If you have a big toddler, with a big appetite, how do you manage it?

[Rainatnight]

DD is 16 months and on the 90th centile or thereabouts. Has always been big.

Now that she's getting older (and very talkative for her age!) it's becoming apparent that she's very, very, very interested in food. Asks for snacks constantly, asks for her banana (mid morning snack) as soon as breakfast is over, asks for my breakfast, locks eyes on anyone else's food, once tried to mug a boy at playgroup for his rice cake...you get the picture.

Her food is pretty healthy and her snacks are fruit, oatcakes and the like. She eats really well at her main meals so can't be hungry.

I guess I'm just looking for advice about how we make sure she stays at a healthy weight throughout childhood, with healthy eating habits, without making too big an issue about food.

I find myself saying 'no' to requests for food quite a bit when I know she's already eaten quite a lot. I'm just a bit worried about how this will play out later.

Thanks for reading.

Oh and some background so as not to drip feed. We adopted her from foster care at 8 months old. She'd been weaned onto all manner of sweet and processed crap so we sort of re-weaned her when she arrived. I suspect though don't know that she wasn't fed on demand in FC as a very small baby, so there may be an underlying sort of anxiety about when the next food is coming.

I would trust her to trust her body and what it needs. It could just be a growth spurt and she actually needs some extra calories right now, or it could be as you say, some underlying anxiety given her history.

Either way you don’t want to deny her, esp of it makes any possible anxiety worse, encourages her to binge eat when she can, mug others for food and generally develop a poor relationship with food going forwards.

As long as the food is healthy, snacking isn’t interfering with her eating meals and she gets plenty of exercise I wouldn’t worry.

At that age I was amazed by what my DD (now almost 3) put away. We still have days where she eats loads but also now days where she eats like a sparrow. But we’ve always let her decide how much to eat without pressuring her or worrying about it. She knows she can always have veg any time she wants it (carrot/pepper/cucumber sticks, frozen sweet corn etc.) and sometimes that does mean she’ll eat less at the next meal, but only she can really know when, and at what time, she’s hungry or satiated.

Trusting our kids to listen to their body and wat what/ how much they need is the best way to develop a healthy relationship with food.

Oh, and congratulations on your DD!

What SilverLinings said.