To not carry about endless snacks and things for my DC?

[AwfulMaureen]

I seem to be seeing an awful lot of parents with snacks in bags....I remember that I did do that a bit when the children were tiny...as in under 3...and their meal times weren't always regular. But now they are 9 and 6 I don't...however I see that the parents of their friends have things in their bags all the time....bags of cheese or chocolate bars...cartons of juice etc. This is not for long gaps between meals whilst waiting for swimming lessons or anything...it's constantly!

Walking about town with a friend and her bag is full of bloody food! Her son is NINE...surely he can wait a couple of hours?

[minipie]

I think swimming is an exception leech makes me starving anyway

[TheUnemployableLeech]

I take a snack to swimming because we have breakfast at 7, leave the house at 9 for the 20 minute walk to get there. Then he has his swimming lesson at 930, then more often than not I need to do a food shop so we have a 20-30 min walk to the shop, have to do the shopping and then have a 15-20 minute walk home.

[KellyElly]

We used to go and get chips from the cafe after swimming on a saturday My DD is a weird child who doesn't like chips! There's a chip shop right by the bus stop when we come out of the baths. Might nip in next Sunday and leave DD to have her banana and a bag of chips for me

[andsmile]

Ive said to know to snack just now after he walked in the door as his spag bol will be ready in 30 mins.

Before I would have given them both a piece of fruit or a ginger biscuit (or other small biscuits).

MN can give you a wake up call. I still took a narnie and drink out to softplay for toddler.

[mrsjay]

We used to go and get chips from the cafe after swimming on a saturday

[KellyElly]

Surely the children with "hollow legs" are the ones you need to be even more careful with though to make sure they don't get into habits of over eating? I don't think three meals per day and two snacks is over eating though. DD will always be hungry for sweets/cake etc but it doesn't mean she gets it. I personally think eating on a more regular basis, as well as being good for your metabolism and blood sugar, stops over eating at meal times. Some kids will have massive portions followed by a stodgy pudding which isn't how we eat at all. I've always been an advocate of little, healthy and often.

[WorraLiberty]

Ahh I see Kelly

Actually whenever I smell chlorine, I automatically think of chicken cuppa soup because that's what I used to have as a kid when I got home Lol.

[Sirzy]

Surely the children with "hollow legs" are the ones you need to be even more careful with though to make sure they don't get into habits of over eating?

[KellyElly]

We go to swimming on the bus, usually on a Sunday quite early in the morning, so we are coming out of the pool at say 10ish (breakfast has usually been at 7) so the snack is for the bus on the way home as it would be the sort of time she'd have a snack anyway.

[WorraLiberty]

Some do appear to have hollow legs!

But take swimming for example, is there a reason why you take the snack with you rather than wait until they get home?

That's what I find interesting...why some people want to immediately put a stop to their child's hunger?

How do they ever learn to cope for a while? I just wonder whether this sort of thing is producing the over eaters of the future?

[KellyElly]

How could a child eat enough at meal times if they've been snacking all day anyway? My DD does but she is an eating machine! Don't know where she puts it all, must have hollow legs . To be fair it's all pretty healthy anyway, especially during the week, only really have treats at the weekend.

[mrsjay]

^How could a child eat enough at meal times if they've been snacking all day anyway?

I think it's a bit of a vicious circle^

well exactly how can parents expect their children to eat anything if they are eating all day or have just had something an hour before lunch and then they pick at lunch baffles me,

[WorraLiberty]

How could a child eat enough at meal times if they've been snacking all day anyway?

I think it's a bit of a vicious circle.

[KellyElly]

I think five hours between eating is quite a lot and DD will have a snack at nursery and a snack mid afternoon. These are usually quite healthy - fruit/rice cakes. Also when we go swimming I take a snack for afterwards as swimming makes you hungry for some reason. I think it's pretty normal and a healthy way to eat (depending on what the snack is obviously).

[DameDiazepamTheDramaQueen]

If your child can eat enough at meal times then I can understand what you wouldn't want to carry around snacks. Some kids are grazers though, just like adults.

[TheUnemployableLeech]

lucylouby do you not see the irony in what you have just written? Children do not need to be fed loads of snacks....and then you say it is perfectly ok to feed them three snacks a day? And they don't complain, well, why would they? They get three snacks.

[Lucylouby]

Children do not need to be fed loads of snacks all day long. I run events for the scout and guide movements quite a lot. These events will sometimes involve sleeping over and will generally involve a lot of running around and physical activity. The children will be fed, 3 good sized meals a day, a morning snack, an afternoon snack and supper in the evening befo bed. The children are not constantly moaning they are hungry, it's very rare to hear them complain about this issue. They are all so busy with their friends having fun.
Ime parents give out too many snacks as a way to keep their children quiet and use snacks as a form of entertainment, as another poster says, they use food in the same way they use the tv.

[minipie]

Yes sorry bones I didn't mean to imply all toddlers need snacks. Some can manage fine without and aren't interested in them. But some do need them - I'm assuming nobody would say a toddler ought to learn to wait for their next meal!

[bonesarecoralmade]

"Toddlers need snacks, they can't eat enough at meal times to keep up with their needs." This isn't true, not for all toddlers anyway. When my dd1 was 18 months - 3 she needed to eat meals at the right time, but could only eat meals. If we were going to be out over lunchtime, I would pack the lunch rather than make her wait an hour, but I would give her the real food she would have had at home, like a cheese sandwich, because if I gave her some stupid cereal bar that would be it, she would have eaten, and only eaten crap. Then she would have fruit in the afternoon if she asked for it, usually didn't, and eat dinner, unless some eejit had given her a crap cereal bar, in which case, again, that would be it.

"I eat little and often, so do my kids. We're all pretty active and slim." well there you are then, if you dont' have a problem with putting weight on, this is why you don't see that snacks are EVIL (only half joking). My friends who carry cereal bars around are naturally slim too. I am not, carbs make me blimp out. I need to be very careful to stay slim, eat only whole foods and little or no sugar, enough protein, and basically almost nothing that comes in a packet - so meals, basically, not snacks. I don't want my children to think that carb-grazing is a human right, because if they are like me, it will make them miserable - either because they have to curtail something that feels socially normal, and that has become a habit; or because they will put weight on.

[PrincessScrumpy]

I agree. I have 3 dc (6yo dd and 2yo dtds) j always have snacks for dtds (part of that is to control/distract when needed) and sometimes dd1 well ask if I have anything for her but generally the answer is no as she's old enough not to need snacks as her meals are bigger. Sometimes I will let dd1 have some but only so she's not left out. I have no intention of carrying picnics everywhere I go once dc are older, certainly not once they're school age.

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

"No need to take food if you are only out for a while, I always took water but that was it. Mind you I am the worst prepared mum in the world, I never took spare clothes, often forgot tissues/wet wipes and plasters that all stuff real mums seem to carry. its amazing mine made it to teenagers."

Are you me, teenagetantrums - because that's exactly what I was like when mine were little!

[minipie]

Hmmm in theory YANBU OP but I'm not sure what age you can say the need for snacks definitely stops.

Toddlers need snacks, they can't eat enough at meal times to keep up with their needs. Older children going through growth spurts (even teenagers) might be in the same position.

I do agree there is a need for children to learn at some point that it's ok to be hungry for an hour or two. Just not sure what that point is.

[JohnnyBarthes]

The concert thing is relevant - at the cinema it's pretty standard to have popcorn, lollies, Kia Ora, Revels... (and has been forever). It is not the norm to scoff crap at a concert in quite the same way.

[EssenceOfGelfling]

I carry snacks and a bottle of water at all times. However I'm paranoid about an impending apocalypse and so we don't actually eat the food, they're only for when the emergency happens!

How having a sleeping bag and a box of biscuits in the car will actually save us from an asteroid strike / bird flu / yellowstone eruption, I have no idea.