DS10 after school snack

[UseTheBigLight]

DS10 is very slim and sporty. He plays football at lunchtime.

He has a packed lunch at 12:45 then dinner around 5:30pm.

He needs something after school to tide him over til dinner and preferably portable as he is starving when he comes out but I’m stuck for ideas.

He doesn’t eat fruit or any salad (hates the skin). Won’t eat oats so no flapjack type things. Not eating yoghurt atm either.

He will drink a smoothie. Protein wise, he likes peanut butter but will only eat small cubes of cheese.

I have a drive home from school that can take up to an hour, depending on traffic. So i routinely make mini wraps - usually ham and cream cheese and cucumber for DS1 and Cream cheese and grated cheese for DS2. Occasionally if I am not working I will make homemade sausage rolls (i grate courgette into the sausage meat- with the green skin removed otherwise neither of them will touch it. )I like to put a thin smear of apple sauce or chutney on the pastry as well. I wrap it up in tin foil and they really love this. Granted my car is messy.

Why not do a double packed lunch? He can have one at school and one when you pick him up?

What sort of things does he have in his packed lunch? Could you make a smaller variety of any of those as an after school snack?

Peanut butter sandwich and a hard boiled egg?

My daughter has something with peanut butter when she gets home from school (super active so always hungry). Makes herself peanut butter on toast or spreads it on apple slices... sometimes on digestives or similar.

Carrot sticks and cubes of cheese?

Peeled apple slices (lemon juice to keep fresh) and peanut butter, in a little tupperware

Dairylea dunker

Rice cakes? You can get some lovely flavoured ones now

Pita bread and humous

At 10, I'd be offering him fruit. If he doesn't like it, he needs to learn to like it or wait until dinner. He's too old to be that picky and if he wants to be sporty then eating fruit and salad are vital for the vitamins he needs.

Wholemeal toast with peanut butter, cheese on toast, beans on toast, poached egg on toast. Egg mayo or cheese sandwich. Houmous with cucumber and carrot sticks. Rice cakes.

Lots of kids don't like fruit. It's not even necessarily about being picky.

Toast & peanut butter always tastes like Toast & PB.
A bag of cheese & onion crisps is always going to be crunchy.
Cheddar cheese is cheddar cheese.

An apple can sometimes be sour, a bit too crunchy, a bit too soft or bruised.
Strawberries can be tart or sweet, mushy or hard, super seedy and have big holes.
Bananas can be under ripe or over ripe, big black bits once you've peeled it, weirdly stringy.

Perfectly reasonable for kids, with inexperienced palettes, to prefer 'safe' food options where the tastes and textures are reliable.

I give dds of a similar age a couple of buttered crackers or a small bowl of cereal, sometimes a couple of pieces of cheese and some fruit. They do eat early at school and we have dinner around 6 and I know they are very hungry so offer just enough to keep rumbling tummies at bay!

Jam sandwich or a bowl of cereal when I was small

Banana peanut butter smoothie made with milk/yoghurt (you may even get away with chucking a handful of oats or some dates in)

Cheese and crackers - my ds has fancy taste buds and specifically requests jarlsberg or Comte over cheddar 😆

Do you bake? Banana bread/carrot amd courgette muffins/choc chip and nut cookies always go down extremely well here

Cinnamon toast, nothing better if it's a cold rainy day

Ice lolly, nothing better if it's a hot sunny day

Carrot sticks with preferred dip/houmous

Popcorn