Incessant requests for food...will they ever stop?

[JustPanicking]

My 3yo dd is constantly asking for food. It is driving me crazy! We try to stick to breakfast - snack - lunch - snack - dinner and I say 'wait until ...' but still sge asks ALL THE TIME! Anyone else? Can I make it stop? Will it stop?

Watching with interest. My dd age 7 is also an eating machine....

My 6.5yo DD has just stopped being a gannet, but nearly always clears large meals and a few light snacks a day too.

However my 3yo DS is always asking for a snack. He mainly gets apples, citrus or slices of ham but I also let him have crackers with cheese and he's eating low fat, low salt tortilla chips from the Sainsbury's Be Good To Yourself range at the moment. It won't spoil his lunch

For breakfast if they have porridge, then I offer wholemeal toast and they have either juice or a hot chocolate too. I tend to offer additional fruit or yoghurt at the end of the meal, so it fills them for longer. They'll normally remember about the yoghurt later on, if they were too full earlier.

Extra snacking normally means a growth spurt here

If only she was eating her meals. Maybe the snacks I give her are too big because she doesn't eat very much at mealtimes. I don't think she is asking because she's actually hungry iykwim. Should I cut down/out snacks? I think she may be a natural grazer. I know little and often is supposed to be healthier but should I be encouraging it. Sorry for the rambly post. At the end of my tether!

If what you are offering her is healthy, it doesn't really matter whether you call it a snack or a meal.

At 3 it's not as if she'll have to sit at a table with cutlery and use the right napkin, is it? . They don't even do that in school...

What I'm trying to say is relax, if she is genuinely hungry, she will eat, if you think she's just asking for treats and not eating healthily, yes, cut out that type of snack, and instead give cucumber or carrot sticks and a dip like houmous. Or the odd cube of cheese.

Little and often is fine, many DC graze, but if you are worried about obesity or eating out of boredom: introduce a new toy/ colouring book or say "let's do that jigsaw shall we?" Distraction can be easy at that age

My almost 3 year old is the same.

If we're busy, she may go without a snack and she definitely eats the next meal much better. Sometimes that backfires and she has a hungry meltdown though.

It gets a bit easier - DS is 6 and asks for snacks a lot but doesn't need them, so he knows he can have carrots or apples at these times. No snacks for an hour or two before a meal though.

I know mine ask for food as a habit and because they are bored, or to put off something they don't want to do.

If I give way then they're worse. If one comes back one week from an activity they go straight to bed from and says they're hungry, and I feed them. Then they will almost certainly ask for food the next time too.

So as a general rule for snacks it is fruit/bread and water to drink, and distraction also works well. If they don't ask for food within 30 minutes because they're happily distracted then they're not really hungry.

My nearly 2yo ds does this and it drives us crazy! It's got worse since he figured out how to open the fridge and he's constantly getting yoghurt out. We're not really sure how to respond to it as he's never been a great eater so any food is good... not the healthiest attitude i know. I've tried to implement no

Grr, stupid phone. On iPad now...

Tried to implement no snacks rule before mealtimes, but then he'll often have a hungry meltdown... I think we'll stick to the idea that as long as they're healthy snacks, it doesn't matter! :)

I think you might be right about it being habit. Also think I may be giving her too many options so she's lining up her next one while still eating her first! I'm going to relax a bit and try to ignore constant requests.

My 9yo is still like this, others can find some moderation.

Mine have never really asked for food. They obviously had meals throughout the day and I would take snacks for after swimming or a picnic if we were going to the park for the day.

If they ever said they were hungry I would just say " Well, it's lunchtime in an hour" or "me too" or "are you?" In the same way that I would if they said they were tired or wanted to play snakes and ladders.

It just didn't occur to me to be feeding them all the time and it wasn't till my oldest went to school that I found out that people worried about their dc being hungry.

The problem is ds has never said he's hungry - he doesn't know that word yet - but he sure as heck acts like he is!

Shall I bother blighting your future?
Mine are 22 and 18. They stop asking for food because they are capable of whipping up a four-course snack independently.

Mine stopped asking so much when they went to school. I think school gives them the discipline of eating at set times. They can guarantee when they are going to eat at whatever time their break/lunchtime is whereas at home it is a little bit more fluid and depended on what we were doing. Also they realised there was no point in asking - the teacher doesn't have a stash of snacks. That said they were/are hungry after school but we plan for that and they have something in between home time and dinner. DS1 who is 13 almost never says he is hungry but he knows what he is allowed to have and when so he helps himself.

I think at 2 or 3 my two didn't eat huge meals. They preferred to eat lots of little things and couldn't manage a big dinner no matter how much they had eaten during the day. I would just go with the flow and keep it mostly healthy and it will sort itself out.

Oh and the other thing might be boredom - don't want to play, don't want to watch telly, what shall I do? Eat!

They didn't used to ask so much if they were immersed in a game or out playing.