Let's Talk About Snacks, Baby

Every month on Can I Have Another Snack? I’m going to share something super practical that you can use with your kids (if you want) based on a resource I use with my family nutrition clients or from a webinar I’ve run. This month I’m sharing my ‘Let’s Talk About Snacks, Baby’ guide and next month I’ll be sharing my ‘Raising Embodied Eaters’ PDF - a super useful resource for helping open up conversations with family/friends/school about the fundamentals of how you approach feeding your kids. A lot goes into creating these resources, so from next month this will be a perk available just for paid subscribers.

Another cool feature we have coming up soon is the ‘Dear Laura’ column, where I fashion myself as an agony aunt and answer your questions - you can submit them now to hello@laurathomasphd.co.uk (or drop them below). Give as much detail as you can about the situation. Each month I’ll pick two or three super juicy questions that we can really go deep on. Send me your questions about feeding kids, anti-diet nutrition and intuitive eating, and body image and embodiment for you/ your kids. Stay-tuned for that next week!

Ok so back to snacks.

Ngl, I half made this guide to help me - coming up with ideas for, and combinations of snacks is one of those endless parenting tasks that I just find exhausting, and so, so boring. And figuring out food stuff is literally my job. A goes to childcare 4 days a week where we have to provide 1 snack a day, he usually needs another when I pick him up, and then the other 3 days a week he needs 2-3 snacks a day. Tl;dr, that’s a lot of snacks.

But that’s my thing. Other parents have other things when it comes to snacks. Some common questions I get asked from parents:

• What if my kid ONLY wants snacks and refuses their meal?
• How ‘bad’ are store bought snacks?
• Why is my kid constantly asking for snacks?
• What if my kid only wants to eat the same snack?
• Should I give a bedtime snack?
• How do I hold boundaries around snacks without my kid feeling restricted?

It doesn’t help that mummy foodfluencers have a lot of opinions about this. Only give healthy snacks. Don’t give fun bedtime snacks. If you give too many snacks it will ruin their appetite for meals. Snacks should be mini-meals.

It’s a lot. And all the noise can make it hard to figure out what’s best for your situation.