Little snack

#snack#fruit#bowl#apple#eating

The question is rarely whether your child gets something, it is how much. A snack without a visible limit easily grows into a meal that makes dinner uninteresting, and the pictures below show what a little snack actually consists of.

Bowl of snacks

A bowl of berries and biscuits sits next to a slice of apple.

About this visual support

The word little means different things to someone who is hungry and someone who is cooking dinner. Without a visible limit every snack turns into a negotiation: one more cracker, one more piece of fruit, and suddenly dinner is uninteresting an hour later. The conflict starts at the cupboard door, not at the table.

Visual support sets the limit before the cupboard opens. Show two or three options and how much each one includes, a bowl of fruit, a sandwich, a glass of milk, and your child knows what the choice is about. Choosing between fixed pictures gives a sense of control while the amount has already been decided by you. That removes the most common source of afternoon nagging and keeps the answer the same whichever adult is home.

One tip that works well: put the snack pictures on the fridge door at your child's height and swap them for what is actually in the house. The questions about what there is to eat stop. In Routined the snack can sit as a step between school and homework, giving the afternoon a shape.