like 'sure but let's all jog round the block or go on an extra bike ride etc' Her DD suffered from anorexia from being a young teenager and also now over eating. She would make her kids turn off the TV after one short Cbeebies programme. She ended up with a DS who won't watch much TV at all she could never pop a film on and get a break at all. Parents need to be very careful they don't unintentionally create major issues around food.

My daughter was 13 yesterday and does around 15 hours of dance class a week. She is hungry constantly and possibly slightly underweight so I don’t restrict her at all. She has 3 (healthy, homemade) meals a day, loads of fruit and veg… and lots of snacks on top. On the days she dances 3-4 hours she often has 2 servings of dinner - before and after class - plus a granola bar or an apple with peanut butter or whatever she fancies that day. So if OPs kids are similar aged they might honestly be super hungry so then the conversation is around low cost options to keep them fed.

Reading over these posts, I'd like to interject that there is a difference between snacking/grazing and a mini-meal.

I would suggest that snacking or grazing is a solitary activity. A mini-meal - such as something that a ravenous child eats straight after school - is something a bit more social.

If you are a fan of My 600lb life, you will see that their eating disorders are nothing to do with normal social eating, but the clandestine gouging.

I would say that, if you have a ravenous teen, have their "snack" with them, rather than just letting them do whatever they want. Make pancakes for them at 4pm as you discuss their day together. Ban mobile phones during this time.

My children and myself are not overweight at all. There is a balance to be had here. Healthy eating is important to me but obsessing over fruit or condiment portions is not healthy. Teens need to eat more than adults, they are growing, they might be very active.

Eating to your appetite is important and I think, if they are hungry that teens should be able to make themselves a healthy snack. I would discourage grazing or mindless eating in front of a screen.

Make sure you “dive into the freezer” and “rummage through” in a desperate manner to get them though as some posters are imagining, instead of just opening the freezer door and taking the bag out and pouring some in a bowl.

I'm not sure where you're coming from?Maybe you've misinterpreted my post?
Meant to quote someone else?
My kids get snacks regularly, if they don't ask I offer. 🤷‍♀️

The thing that annoyed me about my (now adult) children was the selfishness. If I’ve bought a tray of 30 eggs and said I need 15 of them for baking and meals for the week I don’t expect one person to eat 12 of the remaining in two days and only leave 3 for the other 5 people to share. Same with strawberries/grapes etc. I’d buy three punnets at a time and not expect one person to eat the lot. It’s not me trying to restrict their intake, it’s about being considerate of other people and allowing them to have some too. Yes of course I can buy more but there comes a point where it isn’t affordable or practical. If I go to bed knowing there’s 4l of milk in the fridge I don’t expect to get up in the morning and there be no milk left. By all means use some bread and ham and cheese but think about the fact that I have three packed lunches to make in the morning and leave enough for that.

The other thing that irritated me (which didn’t seem to be the case for the OP) was that they’d get up late and not have breakfast but then eat an entire pack of biscuits. Have breakfast and then eat some biscuits as a snack but don’t have biscuits as a meal.

We had plenty of bread, cereal, cheese, cold meats, sausage rolls, eggs, pasta, noodles, fruit, veg, yoghurt, nuts, fish fingers, soup, rice pudding as well as biscuits, crisps, chocolate bars, home made brownies or flapjacks or cakes. They could eat whatever they wanted I just didn’t expect them to eat all of one thing leaving none for other people or to eat the things I had earmarked for meals. That seems similar to the OP and I don’t think it’s as cruel or restrictive as some posters are claiming.

My younger children are allowed snacks but not unlimited snacks because I want them to eat their meals and if they snack too much they don’t want the meals. They also have to ask for now but obviously that will change once they become teenagers and no doubt I’ll once again be waking up to no milk or bread.