Until the age of four or five, your child will prefer to eat frequently throughout the day. His stomach still can’t cope with three adult sized meals a day, so he is not ready to adopt an adult eating pattern. He may want to eat between three and fourteen times a day, but the typical range is five to seven times. What he eats is more important than how often he eats. As a rule, the more meals he has, the smaller they will be.
You may be accustomed to thinking of snacks as “extras,” but they are an integral part of any child’s diet, so should not be refused. As long as the snacks do not reduce your child’s daily nutrition, and are not being uses as substitutes for “meals,” snacks can be wonderfully useful for introducing new foods gradually without disrupting your child’s eating patterns. Avoid giving your child highly refined and processed foods like cookies, candy, cakes, and ice cream, which contain a lot of calories and very few nutrients. Fresh fruits and vegetables, cubes of cheese, peanut butter or cheese sandwiches with whole –grain bread, and fruit juice all make good, nutritious snacks.
Planning snacks Snack foods should contribute to the whole day’s nutrition, so don’t leave them to chance; plan them carefully and coordinate meals and snacks so that you serve different foods in the snacks and in the meals.
- Milk and milk –based drinks make very good snacks, and contain protein, calcium, and many of the B vitamins. You should use whole milk until your child is at least two years old; then you can use low-fat but not skimmed milk unless your child is significantly overweight. Citrus juices are also very nutritious, especially when fresh, and contain a lot of vitamin C. If you buy fruit juices, avoid those with added sugar.
- Your child may become bored with certain kinds of foods, so try to give him plenty of variety, and make snacks amusing if you can: you could use cookie cutters to cut cheese or bread into interesting shapes, or make a smiling face by arranging pieces of fruit on a slice of bread.
- A food that your child rejects in one form may be acceptable in another: yogurt can be frozen so that it becomes more like ice cream, and a child who rejects cheese sandwiches might enjoy eating cheese and tomato pieces out of an ice-cream cone.
- You can also increase your child’s interest in food by involving him in planning or even preparing part of a snack. He will take great pride in eating a sandwich if he has helped you wash or tear the lettuce, for example, or if you allow him to assemble the bread and filling himself.
