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

Mmm... I can see that six weetabix or fish fingers could be regarded as greedy. My daughter really isn't greedy she is just hungry in the morning. I am quite careful about what my children eat but need to be careful not to be obsessive, because I easily could be (I read this thread in the first place because it was about food and portions etc) and I need to make a concerted effort to ensure that my own odd relationship with food is not passed down to them.
One of my aims wrt my daughters is that they get to adulthood without ever (a) feeling they need to go on a diet or (b) going on a diet.
They eat their meals until they are satisfied (not full) and leave space for pudding at the weekend. They do not snack and they know that it is ok to eat cake but just one, pudding is good but not all the time ... Girls need to be taught how to eat pudding, because pudding can make you happy but too much pudding can make you fat and that can make you sad. It is a balancing act.

There are one or two big fat tall odd in the DCs class, but most of the tall ones are fairly lanky. DD never got to wear her PE tracksuit bottoms last year because they were well above her ankles but so loose at the waist that they would fall down when she ran.

Oh I love a food thread on MN. It brings out all the sanctimonious posters!

BTW my child would only have half a fish finger, with the breadcrumbs taken off (NUTRITIONALLY VOID) with seventeen types of vegetables. He's horrified at the mere thought of chips, since I've brought him up properly and not obese. Shame on all of you.

Well my child eats 20 fish fingers with 10 portions of chips for breakfast but she is 9ft 12 and runs an ultra marathon before school every day. You can see all of her ribs.

Hoddtastic, neice takes after her dad's side of the family (dad is nearly 6 ft 5, aunts both over 5 foot 11). She has huge feet too. Is taller than most 8 and 9 year olds yes.

ice and oyster

I wasn't trying to boast about how much DS eats, or suggest that we are much too nutritionally aware to feed our child such nonsense (I reckon he has them once a week maybe twice) I was merely wondering whether I was alone in thinking that 6 fish fingers was too many for a 3 year old to be served to a child for dinner.

Do I win? My DC won't eat fish fingers! Now chicken dippers DD2 (6) would happily eat a whole packet DD3 (3) will only eat 1! DD1 (8) has never liked processed meat.

Money what sort of child will not eat a fish finger? You must be raising animals!

Had fishfingers for my ds (5) a couple days ago and he was served 3 with half a plate of veg. Clean plate and a very content kid. 6 is too much for a 3 y.o. Would have given 1-2 with serving one first and offering the second if the plate was polished off.

I now realise that I was so very wrong to let my children have the scent of a rose for pudding when they were small. It was obviously the start of 15 year old ds's serious cereal habit.......

It's supposed to be "everything in moderation" isn't it?

6 would be too many for me.

Fishfingers & baked beans sounds awful to me!

SIX fishfingers and half a tin of beans for a 3 year old?!
Regardless of the fact it's too many and if they can eat them all or not, surely you can see that that's an insane amount of salt for a 3 year old to eat in one meal?!

I think 2 fish fingers with a quarter of a low salt tin of beans would be more appropriate.

My tweens only have three and a third of a tin of beans. That said my DS11 managed to polish off five small plates of Sunday lunch this week before I made him stop so no judgment from me

I took my Y2 class on a trip on Friday. One boy had not 6, but EIGHT fish fingers and chips in his lunch box. This was in addition to some fruit and a cereal bar!

Sorry for brief hijack but have to ask, Fitbit, was some poor sod really sent on a trip with cold ffs and chips?

3 of anything 'fingery' e.g. fish or vegetable fingers or sausages is the most an adult should eat and I (38) usually stick to 2

Have you never noticed that sausages come in different sizes?

I'd worry that you were my SIL were it not for the fact my nephew is 8 not 3. My mother takes pride in how much food nephew can put away. She did the same with my brother.

Weirdly, although I'm fat, none of the rest of my family are.

Mum reckons if kids are hungry that's because they need the energy. It'd probably be sausages rather than fish fingers though.

Yep!

Ds1 is 8 and will eat five if we have fishfingers. Ds2 is 6 and will eat four.

Six sounds like a huge amount for a three year old.

3 of anything 'fingery' e.g. fish or vegetable fingers or sausages is the most an adult should eat

Why? If I was having a 'normal' portion of battered cod for dinner it would be larger than three fish fingers, even a small one.

'Should'? Oh ffs, relax a bit.

Definately far too many! The problem is they eat it then often puke (as DS found out when he managed to sneak extra food onto his plate on a school trip and wolfed it down quick)

It depends on the child. If that's how much food they need, there's no harm done. I cooked 15 fish fingers two twins of beans. Between two 2yos and one 5 year old. The 5yo had 5 fish fingers, one child had 4 and the other had 3 so I guess it can be done. DP had the rest and there weren't many beans left. They also had a small chopped salad but none of them were overly interested lol. All three of the children I care for have big appetites.

The problem with saying the child "needs" that much food is it is a vicious cycle of encouraging over eating and problems with portion control which is a massive contributor to obesity - both in adults and children.

No child needs that much food. They may want to eat it, or have come to expect that much but that is very different to actually needing it!

I don't really get why 6 fishfingers are such an issue? Would anyone blink an eye if they were chicken nuggets? My kids would easily eat 6 chk nuggets and still be looking starved.

I definitely give him fish over yogurt. Yogurt is full of sugar.

My kids have never puked from overeating not even when dd ate a snail

ime fishfingers are really small... we don't do them at all for that reason. My kids (5&7) get half a battered cod or something if we're doing an easy dinner.

But sirzy, how is it overeating if the child is meeting his or her appropriate nutritional needs? a child's body is growing and developing and their nutritional needs are different from those of an adult. I know that sometimes, if I have had a really heavy weights session at the gym, I will crave protein. Some days, I'm not very hungry at all. Toddlers are like that to an extreme extent. Mine have days where they eat vast portions, and days where they nibble a bit of carrot and that's it. And they have meals like that within a day, too. I would be concerned if my child ate six fingers as a standard portion. But if DD had been doing sports all afternoon and ate three fish fingers and was still hungry and ate a cold chicken leg from the fridge, I would assume that at that particular time, she needed to eat those foods.

She'd probably choose tiny portions of everything the flowing day, or only really want to eat fruit and veg.