Cutting snacks

[Fedupwithfeeding]

I'm thoroughly fed up with mealtimes and my nearly 3 year old. He has never been a great eater but we're in a phase right now of it being really shit. I know the advice is not to cajole them into eating and to just serve it up and let them decide what or how much to eat but it's starting to really upset me seeing food going in the bin all the time.

I'm thinking of cutting snacks and wondered if anyone has had such is done this and seen positive effects?

Example from today was I picked him up from nursery at 3 o'clock and gave him a snack which I always do to tide him over til dinner time. Its usually something like a yoghurt pouch, banana, cheese, some crackers or a healthy flapjack. It just seems a long time to go without until dinner at 5 when we all eat together. Dinner time rolls around and we all have sausages, egg, beans and a few French fries. He ate about 6 French fries and nothing, I mean nothing else.

So I'm thinking I'm totally sick of scraping his dinner in the bin and I should drop the snack at pick up and give him his dinner as soon as we get home. But that means we don't all eat together. Who knows if it will even make a difference anyway. I could honestly cry sometimes and it's hard work trying to seem unbothered on the outside.

He's happy, healthy, his weight is fine. So I know it's ridiculous to be so upset but it does get to me that he doesn't even try. (I never ask him to try or say things like "just one bite of this")

Is it only dinner after nursery that he doesn't eat? Will he eat lunch/breakfast?

If so and he's having a hot meal at lunchtime at nursery I'd probably give him something smaller in the evening. So maybe a small snack when he gets home (depending on what and when he's eaten at nursery) and then a smaller tea.

If he needs a main meal with you as he isn't having it at nursery I'd either cut the snack or reduce it to just some fruit.

In terms of not helping him to eat, a bit of encouragement might go a long way.

My 3 year old eats much more when I encourage him, load a fork for him, keep him going when he loses focus chatting etc! I don't need to for every meal but the evening meal when he's tired, definitely needs some input from us.

Ps, we don't all eat together in the evening either! I'm not eating at 5 without my husband. I sit with mine and my husband and I eat later. We have lunch and breakfast together so it's not a big deal that he has tea earlier :)

Does he have a dinner at nursery he won't starve if you don't give a snack. I'd go small with snacks he doesn't need crackers etc that's quite big snack for a little boy. Give him a drink and maybe some rasins or a few bits. Reduce his dinner portion and see how he goes.

No flapjack. That's too much.
Maybe some fruit.
Do you eat non processed meat. Like chicken? Chicken gujons from M&S are brillant.

Encouragement only makes things worse with mine. He seems to do best with a "there you go" and nothing else. He wouldn't be happy if I tried to put things on his fork.

We go through phases of him eating well (for him!) and then bad phases. Currently in a bad phase. Even then I feel guilty of thinking of it like that. He's obviously getting all the calories he needs but it's still disheartening to cook food and then throw it in the bin. We can all eat at 5 as my husband works from home til 6 or so but he's able to stop at that time to join us. Any earlier he can't join us as he usually has video calls/meetings going on

Until he gets his funded hours when he turns 3, I have to send him with a packed lunch. Some days more is eaten than others. Today his hot food (in a flask) wasn't touched. So he had only eaten a yoghurt, some cheddar cheese and a banana. I always send him with "safe" food to nursery because any time I've tried to gamble and send something new in, it comes back uneaten. They give a healthy snack or fruits and veggies and I know he does join in with that.

When he starts getting hot meals I think I want to throw him in at the deep end and stop the packed lunches. Peer pressure has definitely helped as he'll eat various fruit at nursery that he doesn't eat at home.

I'd reduce the size of the after school snack - but still give it - and push dinner 30 mins later. See what difference that makes.

Also, put less on his plate!

Thanks. I pick him up at 3 and he goes to bed at 6. So as it is at the moment he gets a snack at 3 and dinner at 5 so we can eat together. The snack really is something like a couple of crackers or oatcakes. Or yoghurt pouch. The flapjack isn't some massive piece of cake, it's about the size of a matchbox.

Maybe I just need to give him a piece of fruit at 3 and get dinner in him earlier? I would love us to eat together but maybe it's just better to get his dinner in as early as possible.

I'm even wondering about giving him his dinner the second we get home (we're only a ten minute walk from nursery) and then if he's hungry before bed he can have a small supper of something at the table with us before bed.

His portion was half a Cumberland sausage, a tablespoon of baked beans, 6 French fries and a fried egg. Too much? Just right? It's hard to tell when it's not touched! Because 6 French fries certainly isn't the right portion size 😭

I'd give him his tea earlier.

I don't really believe in the whole idea of 'eating together' until children are a bit older. I don't think it's necessary for toddlers - just feed them when they need food.

I wouldn't expect a child to wait until later in the evening for a family meal until they were about 7 to be honest.

I think you're right. I'll try doing dinner when we get home and see if it makes a difference.

The thing is he ran to the table tonight shouting "I want my dinner I want my dinner!" He seemed genuinely hungry then his face fell when he saw what it was and he wouldn't touch most of it.

Yeah... I've just always thought it's fine to give little kids their meal about 5pm/ when they come home from school, and then a separate adult meal. I know some people disagree but I just think it works better when they're young.

@landscapepainter

In this case it would mean dinner at 3:30/4 which seems mad but I suppose it really doesn't matter.

I would do an earlier tea also.
My DS always ate at 1600 at that age.
Which does sound mad as you say but if bedtime is at 1800 it's not so crazy.

This. He goes to bed so early that it's silly to worry!

Ditch all the snacks. My 3 year old DD doesn't have snacks (and also gets picked up from nursery at 3pm, with a 5pm dinner). I genuinely don't understand the obsession with constantly giving kids food. My daughter still has a normal amount of toddler fussiness with food, so the lack of snacks doesn't solve all the problems (she can still randomly decide to stop eating something she previously loved, so I'm with you on the food waste frustration), but at least I know she's hungry at mealtimes so she will normally eat all of the 'safe' foods I serve her.

Oh OP I sympathise - my DD is nearly 4 but has had phases of eating basically nothing. I've been right where you are at times and it's awful to make meals and watch your child not eat and have to pretend you don't care and throw it away. I've kind of accepted now that my DD is more of a grazer and won't really sit and eat meals. I used to make a "picky plate" for her and just leave it out and she'd slowly pick at it over hours and play/watch TV in between. Not ideal if you need to feed your DS before bed and I get you want to instil proper mealtimes but I tended to do that for lunch, leave it for a bit and then take it away. For dinner I'd offer some sort of choice but not too much like pasta or sausage and mash so she felt involved and I always give very small portions and offer more. I am quite pestering with her if I feel she hasn't eaten enough like would you like a banana/yogurt after your dinner so offering different/more food without referencing the fact she hasn't eaten much dinner. But genuinely it did improve slowly bur surely over time so try to hang in there. There are still days she doesn't eat much at all and others she eats more. I also try and look at a day/week rather than a mealtime and when I add it up over 24 hours sometimes I think actually that's OK for a day's worth of food even though she won't have touched her lunch for example. If his weight is fine I'd try not to worry although I do know how hard that is!

It's mind-numbing thinking about food and then soul-destroying when you bin it.

I think mine is a bit of a grazer too. If we're at home I do the same with bowls of fruit. Will leave a bowl of basically fruit salad out and he picks away at it. I do rely on snacks as we spend a huge amount of time out of the house. He's a very outdoorsy and incredibly active boy so we do a lot of picnic type food on the go. I'm talking about a boy who's not yet 3 years old but can be zooming about on his balance bike for 6 hours straight, only stopping to have some snacks here and there.

Why is he going to bed at 6pm? That’s very early. If it’s because he’s knackered by then, then he’s probably too tired to eat properly at 5. I agree cut the snack and do 4-4.30 dinner.

I literally don't know how to ditch all the snacks entirely. As I said to PP he's an insanely active child and we are always on the go with snacks in the backpack.

Its all good stuff: peanut butter sandwiches, cream cheese sandwiches, oat cakes, rice cakes and humous, fruit, cheese, yoghurts, flapjacks. Sometimes we'll stop at a cafe and have a bowl of soup, or take soup in a flask, but we're outdoors constantly so a lot of the food in the middle of the day is like this.

He's small for his age although he weighs a tonne to me! so seems to be packing it away somewhere. And he's insanely energetic. I feel like toddlers are another species. He seems to run on air sometimes.

This may be an unpopular opinion (!) but why does it matter if your child isn’t really eating dinner? If they are a healthy weight and eating nutritious snacks like banana and cheese? Just don’t cook a portion for them then it won’t go to waste. They are probably getting all the calories they need during the day when they need them for energy. I get really hungry at lunchtime and eat loads, but often don’t eat dinner. And I’m def not malnourished or skinny 😂

just make sure you are still offering snacks that are nutritious. Add in stuff like chopped up cold sausage / chicken / beef, cucumber, carrot, other raw veg (my kids like raw broccoli and sugar snaps), and he will be unknowingly eating his dinner but in snack form

That's just when he goes to bed. On nursery days he's been active all day, and when he's with me we're out constantly walking in the woods or at various parks/bike tracks on his balance bike, swimming and so on.

He sleeps 6-7, sometimes 7:30.

@Fedupwithfeeding the way I see it you have a choice, you keep giving snacks and don't worry about how much he eats at dinner, or you ditch the snacks to try and encourage a bigger appetite at mealtimes. It doesn't matter how healthy the snacks are, or where you have them, it's just about volume of food throughout the day. If your lifestyle suits more snacks out of the house, then stop fighting over dinner. Although, I'm also out of the house all day everyday with my two and we still don't do snacks - we eat food at home at mealtimes - so I'm still not sure why you think ditching the snacks is such an impossibility

(Oh and for what it's worth, my 3 year old also goes to bed at 6.30pm, and sleeps through till 7.30am, so a 6pm bedtime isn't that unusual)

I might need to embrace this. I suppose it's just so ingrained to eat an evening meal and to eat it together at the table. He also sleeps from 6-7 so it seems a long time without food if he barely eats dinner.

I know he's obviously fine and some mornings he's been known to have 3 breakfasts, and very often has two. Porridge with fruit, seeds and honey, then back to the table again for a bowl of cereal, then on weekends he'll pinch some bacon and black pudding off his dad's plate on top of that. He's probably ramming all the calories in in the first half of the day 😅 intermittent fasting toddler style 🤷🏻‍♀️

Might try giving him a small plate of something hot when he gets in and then leaving a healthy snack plate out on the table in the living room and see if he'll graze on that while he's playing in there of an evening.

in which case it’s definitely too late for him to be eating a large evening meal. Imagine if someone cooked you a massive dinner at 9.30 and you were going to bed at 10.30. You would probably just be too tired and not feel like eating much at all.

I don’t think it’s a big deal if he eats earlier however I do agree with pp to some extent that it’s not a great idea for kids to always have food available at a moments notice. There’s nothing wrong with giving food between main meals or taking a packed lunch out of course but I do despair a bit when I see kids wailing “I want a snaaaack” and they are presented with food immediately. They do need to learn to be able to regulate themselves when they are peckish (and that’s what it is - peckish not starving!) especially as when they go to school they won’t have constant snacks available. I think it’s good for them to learn that they sometimes have to wait and it’s only when snacks are used as a barrier to this that they become an issue IMO.

we eat food at home at mealtimes - so I'm still not sure why you think ditching the snacks is such an impossibility

When I'm with him we're usually out from 10-4 so we're often not home for lunch. We take picnic food out. I say snacks as it's not a sit down meal but some people seem to be reacting likes it's a mars bar and a packet of crisps. It's just lots of nibbly things that he grazes on throughout the day. He knows there's plenty in the rucksack and just asks when he's hungry.

My OP is more about the between nursery and dinner period and giving a snack to tide him over. I agree with various PP that I should just bring dinner forward really early.

(Oh and for what it's worth, my 3 year old also goes to bed at 6.30pm, and sleeps through till 7.30am, so a 6pm bedtime isn't that unusual)

I didn't think so either but I was responding to someone on the thread who asked why he was in bed at that time.