Toddler meal after nursery - advice please!

[Bancha]

DD is going to be two early next year. She goes to nursery four days a week as I work. Recently increased from three days. She is absolutely exhausted by the time she gets home. She’s happy leaving and travelling home but when we get through the door she often dissolves into a crying, snotty, clingy, furious mess. That’s understandable; home is her safe place. This doesn’t happen every day and we go through periods where it’s much better, but it has been happening more since I upped my work days.

The difficulty I’m having is dinner time. She eats well at nursery (seems to be much more adventurous there than at home!). Has a hot lunch and a cold tea around 4pm. I feel like 4pm is too early for her to go to bed with nothing else to eat, and some days she eats a lot of dinner. Other days she screams and cries and wants nothing. I think sometimes this is more about tiredness than it is about appetite, though. I put her at the table and she says ‘no want it’ or whatever and I always say, ‘that’s fine, you don’t have to have anything’. If she doesn’t eat then it’s no big deal. DH does try to encourage it which I am trying to stop. We offer yoghurt (rarely rejected) and she can have banana or some oat cake etc after her dinner. Once we’re done she gets down and the rest of the evening is gorgeous. The time she’s stressed and upset is always dinner time. I’ve wondered if it’s partly because we eat as soon as we get in and it’s all a bit much? But there’s only so much time to fit everything in before bedtime.

I’m finding being apart more from DD tough. I want the time we spend together on my working days to be more positive. So I thought instead of serving her cooked food it might take the pressure off if DH and I eat our meal and she’s welcome to have some, but I just give her a bit of toast/banana/yoghurt etc to have if she likes. She seems happier with this kind of food around dinner time.

So my question is - is this likely to cause problems later down the line? I don’t want to encourage picky eating and reinforce adult food/child food ideas but I can’t see how screaming at dinner time is any better. Would really appreciate some advice from more experienced mums. Thanks so much in advance.

My DD eats at a similar time at nursery and I don’t offer her a proper dinner when she gets home on those days anymore as she was also refusing it. I now just give her a selection of bits that she can pick at if she wants to (usually something like oat cakes, cheese and fruit) and a cup of milk. Some days she eats it all and asks for more, other days she doesn’t want anything. I think it’s okay to be led by them, they’ll eat if they’re hungry.

We then have our dinner after she goes to bed. On non-nursery day’s we eat together she can experience that too.

My DD tends to be downstairs for an hour or so after she gets home so there is time for her to graze while playing/watching TV. If yours is exhausted and needing to go to bed straight away, perhaps you could offer the snack on the way home. I have seen parents at our nursery give food when they pick up and the child eats it in the pushchair while they’re walking home.

My DD is two and goes to nursery 3 days a week and has an ‘afternoon tea’ at nursery at a similar time to yours.
I do offer her food around 5.30 but usually it’s just whatever we have in. Toast and some fruit/veg, pitta bread and cheese etc or sometimes if I have some leftovers from earlier in the week I might reheat that.
Sometimes she eats lots, sometimes she eats hardly anything but I just let her lead by what she wants to eat.
We don’t eat with her as we don’t have time to make our dinner before bath and bedtime so she sits at a little table that’s her size and we call it a snack. Seems to work ok.
I agree to try and take the pressure off it - if she wants to eat it then fine but if not then I wouldn’t worry.

I'm not sure if it's the 'right' thing to do or not but after nursery I just offer my toddler something like toast, fruit & a yoghurt which she is more than happy with, or cucumber/peppers/cheese & crackers etc. She is older than your DD but does understand that on non-nursery days she eats the same meal as us at the table. The advantages are that on nursery days you get to eat whatever tea you want without considering if DD likes it too I have to confess that I do allow DD to watch something or play when she is having her 'snack tea' though. I just feel she needs a few hours to decompress before bed the same way I do once she has had her bath & gone up for the night!

I used to just give DD1 a yoghurt, banana or slice of toast with some milk. She'd occasionally want to pick at my dinner too but only a couple of mouthfuls. I'd take the pressure away and see what she wants to eat

We get in at 5.30pm after nursery and generally have yogurt/fruit with either toast, a biscuit, raisins or similar.

She doesn't seem to want anything more but this may change as she gets older.

I've always given DD just a "picky" plate on her nursery days - she has two decent meals at nursery and certainly when she was younger she was exhausted most days and it's no point making it worse imo. Now 3 she flops in front of the TV for 20 minutes then has a quick tea before bathtime. It's normally a bagel with toppings/stuffed pitta or pitta pizza/toasted crumpet, some cheese or chicken strips, crudités and some fruit.

I don't think it will make her into a picky eater. She isn't going to see it as the same as one of her meals as it's going to be a different 'experience' for want of a better word.

It will become part of her routine that after she has been at nursery she comes home and then she plays with her toys then she has a bath then she has a banana then she has her story then she goes to bed. Or whatever it is.

And she won't be two forever. So this will just be a small part of her routine.

DS eats at childminders around 4pm and I just offer fruit/toast/crackers and cheese unless he hasn’t eaten properly or refused childminders dinner. We eat after he has gone to bed at around 7ish. He has his snack plate while we play/watch tv as we have found if we don’t allow him to decompress he won’t sleep. I tend to cook around 6.30 while DP does bedtime/bottle. He is fine on days off/weekends when we all eat together. Haven’t found he is picky because of childminding routine X

These replies have helped a lot, thank you. My MIL (who is lovely and wise and I listen to her advice a lot) said not to stop doing a proper dinner all together so I’ve been persisting even though it is stressing me (and her) out a lot.

We do a lot of meal prep/batch cooking at a weekend to make sure we have food to eat at dinner, but it will be nice for DH and I to be able to have food that doesn’t have to keep well again!

Also my friends’ toddlers all seem to be constantly ravenous and have no problems at all around mealtimes

We do the same as other posters - quick snack after nursery while we have a proper dinner, but on non-nursery days he eats with us. He's not interested in dinner after nursery, he just sits on the sofa with a snack and watches In the Night Garden. He definitely needs a bit of time to decompress, like we all do.

I think that’s fine.
Ds is a bit younger and if he wakes later from nap and has some milk and a small snack at 3.30/4pm he isn’t really that hungry for dinner at 6/6.30pm. So if she’s already had lunch then ‘tea’ at 4pm I imagine it’s similar

Toast/ fruit/ yogurt. Enjoy your evening.
You can eat dinner together the 3 days she isn’t at nursery

We generally have all meals at the table with DS, but after nursery (3 days per week) is a different kettle of fish. I quite often just put a snack plate out on his toy table and let him pick at it. If he’s really tired he’ll sometimes sit on my lap with his plate and watch some TV. DS is naturally quite highly strung and likes a routine, but 6 months in and we’ve had no high chair refusal on none nursery days. DH and I like nursery days as we get to have a meal together just the two of us