[...] Snack Time All The Time: According to the New York Times, it is Snack Time All The Time these days for the soccer mom set. Jennifer Steinhauer describes a world in which she is constantly being asked to provide snacks for kids, and their parents, at all her children’s social events. [...]

One of the boys that I nanny for has preschool 3 days a week from 12:30-3:00 pm. One child’s parents have to provide snack each school day on a rotating basis. This seems excessive to me. They each lunch right before they go and could just have a snack when they get home if they’re hungry.

Like your kids, Sierra, mine get away with eating some junk occasionally (my grandma fed them microwave popcorn and Doritos while I gritted my teeth the other day). At home? They have a snack after afternoon nap, and it is usually a fruit and vegetable smoothie, plain yogurt with a little cinnamon or fruit puree added, fresh fruit and veggies, or maybe a little cheese on whole grain crackers. They’ve never been offered cookies, candy, fruit snacks, etc. (by me) and they don’t even ask. I think I’ll go nuts when my kids are old enough to have social functions where they’re offered junk food daily!

I agree with Julia – why not let parents bring snacks for their own kids. I’m sure the parents who have kids with allergies and other dietary restrictions would appreciate not having to worry about their kids mistakenly eating something they shouldn’t and the parents who don’t have kids with allergies would appreciate not having to worry about feeding some other kid the wrong food.

Comments
Hate the extra snacking, especially where it inappropriate, like during toddler music class as Ella said. http://www.mannersformothers.com/2010/01/forbidden-fruits-and-goldfish-graham.html

My kids snack all day, but they’re 3 and 2.

But the snacks are almost always fruit or “baby” carrots (cuz I’m too lazy to cut up my own carrots). Other than that they can have one slice of processed cheese per day, sometimes we have real cheese. Sometimes they have yogurt. Once in awhile we have crackers, cookies, whatever.

The fact is our schedules are all over the place. My husband works anywhere from 5 to 16 hours any time time from 9am to 3am -starting and stopping at different times. My 3 year old likes to eat as soon as he gets up, I can’t eat first thing also I get up later than him (daddy gets up with him). So he wants a snack when I eat my breakfast. Sometimes we have lunch, sometimes we don’t because the kids have been snacking all morning. Sometimes I eat dinner with the kids, sometimes I wait for hubby. Sometimes I eat two dinners (tee hee)

Once a week my grandma comes over for the afternoon and always brings “treats” (she brings berries, usually blue berries. Once in awhile she also brings cashews. Once she brought dates). We used to sometimes do dinner, but we’ve mostly stopped. My kids end eating a pint of berries and running around too much to stop and eat, and I think its pretty common that kids eat more in the morning than the evenings.

But I think there is almost always a snack on the go around here. Right now there’s a bag of lychee fruit on my desk, raspberries and crackers on the table. I don’t take the plates up right after lunch or dinner so often there’s bits of cooked brocolli or whatever getting snacked on for hours.

On the other hand when we’re out we don’t usually bring snacks, they get busy and they don’t eat (its been like that since they were 2 months old, I used to have to bring my breast pump whenever we went out for the day until I learned to hand express). Sometimes I remember to toss a piece of fruit in my bag, or some dried cranberries but that’s about it.

My “boys” are now 16 and 18. I used to let them snack all the time and although I thought we ate healthy-no cokes or candy, I’m slowly coming to the realization that all that processed food was not good. We have recently switched back to a traditional diet including butter, eggs, whole dairy products and grass fed beef. We are all feeling better and my son’s acne has cleared up. Go figure?