WIU not to give her another banana?

[isurvived3under2]

DD is nearly 5. Tonight she asked for a banana after dinner, which I said she could have. 5 minutes later she asked for another banana. I enquired what had happened to the first banana, she said she had changed her mind and had put it in the bin. But then she changed her mind again and indeed wanted a banana.

WIU to say no to a second banana, let her cry for 20 minutes and send her to bed with a 'rumbly tummy'?

Unless it was a regular and problematic occurrence, then I'd have let her have another banana.

As an adult, if I fancy I banana I have the power to choose to have one. She made a mistake throwing the last one away. It's hardly the crime of the century. I would feel the need to make a point over such a small thing. I might just reminder her not to open food unless she's sure she wants it in the future.

YANBU.

She’d had dinner plus a pudding so it really doesn’t sound like she was hungry.

All could have been avoided if she hadn't thrown it in the bin so work on that. I don't think a child of that age should be throwing food away when they have changed their mind about being hungry for exactly this reason. Any uneaten food gets covered and stored just in case.

She’d had dinner and pudding. I would have done the same.

YANBU, the way some people on this thread have been going on you'd think this was the only food your DD had been offered all day.

Assuming the child has had breakfast, lunch and dinner (including pudding) as well as possibly having other snacks through the day, they are very unlikely to be truly hungry to the point of needing food.

Why do some people think children need to constantly be eating and tbh why is it a bad thing for a child to feel a little bit of hunger occasionally? The OPs DD has not gone to bed with an empty stomach, having not eaten for hours and hours, she's had dinner and gone to bed a couple of hours later. There is no need to eat again, just a preference for a snack. Learning how to understand your own body's hunger cues are an important skill to learn - often we think we are hungry when actually we are just thirsty, so I have always answered DDs "I'm hungry" claims with "Get yourself a drink and once you've finished it give it 15 minutes to see if it passes.

I had weight loss surgery last year and it massively changed how I think about food - we have turned into a real snacking culture, people are always eating or snacking throughout the day. Since surgery I don't get physical hunger cues, but I do still get mental ones. I will often find myself heading into the kitchen at some point between meals to make myself something to eat, not because I'm actually hungry, but because my head is telling me I'm hungry. Even though I have no other physical hunger cues nor has it been long since I last ate, I often feel like I should be eating because "I haven't had anything since lunch which was only a couple of hours ago so I should eat something".

As a child we got breakfast, lunch, a piece of fruit when we got home from school and tea. There were no "snacks for school", no regular "just because snacks", no "before bed snacks" ... and nobody starved to death. My parents bought biscuits, crisps, cakes etc but they were not every day occurrences.

It wasn't because my parents were strict or rationed food, it was just because we were a family of six and my mother couldn't afford to buy unlimited snacks for four kids. In our house we knew that once something was gone then there was no more till next week's shopping trip, so if we had a pack of 12 biscuit bars then we all got two each. If you chose to eat yours on the first two days then that fine but you wouldn't get any more until the following week. If you chucked one in the bin because you didn't want it after the first bite then you still wouldn't get another one until the following week as mum couldn't magic an extra one out of thin air and nobody else was going to lose out just because of your actions.

Sometimes we might go to bed and maybe feel a bit peckish but we were perfectly able to make it to the next morning without eating. If something had been provided then we'd probably have eaten it but it would have been for the sake of eating it rather than because we were so hungry we couldn't sleep.

Im just checking this child is 4? So many adults on here need to think about what they have said! I thought I was strict at dinner times 🤣

That's a whole breakfast. If your portions for meals are correct, then you don't need a fourth meal in the day after dinner.

I’d probably have taken out the banana and washed it!

In reality, my children ate so much for tea that I did not offer them supper and they did not ask. Money was tight as a single mum of three children so once we got home from after school club, where they did have a snack, I cooked a filling meal with a pudding and they did not need anything else before bed.

Their treat was homemade cake at weekends as I loved baking and liked to fill a couple of tins but when they were empty, that’s how they stayed until next weekend.

Once they were teenagers and obviously going to bed later, I just made sure there was plenty of bread and butter to make toast in the evenings if they got hungry. I really could not afford snack food, fruit, biscuits etc other than at meal times. My children did not complain and seemed to be very healthy, in fact my son grew to 6 ft 7 ins tall so must have had adequate nutrition!

She absolutely was.

You clearly have a much lower opinion of 5 year olds than me.

I simply don’t believe that any 5 year old thinks it’s ok to ask for something, open it and then just change their mind and put it in the bin. Then ask for another.

She’s not 2.

I also can’t believe people defend this with ‘if you asked for food and then changed your mind’.

Not getting another banana is an excellent way to feel natural consequences.

@Shamdyhandy

she evidently wasn’t hungry though

Thank god you all aren't my mum. I'd give her the banana because she's 4 and I'm nice.

The implication being that anyone who didn't immediately pander to her wanting another banana isn't nice?

What would you have done if she then decided that banana wasn't what she wanted and threw it away? Got her a third one?

She was well fed and presumably not too bothered in the end if she went to bed and fell asleep. I think some posters forget that it's actually OK sometimes to say no to small children.

You don’t have to be nasty to the child to make it clear that, if you throw something away, you don’t get another one.

I don’t think giving her another is a nice thing to do, though.

I am also surprised by the number of bananas freely available. We buy one bunch a week - five or so in a bunch - so that’s roughly one banana per person per week - there’s four of us. Another banana would mean someone else has to do without.

Seems like a lot of unnecessary stress over a 16p banana. I would have let her have it but explain why it’s problematic. I would never send a child to bed hungry.

I would not be giving my child another banana if they put the first one in the bin! This is an opportunity for them to understand about waste and consequences.

I wouldn't have given a lot but I'd have given something that's not exactly fun but is filling. So if indeed she was hungry that would have done the job.

I blame nursery for instilling snacks in their life. Breakfast at 8 snack at 9.30 lunch at 11.30 snack at 3.30 then we give dinner at 5.30/6ish depending on what time we get home from work.
Then bedtime at 7.30 he always asks for a snack which I have already mentioned and after he has that he goes to sleep. 🤷

I've had this happen. I can't stand food waste!
I got out the encyclopedia, we found out how long it took to grow a banana (around 9 months I think!) and then we looked at the map to see where the main banana producing countries are and how far the bananas have to come, and then we decided it was best to not waste them any more!

What a load of bollocks 😂

Didn't just use Google?!

YANBU. She's learned not to put food in the bin.

Maybe it had brown bits on it, or was squidgy. I'm very fussy when I eat bananas and often end up chucking half of one away. I'd have just let her get another one. She's only 5.

No, I find books and maps to be a bit more of an event, so more likely to be remembered

I'm not sure why this thread is making me laugh so much. All this angst over a bloody banana 🤣🍌

NBU. My youngest does this and it drives me mad. I hate food waste! If she'd eaten the banana and asked for a second one then I would have given one, but not if she wasted the first. I would have said no too but offered something boring but filling as PP's have said such as a slice of toast, raisins etc.

Oh the life of a 5 year old!