How to Make Snack Time Healthier For Kids
I Tried to Put My Kids on a Strict Snack Schedule For a Month, and Here's What I Learned
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I used to let my kids grab a snack and carry on with whatever they were doing, whether it was working on a floor puzzle or colouring or playing tag up and down the hall.
Not only did this leave my house littered with crumbs and sticky remnants of stepped-on cheese bits, but according to Satter, it is just the sort of behaviour that can lead kids to mindlessly eat. "This kind of eating tends to be less nutritious and leads to misuse of food," she wrote.
Now, whenever they eat a snack, it's at the dinner table or seated on a stool at the kitchen counter. Turns out, an after-dinner fruit popsicle is much less exciting when they can't simultaneously build Legos for the 20 minutes it normally takes them to polish one off. I've found that they consume more thoughtfully – they're more aware when they are satiated and not just eating to eat.
After having attempted to follow these three rules for several weeks now, I've seen some positive changes in the way my kids eat. At the outset, it felt like a form of parental torture in which every "snack time" was met with ferocious opposition. They hated the choices I gave, they refused to sit down, they lunged for the box of tortilla chips in the pantry when my back was turned. It seemed like a doomed experiment, and I gave in plenty of times just to keep from losing my cool. (OK, I lost my cool a lot.)
Eventually, though, my kids started to get used to the new normal of being called into the kitchen for a snack. It's still not perfect, and I expect it won't ever be, knowing my and my partner's parenting styles. We'll try to stick to the plan as consistently as we can, but we know some days will be more effective than others.
The biggest lesson in all this, for me, was that snacks need to be treated with the same general process as meals.
"Your child shouldn't be allowed to run with food or get food handouts whenever he wants them," Satter wrote. "Your child should have a snack, and be done with it."