Did I create snack monsters, or is this normal?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My niece is 18 years old and graduating soon from high school. Waaay back when she was 4 years old and demanding snacks all day my sister put out fruit in a bowl and would direcdt her to the bowl on the kitchen table. You want a snack? Sure! Take something from the bowl. And that was NOT what she wanted - she wanted carbs. Crackers or bread. So there were some (a lot) of tantrums until she figured it out: snack will be fruit. If she had a piece of fruit, fine, but she was not getting crackers all day long.

You can change your child's demand for snacks if you want to - but it will take a solid week of fury and sturm and drang and tantrums until they figure out the new regime. But I would suggest you do it - nobody needs so many snacks.

I say this as a director of a full day preschool: licensing requires that a snack or meal is every 3 hours. So we have snack at 9, lunch at 12, PM snack at 3pm. And I am not sure children should be eating every 3 hours! Sometimes kids just aren't hungry for lunch, and it's because they had snack. We try to limit it to 1 scoop/2 crackers and a few pieces of fruit, but when there are 16 children serving themselves, it's hard to be the snack police and see it all.

But truly, children do't need snacks every few hours to make it through! Yes, babies eat every 3 hours, but their tummies are teeny. Children ages preschool and up do not, but we've created this. And look, we are all much heavier than we used to be - snacks to the rescue!

What is the problem with snacks? Aren't we supposed to graze all day instead of being ravenous for lunch? I had to see a nutritionist to get an insurance benefit and this is what she recommended. Doesn't it keep your blood sugar more level and prevent binge eating on a huge lunch or dinner bc you are starving? I know I eat a much more sensible lunch if I have a mid morning snack. It sounds like the daycare director should implement more healthful snacks.