After-school snacking tends to be a pain-point for some families. Kiddos may come home ravenous and hit the pantry hard! Or may eat one snack after another and then aren’t so interested in dinner. Or, as in the case of one family I worked with, kiddo has ADHD and couldn’t decide what snack to eat and so devolved into a hangry mess.

Why Can It Be Hard to Choose a Snack?

When you’re hungry, depending on the level of your hunger, your brain may not be capable of making decisions. A brain that is hungry and stressed is not available to problem solve. And what to eat is a situation that needs a plan—What do I feel like eating? What is available? Does anything need to be cooked? Will I need to prepare it? What if mom or dad doesn’t approve of my choice? Forget it! Kids with Executive Functioning deficits struggle to sift through information, make a plan and then execute it. Choosing what to eat can be overwhelming so these kiddos often go for what is easiest–a packaged snack or they may skip it altogether.

What To Do?

My family with the kiddo I mentioned earlier decided to be proactive and head off the “hangries”. In my office, we came up with 4 snacks that would always be available. And then we listed ways to Buddy Up those snacks. Together we made list to post on the pantry door that would be easily seen.

This plan bombed! Kiddo was too cranky to read and pair up snacks so blew past the list completely.

Creative Mom to the Rescue!

This kiddo’s mom came up with a brilliant “snack menu”. She took photos of the 4 items that we decided would always be available. Those photos were turned into pages of the menu and each page not only had the “always available” snack, she included below a few options for pairing. What a great solution! This mom went the extra mile and slipped the pages into plastic sleeves and added to a binder.

Both mom and kiddo were super proud of the snack menu and they reported that it worked like a charm! The actually brought it to their last appointment with me just to show it off—I was impressed 🙂

Do you have any other solutions to the after-school hangries?

Snack Idea:

Chunks of pineapples & strawberries on skewers with vanilla yogurt for dipping

Reach out at Karen@CoastalFamilyNutrition.com or call the office at 603-674-2479.

Please feel free to share this with someone who may like to learn more about feeding kiddos!