To think your child doesn't need a snack in a 30-minute toddler class?

[Mummyreindeerlegz]

Sorry for the long title.

Why is it some parents give their one year old snacks during really short classes (or at all during classes!)? A one year old wandering around with a soggy rice cake, dropping bits is grim. Wait half an hour or give them a snack before you come.

Please tell me why people think this is ok? Fully prepared to be told I am being unreasonable.

When do babies start to actually understand, though? Sometime after graduation from my experience .

When do babies start to actually understand, though

Id say it's more about when do parents understand.

If your kids had a bottle of milk and some porridge and a banana for breakfast that if they are whinging an.hlur and a half later how on earth could it be hunger.

Even small babies can go three or so hours between feeds.

paxillin DP still gets stroppy when hungry, actually!

Surely it's more of a process, and some babies get it quicker than others? Does anyone go from feeding on demand to 3 mealtimes overnight?

Meh! Formerly for every person who is apparently judging the temper tantrum unfolding before their eyes, there'll be hundreds who wouldn't pay it a second thought.

It's certainly not a reason to risk possibly fucking up a child's future relationship with food for.

My rule of thumb was 'if they can be distracted - or are happy after a drink of water - then they're not hungry. If they can't be distracted, and it's a couple of hours or so since they last ate a meal, then they're genuinely hungry!'

I do genuinely worry about the 'food as a way to occupy a child' approach, and what it sets children up for in future life. If whinging is met with adult attention, playing, book, game, expedition, conversation, then the pattern of 'I feel a bit bored and unhappy, I'll do something' becomes a habit .. whereas if that same whinging is always met by food, that sets up an 'I am bored and a bit unhappy - ah yes, let's eat' habit..

Sometimes, of course, a snack is a totally sensible response - it's a couple of hours after breakfast, child asks for food or is obviously out of sorts - yes, drink and a small snack is the absolutely obvious way forward. But shortly after a meal, or indeed when the next meal is in fact due quite shortly, then testing distraction first is sensible.

CantKeep I think you summed it up brilliantly there.

I have known people buy a young child a packet of crisps while waiting for a meal to arrive and then complain they don't eat enough of the main meal!

It would also help I think of people loomed at what they were eating.

If my meals were so insufficient that a child couldn't go more than 2 hours on it then I'd look at how I could change that.

Are they eating cereal for breakfast if so would an omelette be better fir example.

Some of these lists of food fed between meals is incredible. Crackers and cheese and fruit and yogurts ajd packets of crisps etc that's a meal less than an hour after another meal.

If my child needed sandwiches and yogurts and flapjacks between meals I'd be seriously looking at why I was making and he I could change that rather than throw more snacks at them

There were kids wandering around with biscuits at playgroup again today. They ended up all over the floor and trampled everywhere as kids stood in them. I also knelt in a soggy bit of biscuit. I don't judge the mother's parenting skills, I don't give a fuck whether the kids were actually hungry or being comforted with food - none of that is my business. I do judge the lack of thought for anyone else though. Why should I end up with biscuit encrusted jeans? Why should the women who run playgroup have to clean biscuit off the toys and floor? Sit your kids down to eat, if they don't like it, tough. You don't get to inconvenience everybody else because you can't handle your kids kicking off.

What about thirst Giles? And surely it depends on how much they've had at the previous feed?

Dd probably wouldn't ask for food half an hour after breakfast, but she will sometimes not eat her breakfast, even though she hadn't eaten for over 12 hours, so in that case I would be offering whatever food I could as it could be teething pain stopping her eating etc. It's often guesswork with babies isn't it?

Also, most of the interaction I've had with health visitors has centred around weight gain - I can see how people can get hung up on feeding.

Oh God yy to the obsession with weight from HV

I can definitely see how that could run away from you and the stress over which point you say, that's it.

Toddlers in particular fluctuate. They have days where they live of crumbs and others where you have to say "no this is ridiculous now"

It's OK not to panic when your toddler hasn't followed the line one month..

I had one which seemed reluctant to listen to anything I had to say as shed already made up her mind as dd had gained some weight. Never mind she was barely feeding and the problems I was reporting bit because shed gained (bearing in mind shed been nil by mouth fir a few days so even an ounce or two was an increase with her milk intake) everything was ignored. It's too much focus on weight ignoring the other vital signs of health

Weight does seem to be the only measure of health that my HVs use.

I admit to a bit of moral panic when I see teenagers stopping at MacDonalds on the way home from school, and am a bit bemused by the primary school kids with sandwiches at the school gates, but with babies and toddlers it's a bit different. DD would lose her appetite for food completely whenever she was ill or teething. Since 6 months it's been non stop clods, so she would start getting into solids, and then back to only bf like a yoyo. What she didn't eat she would make up for with milk - fine for her, HVs said there's no problem as she's following her line! But all the change in demand meant the supply was all over the place, leading to blocked ducts and general misery. At that point I would have been rice cake woman, desperately trying to get her to eat anything I could, whenever.

I would have cleaned up after her, although I discovered a half eaten rice cake in my pocket the other day, as a result. So much easier to clean up when dry!

What would the non-snackers do here if their semi verbal 18 month old asked them for food at a non meal time, and was not distracted?

I used to only feed her at set meals, encouraged her to wait, but she kicks off when hungry and has since turning one. I cook proper meals from scratch mostly lifted from my dietician's mealplan for those judgers who say the main meals can't be filling enough.

I don't think it's so much about teaching dc to wait, as not actively getting them out of the routine of waiting.
A baby fed on demand will need maybe 4 or so hours in between feeds, then have a proper feed and get on with their lives by 4ish months old, they wont want to take 2oz every half hour or so and be constantly fretting with hunger for small slurps.
I'm not convinced it's in us to need this for our comfort levels until we learn to 'deal with hunger', I think it's natural to get gradually hungry and not really notice that much, that is until weaning starts and Mum starts chipping in constantly putting a stop to the impending evil hunger, then once natural feelings become alien and cause distress.
A tantrum is a tantrum, it's emotional and anyone judging a tantruming toddler is a nob, we shouldn't be made to feel we have to teach our children emotional eating to appease other people in the vicinity when our toddlers are bored or frustrated.

If they had had breakfast at 8 and asked at 10 then I would offer something small. If they then asked again at 11 I would say no and stick to it. For one giving in every time a child creates for something isn't a good way to start things anyway!

Rixera, I would personally try a drink, and think about bringing the next meal forward if that doesn't work, rather than delaying hunger with a snack, I bet your meals are fab and it's a shame if they have to hit the bin later if they can be enjoyed sooner.
If you play around with meal times as her appetite fluctuates then you can know she won't kick off for the sake of getting something different, if she knows she will get lunch now or lunch later there's less reason to say hungry when she's actually not.

I think we're culturally quite judgemental about food. Many people mistake thirst for hunger, and this is often mentioned as if it is some sort of moral failure due to over indulgence, when it's very common in many species. In our evolutionary past we most likely got a lot of our fluids from fruit, rather than drinking water.

I did see an experiment where they showed food to people in an MRI, both when they were hungry and just after a meal, and some people's brains reacted differently, whereas some responded as if they were still hungry. They did the same thing with young children, but leaving snacks out after lunch. Some completely ignored them but some behaved and kept eating as long as there was food. Again, in the past, food wasn't freely available and hunter gatherers often graze as they go and then feast when they have a successful hunt, and then go a while without that amount of food.

I'm not saying 'cavemen ate constantly so that is the correct way to eat'. I just don't think that in the context of evolutionary history, 3 meals a day has been the norm for that long.

Even in the last century malnutrition was widespread enough to mean that a significant number of the population saw heir diet improve due to rationing. Having food so freely available has been such a massive change that it's no wonder we can't cope with it.

A bit off topic, I know, but I do feel that why should be a health issue becomes a moral one far too quickly.

I'd pretty much do what rabbit suggested.

Rabbit, that's actually a really good point - one of the things that really made sense to me in a baby book I had was about thinking of the 'diet as a whole' rather than 'yummy snacks and boring meals'.

So things like tinkering with timings of the main meal, or eating a component of the main meal in advance (or in the case of our family preference for a sweet snack at teatime, making it pretty much what we would have had for pudding at supper and then having no puddings after meals) meant that the overall balance of the diet was the same, and the same food was consumed, regardless of when it was eaten.

Can'tReach - I know exactly what you mean about malnutrition, and that change has come about in such a short time. 2 of my grandparents (born early 20th century in very poor families in the Welsh valleys) were stunted in their growth due to malnutruition. My mother - born just before the 2nd World War - towered over both of them as a result of rationing. My siblings and I grew up poor enough to know that what we were given to eat was 'all there was', and asking for more today would simply mean less tomorrow. My own children live in an age of constant food availability. It's a really quick change.

I am obviously getting very into this topic! Who new snacks would be the hot button issue...

Rabbit Is your general experience that most babies you know will go 4 hours between feeds at 4 months? Mine didn't get near that until much later, and very rarely would I spend 3 hours with any mum friends and only see them feed once at that age. I assume babies differ in the way they eat as much as they do in sleep, so you could well have a completely different experience to me as to what's normal.

Personally I can go all day without remembering to eat when I'm busy, but dp gets hungry at regular intervals and struggles when hungry. It's the same with sleep - before I left to have dd I had a job that had long hours and quite a bit of burnout. I had colleagues who simply weren't cut out for that little sleep, despite being very invested in their career. How much is nurture is up for debate isn't it, but I'd be surprised if there was no nature in there.

Rabbit, she eats all her meals as well though... Porridge for breakfast, a decent carb/protein/veg combo for lunch and dinner.
She drinks water (no juices etc) and will ask for that too, I usually offer water before food even if she asks for something to eat just in case.

I don't think there is anything wrong in giving a quick snack if a child appears hungry but there is no need for them to wander around with it.
Some children will have been up for 5 hours by 10 am and breakfast could have been 3 or 4 hours ago. ( my ds although he is not toddler age).
I used to give him a snack when waiting for food when eating out because he could smell and see food and would go into meltdown if it wasn't happening. As he has got older he has learnt to wait.

apologies in advance - caught me in a bad mood and this thread just escalated it to disbelief and fury - the child is one. If they or their parent want a snack - GET OVER IT

This AIBU isn't actually about whether it's unreasonable or not to give children snacks - it's actually about OP's child having intolerance issues and OP having a nightmare ensuring said child does not pick up anything and eat it

YABCU - your child. your child's requirements. your responsibility.

Some people on this thread are truly awful, intolerant, inward looking, judgemental twats beings