4yo with slightly worrying eating habits.

[TheWhalrus]

Hi All,

Apologies if this has appeared in other threads...my searches suggest not so here goes.

Our 4-year old eats well, in fact she's always eaten well. The plus side of this is that she will try basically anything and will even eat some vegetables (so not the typical experience at all). The downside is she doesn't stop unless we take the food away and will just keep grazing, especially on foods like nuts that one might leave out in a bowl when having visitors round, for example.

She's always been heavy (consistently something like the 80-90th percentile for weight) and taller than average. Thus far this doesn't seem to be affecting her ability to exercise or keep up with other kids or anything like that, and she does tend to slim down a bit in the summer when exercise is much easier to do here. We bought her a standard 4-5 year old's swimsuit the other day and it was so tight it was hard to get off her when wet. Otherwise standard size kids clothes mostly do fit, but are sometimes tight around the tummy.

My question is, is this simply building up to some sort of big growth spurt and nothing to worry about? or should we be paying more attention to this? What she eats isn't the problem at all (there are some treats and some healthy stuff. predictably more treats around Christmas but we can bring that down now), its the amount and the lack of restraint that rather concerns me.

Thanks in advance for your responses.

Did you say she's always been the same or is this only more recently?

Also, you have an interesting username- are you a fan of the movie or something else?

Can you describe a typical day of food? Does she need more protein to feel full? How much exercise is she getting? Does she walk to school, go to clubs?

If she's high on the centiles consistently then it's likely she'll need a larger size for her age, that's perfectly normal as clothes sizes for age are based on mid range.

As is a 4yo not having a natural off switch to snacks they like, in my experience. They haven't gained impulse control yet.

My girl seemed to not stop eating when building up to a growth spurt, so I'd add protein to her snacks. Nut butter on the side of her apple slices, small amount of cheese/ boiled egg on the side at lunch etc. which helped.

Children don’t loose weight doing exercise (no one does……) you gain or lose weight depending on calories eaten, so it’s likely she just eats less during the summer. You’re outside more, so less grazing on food in the house?

At this age, unless she’s eating lots of processed, junk food, she should naturally regulate her weight/intake.

Keep a true food diary for a month, then look at how much she’s consuming, the quality of the food and take her to the docs if she’s genuinely gorging on whole foods.

Thanks for your comments so far. Here's what a typical day looks like:

Breakfast
Porridge/cereal plus nut butter. If we drop her off early at kindergarten (we live in Germany) there will also be a second breakfast there, typically of toast or cereal.

Lunch
Cooked lunch, type of food provided varies of course although she will often admit to having multiple portions

Mid-afternoon snack: Zweiback (basically rusk), fruit

Dinner: again, this varies, can be a cooked meal in winter, more likely not cooked (something like bread and cheese) in summer.

We limit here, or try to limit her to 3 sweets a day, so 3 smarties, jellybabies etc.

Exercise: Gym club once a week, park after kindergarten when the daylight/weather is good enough. She's going to start learning to swim next week, so swimming twice a week from then, she will sometimes cycle to Kindergarten (about 3km) in the summer months.

She's always been like this to varying degrees....username is nothing to do with the film, just a random and very anonymous username I happened to think of.

What does she weigh? And how tall is she?

Clothing sizes are terrible in my opinion. I have the opposite, a tall 4 year one who won’t eat anything so underweight. I was sorting his clothes last week and he has anything from 2 year old swim trunks to 7-8 year old t shirts. His 116cm (6 year old) pjs he’s had over a year already and I was just thinking they are starting to look short in the legs. I will be ordering 122/128cm by spring I think. Different brands also are different.
He’s roughly 106cm and 15kg.

He was top % born I think, but now at bottom. Also not uk so they didn’t do % here born but he was 4.1kg newborn.

I suspect she drops weight in the summer as you switch from a winter cooked meal to bread and cheese in the summer.
What happens if you decrease the winter evening meal - soup and bread, maybe?

I wouldn't worry. I'd be tempted to look at getting some more protein in her meals, which might fill her up and watching her sugar in take. As for clothing sizes. My ds is 11 and has sizes ranging from 11-15yrs in his wardrobe. Always been the sane. He doesn't like tight clothes, and I also want to get some wear out of the item before he grows out of it.

Does she need 2 breakfasts? Wouldn’t fruit suffice until she gets to school and eats there rather than calorie laden peanut butter?
Don’t leave food lying around to ‘graze’ on
Limit sweets to weekends
ONE portion of dinner/lunch. No seconds.

I would just say, my 3yo is in a 5-6yo swimsuit, and even that is a bit snug. I think swimsuit sizing is absolutely ridiculous, and I've always had to go much bigger for her.

Thanks all for your comments. In response to your questions, last time we measured she was 113cm and 24.1 kg in her pajamas.

I tend to agree with limiting so food intake. The problem is that the second breakfast, midday meal and snack are all at kindergarten, and they may be too busy to do anything about our requests (for context, where we live, Kindergarten is basically free to attend and the duration of attendance is set based on the parents' employment. Obviously, this creates massive demand which is sometimes only barely covered by the available staff members, especially in winter). Plus the kindergarten is full of really skinny kids (as an anecdote, some of whom also have quite fat parents, just saying and not judging) so I doubt they're used to this sort of request anyway.

I think at 113cm she’s pretty tall for her age. Clothing size wise in cm 104cm is age 4, 110cm age 5, 116cm age 6. And that’s without clothing being small.
My 4 year old is at least 5cm smaller than yours and he’s one one the tallest at his kindergarten, and I only ever buy him 116cm or bigger now. So I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t fit age 4 swim clothes

I would be expecting 122-128cm for most things ( age 7-8 years) for her height

She is very tall for her age. Her weight roughly corresponds to her height but she is possibly a tiny bit overweight but BMI calculations don’t take into account things like muscle, preparing for growth spurts. Did you weigh her first thing in the morning? When you only weigh 24kg, fluctuations over the day from food/drinks are a significant proportion of your body weight eg a pint of water is half a kilogram.

If she is going to kindergarten early, don’t give her breakfast at home. Up the vegetable content of the evening meal and reduce the portion size of calorie dense foods eg swap bread and cheese for a cheese salad. How many calories is she drinking eg fruit juice and milk?

Be very careful, don’t give her hang ups. Just normalise things like having nuts out and enjoying them occasionally on special occasions but not all the time. Personally, I would give her a whole packet of smarties and let her chose whether to eat them in one go or have a few every day. Teach her about good foods rather than “bad foods”.

My 5yo, who is in the upper half of the healthy weight band, is 116cm and 21.2kg, so your DD is comparatively heavy. Not sure what you can do though as most of the overeating (second breakfast and multiple portion of lunch) seem to be happening when you're not there.

I'd maybe talk to the kindergarten about the lunch situation. I'm surprised a child is given free rain to eat as much as they want. Ours are given set portions at school, with the option to top up from the salad bar, but no more of the main, not sure if thats a cultural difference between Germany and UK though?

You could also maybe give smaller or no breakfast on days she will get it there, when mine used to have breakfast at nursery they would only have a glass of milk and a banana at home, though it depends how long before she's up and if she'll need energy for a long walk.

We also have kindergarten second breakfast scenario. I usually just give Ds some milk and 1/2 banana at home around 7am. As they have full lunchbox sent for second breakfast they eat around 8.30-9am. As obviously some kids arrive at 7am and haven’t eaten anything, so they also have free rein to help themselves earlier.

For lunch I’m not sure, but I think they offer really small portions first, then if eaten child can go up for seconds/ thirds. So I wouldn’t have thought the portions are huge, even if 2-3 helpings.
I don’t think they would stop them eating usually so your best bet is portion sizes at home ( evening meal and weekends still accounts for lots of meals)

Was the swimsuit from decathlon by any chance? Those things are doll sized😂😂

Are you overweight OP? It tends to run in families. I now someone who was overweight as a child but at around 15/16/17 she slimmed out to a size 8/10 and would have been considered a normal weight. But to be fair she was eating all the wrong things and ate restrictively. Down to in part by bad parenting. She is now nearly 21 and overweight again by quite a lot.

Have you done a food diary of her intake at all? This is what’s usually suggested by doctors. Maybe you will see that she is actually overeating by (X) amount of calories.

So I’ve just read the daily food dairy you previously posted - cut the sugary crap. Get rid of the rusk and sweeties. She and her teeth will thank you. You are offering her the multiple portions, not the other way around, do not give lots of extra portions. I’m not sure what else to suggest. Calories work by an input method.