Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids are 5, 3, 1...

7: Breakfast
9: Breakfast #2 at school
11: Morning snack at school
12:30: Lunch at school
3:30 Afterschool snack
6: Dinner
8: Pre-bed snack

As long as snacks follow the same pattern/rules as meals in terms of nutritional content, why does it matter if kids eat many small snacks v several large meals; the former more closely mirrors humans’ natural health cues.

Er this may match boredom eating cues but a "natural health cue" to eat 7 times a day? Sure maaaybe if I spend hours at the gym.

For small kids you idiot. Feel free to look into it and get back to me when you realized I’m right.

Anonymous wrote:My kids have always eaten whenever they wanted to. They are all teens and young 20s. No one is fat. You people are creating eating disorders.

Typical DCUM response. My way is the only way. The rest of you are doing it wrong and harming your children.

My 5 year old eats breakfast at 7:30, snack at 9:30, lunch at 12:30, dinner at 6:30. He rarely asks for an afternoon snack but if he is hungry I’ll give it to him. On school days he eats lunch at 11 and has an afternoon snack at 3 and then barely touches his dinner.

My 2.5 year old is on the same schedule on weekends. At school she gets 2 snacks and then she also eats almost nothing for dinner.

Home snacks are milk, nuts, and / or fruit. But at school they feed goldfish and other crap.

My kid is lowest 15% for height and weight. (I was too.) 2nd grade.

We are vegetarian so I make almost all our meals. Very little store-bought. She eats small amounts:

7:30am breakfast at home (oatmeal or yogurt w banana)
10am snack at school (trail mix)
12noon lunch at school (brought from home, usually leftover from dinner)
3pm snack in car or at home (half an avocado)
5:30 dinner at home
7:30 snack (whole milk hot chocolate, or half an orange) before 8pm bedtime

It’s not really as much about the number of eating opportunities as it is about overall intake & nutrition.

For us, its:

630 breakfast at home (small during the week / something larger on weekends)
830 2nd breakfast at school
10 occasional snack on weekends, or maybe brunch with grown ups
12 lunch
300 snack at school on weekdays, may or may not have a snack at home during this time
530 dinner
630 small dessert maybe 4x/week (like 2 kisses & small cup of milk)

Drinks are water, milk offered at least twice a day (doesn’t always drink it), and up to one juice a day (like 4 oz. OJ with a weekend breakfast or an Honest juice box after school).

On the charts, Kid is 98% height, 50% weight.

We do mid-morning fruit or nut snack, same for afternoon. I feel it cuts down on whining at meal times and makes them much more enthusiastic eaters of real food. But this does mean they eat pretty big meals — two eggs, oatmeal, fruit for breakfast... protein, vegetable, grain for lunch and dinner.

You have an extra snack than we do.

Breakfast
Midmorning snack
Lunch
Afterschool snack
Dinner

Our schedule sounds pretty much the same, except my girls (almost 5 and 2.5) don't eat a lot for breakfast at home and go straight into snack at school. I'd like to cut out the snack on the way home from school since we eat dinner a little earlier, but they seem starving at pick up and hangry about waiting for me to make dinner once we get home.

We actually do fewer snacks on weekends – breakfast is generally a little later so no morning snack, and just one afternoon snack.

My 5 yo:
Breakfast: 7am
Mid morning snack at school: 9:30
Lunch at school: 11am
Snack at pickup: 3pm
Dinner: 5pm

My 3yo goes to half day afternoon preschool.
Breakfast: 8:30am
Mid morning snack: 10am
Lunch: 11:30am
Snack at school: 2:45pm
Snack at pickup: 3:30pm
Dinner: 5pm

They both go to bed around 6:30, hence the early dinner.

This sounds really normal to me.

Dinner at 7? When is bedtime? He’s probably hungry from sleep deprivation. Not kidding.

We do dinner earlier than you but DD sometimes has an after dinner snack so sounds similar enough.

As long as the snacks are healthy it and are not replacing meals, 2 or 3 snacks a day are fine.