I'm hungry! ... I'm hungry!

[leoleosuperstar]

Not sure what to do about this. DS is 5yo and has for the last week has been constantly hungry.
DS will have breakfast and within 30 minutes asking for something else to eat. This continues throughout the day.
I am not sure he is even actually hungry. DS has a normal build and is average height and weight although if he keeps eating like this he will start to gain weight.
I give him a variety of snacks when he is hungry - raisins, yoghurt, crackers etc and he is eating all his meals.
What would you do - keep offering food when he is hungry or start limiting the number of snacks.

I've got one like that. Most of the time it's boredom I think, although he gets through quite a bit of food and is still v skinny! Can you try snacks/meals that are low GI? Raisins aren't going to fill him up. I'd be glad of some ideas too!

Do you sometimes say no to giving them food?

I try to!

I like the not giving them food idea and teeling them to wait until the next meal time. This way they can have more of a proper meal instead of high carb snacks. Otherwise anything Protein based will fill him up for longer in a way that carbohydrates won't. A slice of multigrain bread/toast with Peanut Butter or nuts (not peannuts) would be more filling. Unless of course he has a nut allergy. Not sure this helped at all

My DD has always done this and she is often not hungry at all but bored.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner with a snack mid morning and one after school is what she can have because that's quite enough for anyone even someone still growing. After that it's just greed or boredom so the answer is no.

I have the same issue with my DD1 who is 2.2........she will be asking for a snack half an hour after she has finished a meal. At the moment, I always give her something to eat when she asks (ususally an apple/banana/some grapes etc) but I often wonder if I should be saying no! I know they say that babies don't overeat, but I don't know at what age they start eating for reasons other than hunger.........

That's what I might do then - mid morning snack and after school snack like toast with peanut butter or something.
I am concerned that even if he doesn't gain lots of weight now it will develop into an unhealthy habit for later life IYKWIM.

I know what you mean. My ds (6) has a habit of saying I hungry when he means I'm bored. I normally say to him "why don't you go and do so and so for a few minutes, and then we can get something to eat". If he is really hungry he will come back and ask. Other times he gets into his game and I don't hear anymore until he really is hungry.

He does have growth spurts when he will eat anything and everything in sight. I normally know when this happens because he will eat all his dinner without a word of complaint! Then about a week after this he seems to grow othernight.

Good luck. I have heard it gets worse when they get into their teens, and devore the contents of the fridge in one go.

Seeing as no one else has suggested it I will, could it be worms?
Don't mean to scare anyone but that is possible?

DD is exactly the same.

Has breakfast of Porridge at 8am, by 8.20, she's saying she's hungry again and often has a piece of toast to eat on the school run. She's 6.

She has grown a few inches in the last 6 weeks or so, so I'm assuming this may have something to do with her appetite. She's tall for her age, very, very active (always flitting about, spinning and dancing!) and very lean BTW.

We've been relying on fruit to help fill her up, and wholegrain rice and brown bread seem to help too. She has a snack of fruit at school mid-morning which helps too. After school, she has a home-made fuit flapjack or something similar which tides her over until dinner is ready.

Um, fyimate, just to say that the 'worms' that children most commonly get are known as thread worms or pin worms and cause itching around the bottom, not hunger.
It is theoretically possible for children to become infested with other types of worm from contaminated soil and animal faeces but this is very unlikely and rare in this country.
A child with thread/pin worms could sometimes have a decreased appetite if anything but not increased hunger.

So, er, no almost certainly not caused by 'worms'.

Sorry if that sounded smartarsey

If it's sudden, could it be a growth spurt? I don't know, mine's not 3 yet, but he goes through phases where we can't fill him, then his appetite normalises again. No idea why, but often coincides with outgrowing clothes etc so I assume a growth spurt.

Could he be thirsty?
My DD is only 10months, but a lot of my friends always offer water if their DC say they're hungry shortly after a meal.