To be irritated with parents forcing children to sit and eat at soft play

[SrAssumpta]

I spent the morning in a play centre with a few other mums and our 3-4 year olds, met at half 9 and stayed about two hours.
The children weren't even playing five minutes when the other parents were calling them back over "Simon, would you like a yogurt? Come down and have some grapes", "Lucy have some crisps", "Oh darling I've gotten you a slush puppy come down and have it before it melts"
I just don't get it? We met up to let them play, why couldn't they eat at home, it's an expensive play centre why can't they make the most of it? Then a huge platter of nuggets and chips was ordered and they were made sit and eat all the greasy food on their plate and coaxed with "Go on just two more nuggets then you can go back and play"

I find it so irritating, we could have just met up for breakfast or lunch but why take children somewhere they're supposed to have fun and force them to sit down and eat?

. Childhood is a time of rapid growth, and meeting the nutritional needs associated with normal development is critical to a child's well-being (World Health Organization, 2009). Because children have much smaller stomachs than adults, healthy snacking can provide nutrients between meals to help them meet their daily nutritional needs.

edis.ifas.ufl.edu/m/#publication?id=FY1154

Quite an interesting read. I don't think chicken nuggets and chips is healthy, but I think that as an occasional treat when you're on a day out like soft play isn't going to do any harm. And yes it may well be an early lunch.

But hey, who cares when you have people who've extrapolated from the scientific same of one family (their own) that no child ever gets cranky when hungry and you have experts who can judge that if they see someone feed their child a snack or a chicken nugget they can confidently hoik up their judgy pants and declare the obesity epidemic is all their fault.

And as for helicoptering; people who want to interact with the children in the group rather than ignoring them? Bastards.
.

Oh. And that blog 'Isn't it awful children are given snacks at football, what is the world coming to'? Yeah, half time oranges in the 70s caused Abba and AIDS.

Yep I agree. There is no need (medical exempt of course) to have even the tiniest pang of hunger addressed immediately.

It's perfectly reasonable to wait half an hour for the main meal or whatever. No need to have a snack as soon as a child feels even slightly hungry. It's ok to feel hungry ready for your next meal!

It's been a good lesson for my DS, if he's messed about and not eaten lunch, yes he will be hungry log before dinner but he has to wait. Next time he'll eat his lunch properly!

Hunger is a normal bodily message. Yes if you wait too long to eat it can become unpleasant but usually you feel hunger 'in readiness' for the upcoming meal. And that's normal.

Not normal to eat straightaway everytime you feel even slightly peckish or even just don't feel full

I just don't understand why my child having a yoghurt/banana/whatever at soft play at 1030 should annoy anyone. Genuinely didn't realise that other parents would be sitting there irritated by it. Still can't understand it.

I don't agree that dc have such teeny stomachs they need to eat all of the time, French children don't snack all day they don't die from it.
The children I know who have never been offered food in between meals aren't so over sensitive to the feeling of an empty stomach they tantrum about it. If a baby has say 4 hourly feeds by 4/5 months whey do they become more infantile as toddlers and children when they are now growing much slower.
I agree with posters who say parents may be creating the need rather than fulfilling it.

Oh darling I've gotten you a slush puppy

Sorry OP, you more or less lost me at gotten but I honestly don't care if, when and when other people give their kids snacks.

Just thought I'd put that out there for any parents who might start feeling paranoid as they hand over a pot of raisins.

MN baffles me sometimes.

I only want to post to sympathise with vvviola. That's exactly my experience too! I end up buying a jug of squash and a pile of toast to avoid death by nagging. My kids are absolute gannets and I can't seem to go anywhere without snacks.

Nobody is questioning that for some children there is a genuine need, but in real life they are the majority, not the minority they should be. And even in the 50's I bet there was the odd chubby child who just never got the idea of when they were full. But now there's loads.
I was the bad parent who never carried round bag fulls of organic fruit flavoured kale bars to accost my child with, or hailed haribo as satan in a bag, or planned my day round the next meal. and despite the fact she can't half put it away, she makes balanced choices. And her and others raised on the same idea, aren't the ones bemoaning the fact anything that fits is 3' too long. Like the majority of the 'let me express my love in flapjacks' or 'sit and eat these crisps and be quiet' crew are. Nothing wrong with snacking at all but short of valid need you shouldn't need to force them.

Yes people do have short memories. How many of these "have a snack Johnny" parents were fee between meals a as young kids?

Interesting to compare this with the many threads I've seen where teenage boys' appetites are discussed. Apparently they need a pizza and six sandwiches on the hour, every hour, and this has to be accepted and factored into family shopping because 'That's What Teenage Boys Are Like'. Teenage girls don't seem to get the same dispensation, and evidently neither do younger children.

I would imagine teenage boys who have to eat on the hour every hour, were probably brought up snacking all the time.

I've got/have had 3 teenage boys and they don't/didn't eat like that.

Nor did I or my brothers/sisters.

Personally I think many parents are creating the need for their kids to snack from an early age.

I actually did have "hungry" boys who were generally always on the go and did factor in snacks (usually a pack of raisins/couple of cubes of cheese type of thing) as their behaviour did deteriorate when they were low on energy, but I don't think 2 hours in soft play really needs you to encourage your child over for anything other than a drink....and if they moan that they are hungry then a small snack is fair enough - but then mine were racing around and dripping in sweat (eurggh) so were burning of a fair amount of energy. A visit over lunchtime or teatime is obviously different.

If they say gotten then yanbu and should avoid them so your children don't pick up these awful things

Hunger is a useful aid in getting my kids to eat their meals. 'Mummy I'm hungry!' - well you should have eaten your tea then! If however they are going to be doing a lot of climbing or running about, I like to give them a banana.

What really annoys me is how my friend has started to bribe her son to behave with a variety of snacks. So he's learnt to play up for a bag of pom bears. My 2 will stand watching, salivating and looking at mummy with sad puppy dog eyes. Lord knows what my friend thinks of me as i sharply say, 'no!' Before the word 'please' rolls out of their opened mouths.

oh, and they are teenagers now (13 and 15 - 6' and 6'1 respectively) DS1 is slim as a whippet, DS2 is more solid and due a sprout up but not fat. They eat large meals but aren't encouraged to snack - on a school day, they have breakfast at half 7 and lunch isn't until 20 to 2, they have a packed lunch but say they don't eat any of it at morning break, so after lunch that's them until dinner and a snack at suppertime (we don't have deserts, just a main meal)

One mum I know packs enough snacks to feed a small army, spends all morning or afternoon pestering her children to eat the snacks she's brought, most of which are binned after one bite, then gets ridiculously stressed because her children won't sit down and eat a meal nicely as soon as they get home. Err - that will be because they are still full from all the crap you've been ramming down their necks all day! Of course that means they can't possibly have had enough to get them through to the next meal so the snacks come out again within ten minutes of them leaving the table and the cycle repeats.

I've looked after more children than I can count and, unless they had a health issue like diabetes, they have all been capable of selecting independently what they need from a sensible amount of food on offer at appropriate times. I've never persuaded a healthy child to eat and I haven't had to cope with hunger-related meltdowns when I've neglected to do so.

Teaching our children to listen to their appetites and regulate their own food intake in one of the biggest favours we can do them.

and actually it's normal to feel hungry. Dd (11) came in from school, got changed and ran back out, grabbing an orange on the way past, I suspect because she passed the fruit bowl and it was the quickest snack to take out. And she's still out not wanting dinner, not diverting to shops for sweets, and by the time she does eat will be really hungry, and it won't kill her. I get that an only child with one parent makes it easy to have dinner whenever, but the basic principle of her not dying because she has better things to do than eat is the same.

The initial response to a shout of I'm hungry is usually "good". :o

a further shout then they got invited to get a drink

any more then fruit was offered.

Sometimes it is simply thirst or boredom - I suffer the same myself and snack unnecessarily when what I need is a drink or something else to do.

It only irritates me because the children weren't looking for anything, they were playing happily but being pestered and hounded with all these snacks. It was like watching a toddler harass a content little dog, just leave them alone! It was only two hours between breakfast and lunch time, in a play centre, yet some children were called back more than 4 times for snacks upon snacks and slushy drinks they hadn't even asked for.

I think Worra is definitely on to something, if children are beckoned for snacks this much then of course a pang of hunger is going to throw them a little bit.

Absolutely nothing wrong with having a snack and drink on the table and yes I'm known to pester DD to have a drink if she's hot and sweaty to but to follow them around coaxing them from their friends with the rustle of a crisp packet or the threat that mummy will eat all your grapes if you don't hurry, really is ott! Especially when it's all followed by chips and nuggets.

There's a long summer ahead of us and if every trip or day out comes with the expectation of masses of snacks, smooties, slushys, nuggets, chips etc then it's going to be very expensive and the children will probably really struggle going back to normal eating when school starts.

You're lucky captain that your friend doesn't just start handing out to yours too, this is the thing that drives me up the wall the most about the whole snacking thing, that for some parents its not enough to resuscitate their own dc every 2 hours with rice cakes and raisins they need to nourish others with crap too all in the name of sharing. It fucks me off so much I actually started a thread about it for advice www.mumsnet.com/Talk/parenting/2376687-If-your-dc-dont-snack

I actually could have written your OP Rabbit!

When mine were that age I would wait for them to ask for a drink/snack. I would take my own water and would restrict what I was willing to buy - either due to cost or because it was junk.

Unless there is a medical/behavioural reason I can't see why 3-4 year olds need to be 'forced' to stop...

I truly believe (and I have worked with children for over 30 years) that people talk a lot of rubbish about children having melt downs because they are hungry. They never used to. Nowadays they are so used to having snacks they get cross when they are not offered them. Many children (not all I know) are never told to wait. I know loads of people will come on to tell me how little Oscar can only function if he has a snack at 30 minute intervals, but this just didn't happen in years gone by. It wasn't part of the way we lived and we were much healthier .We are getting so used to seeing fat children (and adults) that we have forgotten what healthy children look like!

Rabbit, actually she did once give them snacks but I said to her that I don't let them snack because they won't eat their lunch. Which is true and can quite happily exist on half an apple and a bite of sandwich for hours...

She then told me her so never eats his lunch or tea either.

Anyway she doesn't offer food to them now.

Once at a bus stop my dd was staring at a lady opening a kitkat. The lady saw my dd and asked if my dd wanted it instead. I told the lady no, because we were going home for lunch but she gave her half instead! I couldn't believe it!!

I want to know how to stop mine insisting I play on the bloody stuff at soft play. He goes through asking, ordering then actually coaxes 'Come on mummy, you'll have fun if you try. Don't be scared, I'll help you.' etc.

I just want to sit down and drink shit coffee.

But eating in one of those places? Nope...