Does your child even need a snack?
Snacks can hold an important place in the diet. But too often, we see traditional snack foods displace other critical nutrients. This often occurs because our children snack on what are commonly referred to as “empty calories” (or traditional “snack” foods that offer little nutritional value) or they fill up on snacks too close to meal times (leaving them without an appetite for the more nourishing options usually offered at meals versus snacks).
If what snacks your child is offered lack nutrition, when such snacks are being eaten compromise their appetite at meals, or where your child grows accustomed to grazing versus adopting healthy snack habits, this article is for you.
Can I have a snack?
A step-by-step guide to get you through the daily dilemma of what, when, and where to offer a snack. Answer these six questions to decide if your child needs a snack (or not)!
Many families are confused on how The Division of Responsibility applies to snack time. Particularly in the area of how much snack to offer, parents seem unsure on how to answer the common question, “Can I have a snack” and if so, how much of a snack is overall helping more than hurting. With research that shows kids are consuming more calories from snacks in recent years versus decades before (when many of us were kids), parents are rightfully unsure of how to best approach nutrient-rich snacks that compliment versus compete with what their children eat over the course of the day.
This kind of uncertainty in feeding can often lead to catering rather than parenting from a place of confidence and clarity. So let’s work through this!
Does your child even need a snack?
Here are six questions to ask yourself before deciding on what, when, and where to offer your child(ren) a snack.
Get your free meal and snack template here.
1. Are you being proactive or reactive with your child’s snacking?
To answer this, think about: Are most snacks dictated by your child or by you? In order to maintain your role in the feeding relationship, YOU should be the one who is deciding what, when, and where food is offered - including snacks. From there, your child gets to decide if/whether and how much of the offered snack they eat.
Need help with this? Read more here about role reversal and how allowing your child to decide what, when, and where snacks are offered can spiral and cause you to also assume their role of if/whether and how much they can then eat. Instead, establish your role within the feeding relationship and start taking a more proactive approach to establish structure with snack time.
2. When did your child last eat?
Evaluate your child’s routine and schedule. How big are the gaps between meals? How many snacks are you allowing within those gaps? You want to evaluate if your current feeding routine is supporting a good appetite upon meal times and yet satisfied hunger in between meals. This is often achieved with snacks when the time between meals spans greater than three hours.
Need help with this? For more on coming up with a feeding routine that fits your family (including spacing snacks appropriately versus allowing them on-demand throughout the day), be sure to check out this post and others from my series on creating structure and establishing routine.
3. Why do you think a snack is needed?
As early as infancy, we parents find the soothing power a snack can have.
Fussy while waiting at the pediatrician? Here’s a pouch.
Antsy in the stroller? Have some puffs.
We all have likely fallen prey to doing this a time or two, but what we don’t want is for this type of reactionary feeding to become our family’s norm. We can quickly see that if/when we do, these foods become what our children associate with “snacks” - something very different than those foods we offer at meals.
Instead, consider your objective in offering a given snack and ask yourself, is it being given for reasons other than to nourish them?
While food offers more than nutrition alone and those non-nutritive values matter, we want to use food to regularly fuel our kid’s growing bodies not to routinely soothe their ever-changing temperaments. As discussed here, if it seems like they consistently struggle at a given time of day, it may mean you need to adjust your routine or, as mentioned below, alter the snack being offered to better support your child’s appetite with more satiating snack options.
If it is an off hour or extra emotional day, snack routines will help you to more easily differentiate if your child’s expression of emotion is tied to actually needing food (in order to meet a physical need like hunger) and something else being needed (to tend to an unmet emotional need they are expressing). Offering a snack (satisfying a physical need) when it is really an unmet emotional need that is crying out for attention can confuse both parent and child about the purpose of snacks.
Need help with this? One of the easiest ways to rule out “Are they hungry?” versus “Are they acting out?” is to utilize clear boundaries in the feeding relationship. One way to do this is to adopt predictable meal and snack times and then to monitor their temperaments accordingly. Appetite regulation (something I work with families to achieve in The Academy) can take up to two weeks to be established with regular routine. Once your child has learned that you have a proactive, planned approach to what, when, and where snacks are offered, you can more easily identify why you (or your child) feel a snack is needed.
4. How long does this snack need to fill them for?
A true increase in appetite can and does happen with kids, particularly during seasons of increased physical activity or growth spurts. That’s why we will highlight what a well-balanced snack is in the next section and how we can make the most out of a child’s true appetite for their nutritional advantage by offering more satiating snack options.
However, it is important to also point out here that The Division of Responsibility in feeding should naturally adapt for such increases in appetite because the child is regulating if/whether and how much they eat and bases such decisions on internal cues (i.e. true hunger) versus external cues (like pressure or restriction from a parent). This reinforces that the parent can choose from simple or satiating snack options (based on how long until the next meal), and the child can they practice self-regulation from the snack options offered. To do this, a parent can ask themselves:
Is this a tide-me-over snack to help temporarily curb their hanger and bring them to the table comfortably hungry (without being in borderline meltdown mode)? Then you might want to offer a “lighter” snack option that is less satiating. This isn’t your limiting the amount of what they eat (remember how much is their job!) but rather making wise choices for what is within your realm of control (being what is offered, because you know when they might be eating again).
Or, is this snack something you need to stick with them for longer because you know their next opportunity to eat won’t be for a few hours? If that’s the case, you need their snack to be more satiating. Because just as you shouldn’t restrict them into eating less (in the above example), it is also not your job as a parent to force them into eating more at a given snack. That’s on them to learn how to self-regulate so that they can remain comfortably hungry or full until the next eating opportunity.
Need help on this? Rather than parents trusting their child to self-regulate and a child trusting their parent to allow them the freedom to, what can also happen with snacking is that kids indulge in snack foods not necessarily out of true hunger but rather because of boredom, feeling restricted towards such foods, or in attempts to fill up on such foods so they aren’t as hungry come the next meal. If as a parent you are wondering, “Are seconds okay?” or “How much of a snack should I give so they are still hungry for their next meal?,” be sure you are signed up to be a part of my free email community. As a member, you will be the first to know when upcoming content goes live - including my next post on the gray area of snacking. In the post, I will cover five confusing times of days that kids commonly ask for snacks and we as parents waver on what to say (or do!) with the snacks we offer and seconds we allow (or don’t)! If self-regulation versus how much to serve is an area of angst for you, you want to make sure you don’t miss this post!
5. What is a well-balanced snack?
A lot of families are confused over what a “well-balanced” snack even means let alone what it looks like in a real life application. So let’s review some snacking 101 info, so you can decide both what to offer and how it might impact their appetite afterwards (so it doesn’t disrupt their next meal).
In terms of a snack’s (or meal’s) “fill factor,” you want to consider how much of a given macronutrient it offers (being protein, fat, and/or fiber - from the type of carbohydrates in it).
“In general:
Snacks with less protein, fat, or fiber will be more simple (and thus less filling).
Snacks with more protein, fat, or fiber will be more satiating (and thus more filling).”
So when we consider this in terms of what “well-balanced means,” a more “well-balanced” snack might be one that includes a little bit of eat of these macronutrients to ensure your child is getting a balanced diet (across the macronutrients they need for proper growth and development). We can also consider “well-balanced” though in the context of offering our children a balance of micronutrients
Need more help with this? The Academy covers all the macro- (and micro-!) nutrients kids need as well as how to encourage your child to eat from all food groups for a more “well-balanced” diet. Including strategies on how snacks support this, the Academy takes a food-first approach to help promote your child is eating a balanced diet (before adding in supplements).
6. Have you identified any nutritional gaps in your child’s diet?
As mentioned earlier, the intent of a child’s snack is not to use food to pacify emotional needs (majority of the time) but rather to fill nutrient gaps that they naturally have during the day.
Because children’s small stomachs can only eat so much at a given eating opportunity (i.e. meal times), snacks offer a bridge between those meal times as well as additional opportunities to offer additional nutrition otherwise lacking or missed in their diet. These are the nutrients we want to emphasize at snack time.
This might be more broadly in terms of balancing out the food groups they are offered over the course of the day (being fruits, vegetables, dairy, protein, and whole grains), or more specifically in emphasizing the micronutrients they need to achieve proper growth and development (like calcium, vitamin D, and iron to name a few). Micronutrients are the vitamins and minerals that parents often worry their child is lacking and opt to supplement (i.e. with an over the counter vitamins) instead of more intentionally integrating these important nutrients into snacks.
Need more help? Academy members are encouraged to work through their Academy Notebook to identify where nutritional gaps exist using their advanced template. This is a 70+ page guide covering the pillars of proper feeding and nutrition for your family. Visit here to enroll in The Academy ON DEMAND or the next LIVE session.
Now what?
These questions should help lead you to confidently deciding if/when a snack might be most appropriate. But inevitably, in every family, there are still going to be gray areas with kids snacks. That is because whether your child arises early before you have had enough coffee to prep a more proper breakfast or you feed your children dinner early and find an awkward gap at the end of the night, there are several scenarios where discerning if/whether to offer a snack still comes up.
Get notified of upcoming content on snacking here to learn more tips and tricks to tackling these gray areas, as well as stroller snacks, bedtime snacks, after-school snacks, nut-free snacks, and all the simple and/or satiating kid snack options in between.