To only feed toddler at set times

[WhenZogateSuperworm]

DS (2.9) is a serial snacker. He grazes all day long and then doesn’t eat much dinner. He is also quite fussy with food.

He is obsessed with snacks, constantly saying he is hungry and needs a snack. It’s the cause of most of his tantrums. He will go to the fridge and help himself to yogurts and fruit then scream when I do let him eat them. If we go out he will cling to me refusing to play or join in just pleading for snacks.

AIBU to start offering food at set times during the day only. I am considering only allowing him to eat at the dinner table rather than his little table in the lounge and to buy a clock with the eating items drawn on.

I am planning on breakfast 7am, snack at 10am, lunch at 12pm, snack at 2:30pm and dinner at 5:30pm. No snacks outside of these times.

I also want to change the type of snack he has so that it’s more savoury and do something like toast, cheese sticks and fruit. At the minute he likes to snack on yogurts, boxes of raisins, biscuits and soreen banana loaves!

Does that sound reasonable? I don’t want to deny him food, but it’s taking over my life and I’m about to have 6 weeks of him at home with me rather than in part time childcare!

Sound extremely reasonable and I’m curious about your childcare arrangements as what you’ve described is a pretty standard schedule for a nursery. We follow something similar although are flexible when we need to be like if you’re travelling or you’re going out for lunch slightly later than usual. I do allow stuff like yoghurts and raisins as a snack though- everything in moderation! I also like to allow choices e.g. DD can choose between cheese or a yoghurt for a snack, she doesn’t always pick the sweet stuff either. Eating at the table sounds great and I’d also rearrange the fridge so he can’t reach the food he likes.

Add toast or a bowl of cereal/porridge at bedtime?

"He grazes all day long and then doesn’t eat much dinner."

No shit sherlock haha.

Put a lock on your fridge so your 2yo can get in it. Also: he is almost 3 so he needs to have boundaries and to learn that the answer isnt always yes and he doesnt always get what he wants because of tantrums.

If you want to give him snacks give him 4 grapes / A few raisins whatever. Tell him before hand that that is all he is getting. If he tantrums for more : let him. His temper tantrums are nothing more then him manipulating you to get what he wants.

Also: might consider feeding him dinner at lunch time.

Enjoy sitting together at table for snacks & meals, put a bright tablecloth ,get toddler to put teddies in the other chairs and set table & get them ready to eat too. Make it fun, put music on, dance while making snacks, distract from tantrums with silly jokes and cuddles Don't stress if some days its different meal or snack times and a few tantrums. We all have crap days.
Aim for protein rich snacks & meals such as;
apple slices spread with peanut butter
Celery with peanut butter & raisins
Hummous dip with carrot & red capsicum sticks
Cottage cheese & cherry tomatoes on crackers
Banana & berry yoghurt smoothie
Fish fingers, crunchy salad, mayo, sauces
Scrabled egg & bacon & tomato on toast
Zucchine cheese Omelette
Boiled egg cut in half with sticks of buttered toast
Cubed cooked chicken &veg, for example -pour a little warmed honey& melted butter over cooked carrot
Cubed Butter chicken & basmati rice
Cubed Chicken korma & basmati rice
frozen peas in a little bowl

Thanks everyone. He is tall for his age 95th centile for height and 72nd for weight.

I need to come up with some better snack ideas as I admit I have got lazy with it (have a 3 month old so have been going for convenience).

In one day he can eat in snacks alone;

Brioche
Soreen banana loaf
2 or 3 yogurts
Bag of popcorn
Crisps
3/4 biscuits
Goodies flapjack bar
Raisins
2 apples
Raisins
Those baby fruit flake bags
Ice cream

Everything on the list is sweet so that’s my first step to sort out. Snacks need to become less appealing.

Please don’t flame me- I’ve been opting for ease, especially when I’m feeding baby just to make things easier in the short term.

@midsummabreak

That’s a lovely list- sadly the one things he will eat are in bold

Aim for protein rich snacks & meals such as;
apple slices spread with peanut butter
Celery with peanut butter & raisins
Hummous dip with carrot & red capsicum sticks
Cottage cheese & cherry tomatoes on crackers
Banana & berry yoghurt smoothie
Fish fingers, crunchy salad, mayo, sauces
Scrabled egg & bacon & tomato on toast
Zucchine cheese Omelette
Boiled egg cut in half with sticks of buttered toast
Cubed cooked chicken &veg, for example -pour a little warmed honey& melted butter over cooked carrot
Cubed Butter chicken & basmati rice
Cubed Chicken korma & basmati rice
frozen peas in a little bowl

A lot of children are like your son. Mine was always hungry too and as he got older, even more so! So were his friends.

His snacks don't sound particularly unhealthy. Bananas are a good source of nutrition and quite filling, drinking milk is healthy and cereal, such as porridge, is excellent in many ways.

Therein lies your problem whenZogateSuperworm
The only reason he only eats those foods is cos they are always on ready supply
You gotta turn it on its head & bluff the little cheeky guy into eating a wider, more filling nutritious variety of food
But i completely understand what led to this, i had four kids, the last one was prone to jumping up and down for a chupa

Chup.

My children are 10 and 7 and the only thing they are allowed free access to is water 🙈
They can’t help themselves to food from the fridge otherwise they’d never stop eating!
I’m not cruel they never go without food but as the adult I have to be in charge of what they eat..
8am breakfast usually scrambled egg/omelette
Any amount of fruit and veg
Toast and peanut butter/soft cheese mid morning.
Lunch around 12.30/1
Soup, pizza, sandwiches or pasta
Toast/muffins/veg/fruit mid afternoon
Dinner around 5
Chilli, spag bol, curry, roast or fish.
They’ve started asking for “supper” I’m stuck on what to give for this though..I had dinner at 5 as a kid and nothing then until breakfast..
I think a clock with meal times is a great idea. Also a little bowl or basket of healthy snacks is a good idea too

Don't let the little blighter make you lose faith in having fun & a little variety at mealtimes

www.kidspot.com.au/kitchen/recipes/popcorn-chicken-1030

DD (3)

8am - breakfast
10.30ish - snack - oatcake or two, small apple, glass of milk
12.30. lunch
3.30ish - snack - oatcake or two, small apple, glass of milk
6.30 - dinnertime

The apple is not always finished, and is sometimes an orange or banana or grapes.

Very occasionally she'll have half a doughnut as afternoon snack with the apple but that's like once a month. If she asks for more she gets cheese.

I agree you have to cut back on the sugar content. Expect protests! (Breastmilk is very sweet - it's a taste we desire.)

One of the things I find works at lunchtimes is to give DD her vegetables in a little bowl while I'm cooking the rest of the lunch - strips of carrot, pepper, cucumber, tomatoes. She's not a massive fan of cooked vegetables although she is getting better.

Great idea to start to regulate the eating now, it’s important to put boundaries in place for food as good habits need to be formed early. I work with 2 year olds and their meals go like this:
Breakfast 7:30-8:30 ish
Snack 10:30
Lunch 12
Snack 3
Tea 5:30

Expect tantrums initially but try to offer choices so he feels he has some control but ultimately you are in control! For example allow him to choose between a few items. Maybe get a snack box and put a range of foods in and that’s it for the day, when it’s empty it’s gone. That would limit how much snack and what foods he can eat in the day?

That’s approximately when my DCs (age 4 and 20 months) eat. I’m not super strict as they’re not overweight and we’re out and about, but I try not to let them graze all day!! mostly they have a morning snack around 9.30/10ish. Usually an apple or banana or some cheese and crackers. Lunch about 12ish and then snack around 3 and dinner 5.30ish. My youngest has milk before bed and my oldest often has a further snack around 7, usually toast, cereal, some nuts or a banana.

I have a just-2-yr-old and 3 month old too...I don’t allow access to the fridge and have a routine of...breakfast 7-8am, snack 10-10.30, lunch 12pm, snack after nap time (inc milk), dinner 5-5.30, bedtime milk 7pm.
Snacks here are generally from:
Fruit, vegetables such as red peppers/carrot & cucumber sticks/mushrooms/cherry tomatoes/peas, Greek yoghurt, wholemeal toast, homemade soup, cheese, boiled eggs. If what’s offered isn’t eaten nothing else is offered till next meal time, it’s just left at kitchen table.
Mine tantrums all day anyway, some more about food is meh.
Yesterday the food for the whole day was:
Porridge with prunes & milk, cherry tomatoes, banana, homemade cheese & green pepper scone/puff thing, quavers (out at friend’s house), broccoli & lentil soup, stewed apples & Greek yoghurt. Milk equalled pint for whole day inc porridge.
If they were allowed access to sweet things they’d eat them all day, as would I!
I think you’ve chosen a great time to tweak your family food habits, Baby is getting easier to work around and toddler years can be exhausting but routine helps give structure and holds them in good stead for school. You can do it.

Just throw out all sweet yoghurt & sweet foods in frige & freezer.

Then fill your frige with covered Mini containers & bowls with foods as Mrs Teaspoon & others suggest above, etc
Call it rainbow snacks
white cream cheese dips
pink salmon/ trout dip
orange carrot,
red peppers.
yellow peppers
red cherry tomatoe
yellow cheese cubes/ slices
oatcakes
cottage cheeses

Then at meals serve his favourites
Fish fingers& whatever veg & other meals , followed by
Stewed apples & yoghert or other fruit blueberries etc

My son has issues with resource guarding, so he has a box of snacks he can eat that day so he knows how much there is.

It generally contains
Carrot
Cucumber
Humus
Pepper
Half a roti
Apple/orange/banana
Half a bag of pombears
Two oreos

The rule is that you can’t eat anything from the box before breakfast or after dinner, he also has to sit at the coffee table to eat it (no dining room/dining table).

My 3yo is a bit like this. She's always been a different sort of ester. She will go days on not much and then have a really good day. She's quite fussy and as I've recognised this I've done what you have done and have eating at set times. I didn't do this with first and gave into the natural grazing culture and now at 7yo she just wants to eat all the time - always saying she's hungry. I am concerned she'll have weight issues (seems to be getting a tummy, although still within realms of normal for her height) so have been doing set meal times for a while. Whilst it can be normal for toddlers to graze it's something that needs transitioning out of and can be hard to break habits when they're older.

So our day tends to be breakfast at 7:30am of cereal and toast during the week. My 3yo will often want to split her breakfast and have cereal at 7:30am and toast at about 9am when we get back from school. So long as it's before 10am then I let her otherwise I distract her until lunchtime and make lunch a bit early. Lunch is usually at 11:30am and quite often she'll just have the smallest amount but will eat better if she hasn't had her toast. Generally speaking she'll ask for some fruit at about 2pm and then we have dinner at 5pm.

I remember when my first was born and we started weaning and how once she was weaned I used to give snacks. I remember my mum asking why I was giving her snacks and I said because that's what I'd read about people doing these days (on mumsnet). She said "they" didn't (at least she didn't and it wasn't something that they discussed at groups or saw other people doing) when we were little and we just had 3 meals a day which we ate well. Now perhaps that's just luck but it strikes me that probably not all children need snacks - certainly my 3yo will eat better meals if she doesn't snack. Then again, even when she was a baby she had far less milk than her peers, often only having 3 or 4oz milk in each of her bottles and less each day than recommended.

My 2 like a snack but they don't have very sweet things often. I tend to give them babybels, crackers and fruit.

I'm so pleased that this thread came up as it's the philosophy I'm trying to follow with my toddler, after seeing a closer family member's children eat next to nothing at meal times, becoming almost distressed that they can't manage more than two mouthfuls, followed by them being absolutely starving withing half an hour, and given a smasher or some of mum and dad's food etc. It's a constant theme that they 'don't eat' . I want to foster a healthy relationship with food and family mealtimes, and I feel that getting this most framework in early in may work. Maybe it will stop working but so far so good, and I'm glad that others appear to think it's OK too!

We never started the whole snacking thing with our children. It wasn't a conscious choice, but I didn't go to many baby groups so didn't realise that it was the done thing. When I weaned the children I gradually replaced milk feeds with meals and then dropped the in-between feeds without replacing them with anything. I just followed what my parents did with me. The children don't seem to have suffered. They are both healthy weights and don't ask for food between meals. If they say they are hungry (sometimes after school) I just move dinner earlier which has the benefit that they tend to go to bed earlier too!

Maybe they'll turn into snack obsessed adults!

I think if he's eating that amount of snacks a day he generally won't be hungry for meals. My son's older but his snacks tend to be a combination of breadsticks with cheese/ cream cheese , rice cakes , crackers, berries , apples, green beans , raw carrot , banana , oatcakes, pitta strips, boiled egg. He usually has 3 meals and 2 snacks. I try and give a big breakfast as hes always hungry he's had a 2 egg omelette , fruit salad and a bowl of dry bran flakes ( only eats them dry) as hes up early and had breakfast he might have a banana or glass of milk before we leave for school. I think if you can try and increase breakfast size even if he is eating it over a hour or so as long as it's just breakfast foods , fruit ECT then that's ok then try and limit the snacks to one larger snack mid morning with a little variety of healthy things on a plate. same in the afternoon his diet will improve. I would get rid of all the sweet snack things and just offer the savoury snacks with fruit ECT I don't think it will be easy but he is eating way to much snacky sweet food at the moment

Sounds a good plan. I would get a clear clock (with hands) and a chart with the times (with pictures of the hands) etc so it's also a learning tool.

For healthy snacks try hummus, carrots, cucumber, cheese etc

Sounds fine to me, I have 2.5 yr old boy and same issue, I find mine asks for snacks far more if we are just playing at home so I think it's largely boredom. I also notice loads of snacks means a reluctance to eat more nutritious food offered at meal times, then subsequent requests for snacks when be a hungry between meals as a result..

I now only give:
6.15 cup of milk on waking
8am breakfast
10am snack if requested - usually apple or similar fruit.
12.15 lunch
2.30 waking from nap - a pot of cucumber & red pepper
5pm dinner
Milk at about 6pm, bed at 7.15.

My only exception is that if he requested salad type things through the day (cucumber, red pepper, tomato, beetroot, a carrot stick etc) I rarely turn these down unless it's nearly a meal time. They have few calories or sugar in, don't seem to ruin his appetite for meals and are a good source of water & nutrients so I don't see any point restricting them.

Also I agree with other posters - snacking wasn't a thing when I was a child. Children need to recognise hunger before a meal! It also makes them eat better at meals. A sibling lets their kid snack a lot & as a result he eats poorly at meals and his diet is crap overall, too many easy carbs/sugar, not enough variety of protein & veg and he can't cope with not having a constantly full tummy so doesn't recognise hunger etc and fullness properly.