Some time between breastfeeding and back-to-school, there’s a transition: a nursing baby can eat up to 12 times per day while an adult human generally has three meals per day with a snack or two thrown in. But let’s make them healthy snacks when we can. Don’t even get me started on the number of people willing to hand my child a cookie on any given day!
How do we get from one point to the other? By making it up as we go.
As the mom, I am in charge of the what, when, and how of snacking. I decide if the whining preschooler rolling around on the floor needs a snack or is just bored with his usual array of toys and activities. I conclude whether my toddler’s recent boneless tantrum can be blamed on low blood sugar and whether I can learn any lessons for next time.
Since I turn into a huge B-word when I don’t get enough quality calories, I project my worldview onto my children. I offer my little people food about every two hours. I like to keep many healthy options around so all choices are good ones.
Here are five easy snack combos (as excerpted from our book, Stuff Every Mom Should Know):
- Apples and nut butter. Slice the apples, spread the peanut or almond butter, and serve with an extra helping of napkins.
- Fruit smoothie. Add frozen fruit, bananas, and yogurt to your blender. Serve with an extra wide straw.
- Hummus and pita. Offer pita for dipping or spread onto triangle wedges of whole-wheat pita. Older children can be offered carrot sticks too.
- Sunflower seeds and raisins. Great for a stroller snack, this modified trail mix can be eaten straight from the bag.
- Cheese and cherry tomatoes. Cheese sticks, cubes, shreds, or circles are a good boost of calcium and protein. Pair cheese with small tomatoes for sweetness.
On the weekends, I announce “Snack Time” like clockwork at 10am and 3pm. The boys tend to ignore me and keep right on playing. But on schooldays, if I don’t pick them up from after-school-care brandishing portable snacks, I’m “the Worst Mommy in the World.” Clearly, there’s no right answer.
I’m curious about your house: Do you push snacks on your child proactively, provide them only when asked, or deny them between meals?
it’s funny…when i was working my snack times were 10 and 3 that would fuel me when i would start to get a little cranky with paperwork and clients. Since being at home i dont snack at regular times, i will go long periods of not eating….this is when i lose my cool. I need to work on getting back to my old snack times.
{Kathy} I would add Nutella with sliced bananas on anything, crackers, toast, etc.
Yay @Maribel, let’s hear it for 10 and 3. I find that if it gets past 10:30 and I haven’t had a snack, I’m wondering where lunch is. I’m worse than a toddler some days.
I never think about sunflower seeds! I never really ate them growing up. I should try them with my nut-allergic kid, who I thought would never know the joys of trail mix.
At our house it’s 10 and 3 too. I have a 6 and a 9 year old and we ALL get cranky at those times if we don’t fuel up.
We like stove-top popcorn and apples.
Carrots and yogurt
Our own trail mix
goldfish and milk
@CM – Sunflower seeds are the crunch in our nut-free-preschool mix. We add raisins, chocolate chips, and other dried fruit. Guess what the little guy goes for?
@Hillary – Thanks for the other good suggestions. What’s in your trail mix?
My kids refuse sunflower seeds, although our go-to spread is sunflower seed butter.
We also consume a lot of
String cheese
Yogurt
Blueberries or strawberries
Fruit leather (healthy? I don’t know)
As for Nutella (yum!) I was so intrigued by a tv ad claiming it was part of a healthy breakfast, that I googled “Is nutella healthy?” and learned that Nutella, with 21 grams of sugar per serving, settled a class action law suit for misleading parents with this ad campaign. Nutella is apparently a delicious snack, but not a healthy one. Same amount of sugar as a Kit Kat bar.
(@Mothering From Scratch, I’m not at all criticizing you. I’ll totally eat it with sliced bananas on toast. Just thought I’d share my learning.)
I am so glad I am not the only person that gets cranky when hungry. I too can throw toddler sized tantrums if I go too long without food. It is like a switch and I go from Mrs Nice to Mrs Nasty. I hate it!
I will be feeding my wee boy regularly in case he has my issues LOL
Good food suggestions, folks. I’m curious if anyone else is interested in combinations (like protein with starch or fruit with protein) or am I trying too hard?
My go-to snacks are fruit (we stalk up on whatever is cheap at the farmer’s market), and we always have assorted cheese sticks in the house. Crackers and peanut butter, chips and salsa, or cheese and crackers. For the portable snacks, we have fruit leather, freeze-dried fruit, no-sugar-added applesauce pouches, and trail mix. I buy trail mix at trader joe’s, then put 1/4 servings in little tupperwares to stock our snack box. My 4-year-old can grab any of these on his own, which is great for me. I like having snacks he can get himself, so I don’t have to stop what I’m doing to get his snack. And, since I control what goes in the snack box, I can make sure it’s reasonably healthy (win for me), but he gets to choose whatever he wants from the box (win for him).
I try to make combos, too, like a fruit and a protein, but I don’t sweat it too much. I recently tried roasted garbanzo beans with garlic salt and garam masala, which my three year old devoured. 🙂