To ask if you think 6 fish fingers is too many for a 3 year old boy to have for dinner?

[BasinHaircut]

along with half a 400g run of baked beans and chips.

Need to settle an arguement.

Cheers

some of these kids must be fat, have worms or some kind of digestive issues or parents who exaggerate a 9 year old eating 6 weetabix? Will it be a whole box and a wrung out cow by the time he's 11?

Yes too much . . . But some days my 3yr old eats little and other days he eats lots . . . so I definitely think it could be done!

He is healthy weight, no worms or illnesses.

Lifeisshort123 it's what he chooses

i'd have trouble eating 6 as an adult . if they were served with veg and chips/potatoes etc. maybe if they were served on their own. but i doubt a 3 year old could manage that

Neice is healthy just properly active. Karate or Judo three times a week, dance twice, football (5 a side every weekend) and she's always running around from the second she comes home from school. She's four, four foot six nearly and weighs 2.5 stone.

Well DD is 2.8 and she easily eats 3. She wouldn't eat anything much with it though - maybe a few beans.

i remember being about 8 or 9 though and having 3 weetabix every morning! with lots of milk. for some reason i never felt full with 1or 2

I give my 6 year old 2 fish fingers, 9 year old gets 3 and then half a tin of beans between them.

I think portion sizes for kids can be a bit skewiff sometimes though - in my previous work 3 and 4 year olds were getting 3 frozen yorkshires on their dinner! Now I've a big appetite but I only have 2. Some people give huge portions then there are people like that supernanny who a few years ago suggested 1/4 of a mini pozza is enough for a 10 year old If the child is hungry it's best to give them proper food rather than junk, and I wouldn't be leaving them hungry after tea - but I wouldn'toffer 6 at a time cos that encourages them to eat all 6. Offer 2 to start then give another 2 if they ask for it. Same with weetabix - under 8ish and I'd give 1 weetabix with banana and milk - but of course if they asked for more I'd give it. I just think automatically giving them big portions encourages them to et it all, even if they wouldn't neccessarily ask for it left to their own devices. Children do eat a lot during growth spurts but on MN children either eat vasts amount of food (perhaps more than some adults) or they eat less than sparrows At 3 I'd give 2 fish fingers to start.

a 4 year old who is 4ft6? are you sure? that's 2cm below the top height on the centile chart for an 8 year old... (I have tall kids btw)

DS would eat that and he is 3. He has food issues and we are working with a therapist. It has been made clear to me that it is completely normal for kids to eat more at one meal than the other two meals. As an example, yesterday DS ate three bowls of oatmeal for breakfast (make it with hidden veg so he got 6 portions of veg in that meal), for lunch he had a 1/4 of a peanut butter sandwich and a cheese stick and for dinner had apple and vegetable sticks (like carrots, celery and cucumber). During the day he drank about 0.5L of water and the same amount of milk (1% fat). If you look at the breakfast in isolation it looks awful but based on the whole day it makes sense.

However there isn't a single veggie on the plate and after the 2nd fish finger I would have not given any more until the other food was eaten and the kid had drunk some water/milk.

That's the height of my 8 yr old

Haha!
Why must it be an exaggeration because you have never experienced it?
And she's a girl, she's not fat but is tallish and fairly active. Healthy... I don't think she had a day off school last year. She doesn't snack and likes a big breakfast. The others eat more and do more.

Oh and she doesn't eat them all in the same bowl.... Two at a time.
Sometimes she has porridge, but generally weetabix. Then two slices of toast and jam. Generally a homemade smoothie. I really don't think it would be a good idea to send her to school hungry and she really isn't fat.

The reality is, we have lost track when our children are hungry maybe or heaven forbid, they are even really hungry). We over feed them, snacks here, snacks there, some (most) parents cannot collect a child from school without literally tempting said child down the driveway without a "snack" in their hand.

When my DD was 3 I would give her 3, accompanied with a mixture of peas & sweetcorn, no chips or waffles etc. followed by fruit & maybe a yogurt. She's clear her plate but wouldn't typically ask for anything else afterwards.

I could happily eat 10, in bread, with chips & mushy peas!

There are actually only 400 kcal and 3.2g of fat in 6 weetabix and 366kcal and 15g fat in 6 fish fingers. So whilst quite a lot for one meal, neither are that ott. By contrast 2 sausages have 277 kcal and 21g of fat, 3 would have 415 kcal and 32g fat.

My dc have their treats, enjoy a mcds and all that.. But a 2 year old eating an adult sized portion?
I'm the most lax parent but even I know you don't give children adult sized portions.

Children should be eating little and often to keep them satisfied.

What are people feeding their kids that has them hungry all the time?

it's the massive repeated bowls of mindless eating... gives no sense of portion control, regardless of fat content. Seem greedy to me.

And I am still not buying 4 year old the size of a tall 8 year old, unless it's got something wrong/is overfed so has grown too quickly. QED by this thread.

I give DD a snack the minute she gets out of school. The school lunch portions are tiny, and she is tall and active. Through a process of trial and error, I have worked out that she needs a snack roughly the size of a small meal after school or she mopes around for the rest of the afternoon asking for food, losing her temper and being unable to concentrate on her homework. One wholemeal pitta bread with hummus, cucumber and tomatoes with an apple and a glass of milk, and she is restored to a pleasant child who does her homework and runs off to play.

Fascinated by all the adults saying they couldn't eat that many, I could easily inhale 6 fish fingers, I don't, but I could. I have to negotiate with myself and limit myself to 2-3, I'm an average 30 year old, 5 ft 8, 10 stone, but I'm a bottomless pit and would eat massive portions all the time if I was let. Always been this way so I am in awe of people who say things like "oh I could never manage that much!" or who regularly leave food on their plates.

Completely agree many people have lost sight of hunger, quantity and appropriate or necessary snacks vs eating mindlessly. We have problems with far too much food and a of crap food, whereas previous generations didn't have enough and that's where their food related problems lay.

i give mine a banana and a water. If they have swimming they have a flapjack or a cereal bar cos it means that tea'll be late.

I think snacking is a real problem. I give my son a banana so that he has something in him if he's had a shit lunch (school dinners...and he's fussy)
He has breakfast around 8, they have fruit and milk mid morning, lunch at 12, i pick up at 3.15, we eat dinner between half 5 and half 6. I wont kill him to go 6.5 hours without a few hundred calories in addition to his meals?

DD aged 9 would have the afternoon snack outlined above plus maybe one more thing, for her lunch.

Both kids are fit/slim/active. Some of their mates are already chubby/ont their way to it.

Hoddtastic- my nephew will be 6 at the end of the month and he's 130cm tall and his 7-8 yr old trousers look like they've had an argument with his ankles! He also wears size 2 shoes.

my son is just 6yrs2 months and the same height give or take a cm or 2. He can't keep them up without a belt or gathering them onto the tightest button so all the fabric bunches though as he is tall, not 'big' (if that makes sense?)

I don't believe a 4yo is almost the same height as my (tall) 8 year old - without being fed so much they've grown too big prematurely. It's no surprise in Dc's class that the massive tall kids are also fat, and have fat parents.

I don't think I could eat all that and I'm a greedy 22 year old woman! If I make myself fishfingers it's usually 4 with 2 potato waffles.