19: Should You Offer a Bedtime Snack? Let’s Talk About It

In this quick episode, Sarah shares a realistic approach to bedtime snacks — a common source of confusion (and negotiation) for many families. 

Should you offer them or not? Whether your child is genuinely hungry at night or using snacks as a stalling tactic, this episode explores how to approach bedtime snacks without guilt, pressure, or power struggles.

Sarah covers:

• Why bedtime snacks can be totally normal (and sometimes needed!)
• How summer and school year routines change things
• What to watch for if your child is skipping dinner
• Practical bedtime snack ideas that fill bellies without overcomplicating things
• Compassionate ways to set boundaries — without making snacks a “reward”

Whether you're in the midst of back-to-school transitions or simply looking to refine your bedtime routine, this episode is packed with practical tips and real-life examples to help make evenings more peaceful and nourishing for the whole family.

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Check out some inspiration for healthy kids bedtime snacks, or snacks any time of day!

Transcript

Sarah Schlichter (00:08.94)
Welcome to the Managing Mealtime Madness podcast, your go-to resource for making family meals less stressful. I'm Sarah Schlifter, a registered dietitian and mom of three, here to help you simplify meal time from the mental stress and prep work to gathering around the table. No matter what family looks like for you, sharing meals has real benefits. Whether you're squeezing in a workout, rushing to soccer practice, or tackling the never-ending dishes, I've got you covered.

Join us for practical nutrition tips, time-saving mom hacks, and fun, easy meal ideas to make feeding your family more enjoyable. Let's get going. I want to preference this by saying, as with anything in feeding, there's no one size fits all. Every kid is different. You are the expert of your child. So if some of the things I'm saying may not work for you and your family, that's okay. My goal is to share some options and maybe ideas, even

talking points, things you can say to your kids who are always asking for snacks that maybe you haven't thought of or might be helpful for you. That being said, let's just get right into it. Alright, so I like to start with the disclaimer that I'm very pro snacks. My college nickname on in college football was snacks. I always carried them with me. Personally, I just never loved the idea of being somewhere and being really hungry and not having access to food. So

I'm just used to packing snacks. So that's my point of view. But that being said, I do think snacks should be part of nutrition, not just filler foods and treats. I think we can use nutrition knowledge to integrate them and make them part of a child's daily nutrition and add to it.

So for many young kids, know, three meals a day and two to three snacks a day can be totally normal and support their growth, energy and mood. That being said, you might find that your kids and in your family, they do better with less snacks. So again, there's really no one right answer here.

Sarah Schlichter (02:15.834)
But I think the more we treat snacks like mini meals, the more likely we can kind of keep our kids balanced throughout the day. And when I say balanced, I'm kind of thinking like energized, keeping their blood sugar balanced, preventing them from getting too hungry. Sometimes kids can't even tell us they're super hungry. They might just act out or get whiny or act tired. I think the two can go hand in hand, but

I'm also very aware of trying to teach my kids to become more intuitive. mean, kids naturally are intuitive, but I want to promote that as they continue to grow. If you think of snacks that way, it can be helpful, right? We can use them as ways to get in extra fruits and veggies, extra fiber, maybe extra protein. Maybe lunch was lackluster so we can fill in some of those nutrition gaps in a snack. But I think timing matters too. So

If you are someone who is kind of struggling with this idea of a bedtime snack, I think we want to make sure that we are allowing, you know, time for kids to eat dinner, but even before that, we're not serving an afternoon snack too close to dinner. Because what can happen is kids can really start to rely on that afternoon snack and maybe eat a lot of it and then not be hungry for dinner.

but then by the time they're hungry again, it's for a bedtime snack. And we can get in this rut or just the cycle of skipping meals and just surviving on snacks, at least kids or kids expecting that. I think right out of the gate, we want to avoid that. And we want to try to offer afternoon snacks early enough or allow enough time between an afternoon snack and a dinner meal for your child to be hungry. And that might mean moving dinner

Later, that might mean skipping an afternoon snack and moving dinner up, whatever works for your family. And then for a bedtime snack, I have found in my personal experience, I do not like to give it, you know, when my child is in bed getting ready to go to sleep, I find that it's better and more relaxed if maybe we're going up to read a book and maybe they have a bedtime snack or maybe they're having it right before we head upstairs. It can kind of like...

Sarah Schlichter (04:35.122)
close out the day, I find that with younger kids, transitions can be really helpful. So for instance, we've started doing like shutting the lights off in the kitchen and that signifies, okay, the kitchen's closed, it's time to go upstairs. And I think you could use a bedtime snack in the same way, like maybe after dinner, you went to play outside, you went for a walk, you played a game, you did homework, X, Z, and then...

maybe you are a parent or maybe it's a situation where you're offering a bedtime snack so you can say okay let's have a quick snack before we go up to bed here are your options xyz and then after the snack it signals the transition to head up to bed now i think it's important to remember back to the division of responsibility and that was episode

when we talked about the division of responsibility but just a short recap is as the parent you're responsible for offering picking what is served and offering it at a certain time and choosing where it's eaten and the child is it's up to the child to decide if he or she will eat it and how much so that still applies to bedtime snacks so I would try to avoid snacking too late or

offering snacks too close to meals because I would prefer to prioritize nutrition in meals. That being said, I think as children, and maybe this is some of me thinking back to my prior days, you want to know that there is food available, right? You want to be secure and have trust in that process. So as a child, knowing that you have access to food if you're hungry is important. And as a parent, you want to give your child that.

peace of mind. So maybe that does look like a predictable snack option at bedtime or maybe you leave it up to your child to let you know, hey mom, I'm hungry. Didn't get enough at dinner. I wasn't hungry at dinner. I'm hungry now. Whatever it is, if they're communicating true hunger, I think you want to answer that because we don't want them to feel like food is not available. We don't want to create negative relationships or insecurity or just a distrust around food.

Sarah Schlichter (06:46.29)
And lastly, when we're talking about snacks before bed, I try to keep it super boring. Things they've had before are nothing new and exciting. You know, I'm not going to offer ice cream as a bedtime snack on the regular. You know, maybe if we're watching a movie or we're having a fun night with friends or neighbors or cousins, you know, I have no problem with going outside or normal routine, but that's not something that my kids would ever expect as a regular bedtime snack.

try to keep it as plain as possible. You know it's going to provide nutrition ideally. So things like it could be like a piece of toast with some nut butter, a banana, plain Greek yogurt is something we do a lot. Sometimes I'll add some fruit or even a tiny bit of honey or granola if they ask for it. If your child likes cottage cheese with berries that could be another option. Oatmeal, again I'm trying to

provide options that will fill their bellies because if they are hungry before bed, you know, I don't want them to feel hungry throughout the night. I want them to be able to come to me asking for food and provide some options and then have them eat that and go to bed.

hummus and crackers, cheese and apple slices. I really like the little square cubes of cheese as a bedtime snack because they're not messy. They're very easy. Sometimes I'll pair that with like pistachios. often I'll ask my kids if they ask for a big bedtime snack. Okay, here's our choices tonight. A cheese stick, some pistachios or a piece of toast. What, which one would you like? And that's that. And maybe in your house you would have different options.

or maybe you just give one option and if they're hungry enough you know it would be something that they would actually eat. Again, you don't want to offer something that they won't necessarily eat or have never eaten before because if they truly are hungry they're coming to you, they trust you. In my opinion, I think you should offer something that you know they would eat because if they are hungry they should eat it. It doesn't have to be super exciting or super enticing. Also think about

Sarah Schlichter (09:00.786)
time of year and what activities they did. So did they play outside or run around a lot today? Were they outside at the pool all day? Like maybe they are a little bit dehydrated or they skipped some snack times. Maybe they were inside all day. Maybe they skipped a meal. Maybe they're just growing and they need more nutrition. So again, I think it's always a valid practice to listen to your child and if they are asking for food,

Ideally, you know what they ate throughout the day, how much of their lunch, if they were at school, what came back in the lunch box, what snacks were they offered, what snacks did they eat, how close to dinner did they eat, etc. Another way to think about it is if you're offering a snack, try to make it two of the food groups. So it could be like a little bit of fruit with some peanut butter. There we have some carbohydrates with some fat and protein. It could be a cheese stick, which has

some carbs and protein in and of itself. It could be avocado on toast, like little triangles. That's something I like to do. Pairing carbs with protein can be helpful. So we talked a little bit about why bedtime snacks might be needed, right? Like some kids are genuinely hungry before bed. Especially if you ate dinner a lot earlier, we've done that sometimes. We'd be in dinner at like five o'clock and then gone outside and

gone for a bike ride or done scooters outside with the neighbors. And then by the time we come in at 730 and they've been running around, so they are genuinely hungry. Think about that too. And then my last point is I even eat bedtime snacks pretty much every night. So I feel that it is pretty normal in our house to eat bedtime snacks. And if my kids are asking for bedtime snacks, I'm usually going to honor that.

What we have to be careful of is just making sure that we're not coming into a pattern where kids always expect bedtime snacks so they may skip dinner or not eat what's served for dinner because they know they're getting a bedtime snack. And depending on the age of your child, this could just be something you simply communicate with words, right? It could be something like, we are going to sit down for a meal together. This is where we're filling our bellies before we go to bed.

Sarah Schlichter (11:26.867)
so they understand like this is the priority. If they do ask for a snack later, there could be some different approaches or different conversation starters you have for that. So you might say something like, if you're done eating dinner now, we can clean up the kitchen and start showers, books for bed, et cetera. You're making that transition.

We still have some time to read or play before bed. If you're hungry, you can have your choice of an apple with peanut butter or string cheese, know, give them choices. Don't make it a free for all. I would try to limit giving them full access to the pantry because again, we don't really want to make this last snack, this last eating instance of the day, super exciting. Like it just, if they're hungry, we can give them

balance choices that are plain and boring and they've eaten before, but we'll get the job done. And it might even be something like talking to your child and saying, we try to sit down and eat most of our food at dinner as a family. It looks like you didn't eat as much at dinner tonight. Maybe you weren't hungry. I understand that you're hungrier now so we can have a small snack before bed, but tomorrow let's try to eat more at dinner.

something like that, okay, it's gonna be different for your family. Again, try to prevent that cycle of a child skipping dinner because they look forward to a bedtime snack every night. Because I think, A, they're not eating dinner with you, but B, they're looking forward to a snack that probably is not providing as much nutrition as the meal that you had made in the first place.

I will say this situation is normal though, so if you do have a child who skips dinner and then 30 minutes before bed they're asking for a snack, this is just normal child behavior and development. And I think just setting a precedent and teaching them that we try to get more of our nutrition, more of our energy at meals, we don't always offer bedtime snacks, however that looks for your family.

Sarah Schlichter (13:43.217)
I again like to recommend having a consistent bedtime snack option that's predictable and not exciting. It could even just be like a glass of milk with some blueberries or something like that because again we're getting protein and pairing it with carbohydrates. It doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to be huge. If a child is still legitimately hungry, they would tell you.

And if you're someone who is afraid to say no, I mean, there are some instances where maybe you don't need to do a bedtime snack. And again, this is going to be family to family dependent, but these are some situations that I've thought up where you might be able to skip the bedtime snack. So of course your child is using snacks to delay bedtime, right? Children eventually catch on. They become really smart.

They'll do stalling tactics like asking for more water or one more book or snacks or asking you the most random questions at the end of the day. But sometimes that I'm hungry request is less related to true hunger, but it's more of a stall tactic or just something they say out of routine.

So in that situation, if you notice this happening consistently, I think it's important to hold that boundary. So we already had our snack time, now it's time for rest. Let's pick out our breakfast together in the morning. Or you can tell me what you want to eat in the morning. Okay, so again, you're providing them that security that food is available, but you're also setting that boundary like now is not a time to eat. Because as the parent, according to the division of responsibility,

it is up to you to decide what is offered when and where. So if it is in the best interest of the child and for your family not to offer that bedtime snack and you know they've gotten enough food throughout the day, then setting that boundary is important. It teaches them that food's available when we're truly hungry, but we don't just need to eat to delay bedtime, to avoid routines, et cetera. Another time I think it's worthy of skipping a bedtime snack is if it's becoming a habit.

Sarah Schlichter (15:52.103)
so of skipping dinner and we kind of talked about this earlier but if your child is refusing dinner over and over again they probably know that they're going to get a bedtime snack so what is it what's in it for them to eat dinner if they know they're going to get what they want for a bedtime snack so that's when it's kind of time to pause set that boundary and kind of change things up so

If they are skipping dinner, you could even offer what you would offer as a bedtime snack along with dinner. So why are they skipping dinner? Right? That's like a whole nother podcast episode, but do you have a safe food on the table for them to eat if they don't want to try or eat what's being served? Did they eat a afternoon snack too close to dinner?

So those are the two big things I see when kids are skipping dinner. It's because there's really nothing for them. I mean, obviously we want them to start eating what we're eating. We don't want to be short order cooks. But if it's all new foods without a safe food, that can be quite intimidating.

So reinforce again that meals are the time to fill our bellies. This might be obvious, but if a child is not hungry, maybe they're sick, maybe they're, you know, growing, maybe sometimes heat can stifle hunger. There's, you know, some situations where maybe they ate a great dinner and you're offering a snack and you don't need to be offering a snack. They never told you they were hungry. So,

You don't always have to offer that just in case snack. If your child isn't asking for food and is showing no signs of hunger, I would actually say skip it. We don't want to force food on them either. Again, part of our role as parents is to continue to promote this intuitive nature in our children. We want them to trust their signals for hunger and fullness. Okay, so

Sarah Schlichter (17:49.373)
I just want to close out really quickly here that bedtime snacks are not bad, right? Quote unquote bad. They can actually be helpful. They can be nourishing. They can help your children sleep better, especially if they are legitimately hungry. They ate a lower amount at dinner. They're growing. They're more active, active, et cetera, et cetera. But pay attention to patterns. Is your child always asking for a snack?

Maybe we need to reevaluate portion sizes at dinner. Maybe we need to reevaluate an afternoon snack if it's too close to dinnertime. I would urge you to go back and listen to, again, episode eight about the division of responsibility. I would even encourage you to listen to episode two about what to think about before planning meals because this is taking us way downstream and getting ahead of some of this. So before you even put that meal on the table,

What can you be thinking about when feeding your kids? Making your dinner more enjoyable is also really helpful. And that was episode 12 where I talked about five, six tips to help make dinner more enjoyable for everyone around. Because if it's more enjoyable, your kids are likely going to be eating more. And then our last episode, if you have more questions about snacks or snacking ideas,

was super helpful with my seven year old and she provided some of her insight on snacks and summer snacking versus back to school routines and snacking too. So if you have a child, a strong willed child or something, maybe they won't listen to you, but maybe they'll listen to her. So enclosure, use bedtime snacks as a supportive part of the routine. Don't use it as a reward. Please don't call it a reward or you can have a snack if again, we want to

have kids trust us, trust that food's available, we want them to trust their bodies and listen to that true hunger, not see food as a reward. I hope this episode is helpful. I'm going to be sharing some episodes on back to school, packing lunches, and things in the coming week, so make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss those.

Sarah Schlichter (19:59.865)
And if you've listened to a few of these episodes and you find them helpful, I would really appreciate a review on your podcast listener app of choice. It is so, helpful for me and it's so great to hear from the community, hear what you're liking, leave some comments on what you would like to hear more of. And I'm always available to take any listener feedback, but yeah, please go ahead and click that five star review. would mean a lot and be so, helpful for the show.

That's it for today's show. hope this episode helps you think about feeding your family and makes it a little bit easier. Please, please take a minute to rate the show on your podcast.