Episode 21: How to Stop All-Day Snack Battles Without Being Restrictive

If snack time feels like it has taken over your whole day, what if the problem is not your toddler, but the lack of a clear rhythm?

In this episode, Dr. Liz Daniels explains why toddlers ask for snacks so often, why their hunger can feel unpredictable, and how parents can bring calm structure back to the day. She shares how to create a simple snack rhythm, build balanced toddler plates, and offer food in a way that supports hunger cues without turning every request into a battle. You’ll also learn how to hold kind, clear boundaries when your toddler pushes back, without bribing, bargaining, or feeling like the snack police. This episode is a caring reminder that structure is not the same as restriction, and your child can feel loved, safe, and well-fed while learning when food is offered.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why your toddler is not the problem
• Why constant snack requests often come from a lack of rhythm
• How toddler hunger cues change with growth and development
• Why parents can stay predictable when eating feels unpredictable
• How to build toddler meals and snacks with simple portion guides
• Why snacks should include both protein and carbohydrates
• How to respond when your toddler says they are hungry again
• Why boundaries around snacks do not have to feel restrictive
• What to say when your toddler pushes back at snack or mealtime

Episode highlights:
(0:51) Why snack requests become all-day negotiations
(1:33) What this episode will cover
(2:21) Why your toddler is not the problem
(3:11) Toddler development, autonomy, and feeding behavior
(4:14) Why toddler hunger and fullness cues can feel unpredictable
(5:55) The key shift: stay predictable when your child is not
(6:32) Why snack boundaries can feel hard for parents
(8:27) Toddler meal and snack portion sizes
(9:47) Using variety and smaller portions to support better eating
(11:08) How to build a balanced snack
(12:15) What it may mean when your child refuses a snack option
(13:15) What to say when toddlers push back
(14:16) Why toddlers do not need food every 20 minutes
(15:50) How to hold snack boundaries with kindness
(17:12) Feeding support and course information

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Nutrition for the Early Years podcast with Dr. Liz, your guilt-free guidance for feeding your family. This podcast is for folks who are craving better nutrition for their kids, but are tired of the whiplash of nutrition claims and diet culture influence. You're reading labels, paying attention to ingredients, but you still doubt yourself. And for good reason, food goes deep, and often we fear making costly mistakes that as parents we hope to prevent. If you're ready to explore the ins and outs of your child's actual nutrition needs and nourish the whole child from the inside out, hang with me, Dr. Liz Daniels. I'm a board-certified pediatrician plus registered dietitian, and we're gonna dig deep into real deal nutrition science, honest talk about barriers to health, and real stories that I help address. So let's dig in. What if I told you the problem isn't what your toddler is snacking on, or even how often they're asking? It's that the snacks have no edges in your house, no start time, no end time, no rhythm. So every can I have a snack? turns into a negotiation. And by 10 a.m., you've already said the word snack 47 times and you're wondering why dinner is a disaster. If that sounds like your day, stick with me. Over the next 15 minutes, I'm gonna walk you through the shift that relieves this all-day snack negotiation without feeling sneaky or restrictive. Just predictable. I'm Dr. Liz, pediatrician, registered dietitian, and mom of three boys. And this is the same framework that I help families work through every week. Let's get into it. So today we're gonna talk about a few things. First, why your toddler isn't actually the problem. Then we're gonna talk about the shift that you can make that will help this be fail-proof. And next, I'll walk you through a snack rhythm that actually works, when to offer, how often, and what to put on the plate so they're not hungry again in 20 minutes. And then finally, the part most parents skip how to hold the boundary kindly when your toddler pushes back without bargaining, bribing, or becoming the snack police. Because chances are you feel stressed for a good reason. We don't come into parenting knowing how to handle these situations. And when we think we do, and it blows up on our face, we start feeling like we don't even know where to begin. So we just kind of give up. I've been there and I know it's where a lot of parents are too. Okay, so your toddler's really not the problem. I know it can feel stressful. And trust me when I tell you that this age group for toddlers, like one to three and a half, four, is really tricky when it comes to feeding because the behaviors change so much. And, you know, I like to remind families that you start out the gate with this brand new baby and you are so predictable for the most part. I mean, you go through the whole year and you know like how many ounces they're drinking, you know how many poops they make. Most daycares will send you pictures of everything. And so there's this constant documentation of what they're eating, and you feel totally responsible for it as a parent. And then you enter toddlerhood and everything is wild west. And they eat when they want, where they want, how they want, or not at all. And you have very little control, or at least that's what it feels like. So this is developmental. And what I mean when I say your toddler is not the problem is that the developmental stage that they're in really requires that they practice autonomy and that they practice this communication of what they need. And we really want that from our kids. So it's good to give them the opportunity to ask for things. It's good for them to receive when they've asked. Every parent wants this. I think the trouble here is that sometimes it's really hard for parents to understand what that boundary should look like and how to enforce that when those language skills in the very beginning are limited. The other piece to this is that during toddlerhood, our kids suddenly become pretty unpredictable, or it feels unpredictable when one day they want to eat nothing at all, and the next day they want to eat everything in the house. And so it feels frustrating when a child goes from eating the same thing or having a routine and there's a lot of unpredictability or changing. What I remind families is that during this stage, their appetite signaling is very different than you or mine. And so I like to remind families that in general, you and I, our hunger appetite signaling, we eat, we feel full, and our hunger hormones are happy and they tell us that we're all good. After our bellies are emptying out all that food, those hunger hormones kick in and say, it's time to eat again. And we feel back up and then down and then up, like a seesaw. So it's this constant regulation for us to maintain our weight. But in these first few years, babies and toddlers really regulate differently because they are in a consistent state of energy surplus. So they eat and instead of feeling totally full, they actually only feel a little full-ish. And so then they can be hungry again very quickly. And this becomes confusing to a lot of parents because being able to discern hunger and fullness cues are things that are out of our control. It's unpredictable to us. And it actually can be a little unpredictable to them as well. Where I'm going with this is that toddlers have appetite signaling that is consistently moving with their growth needs. And so they really do know what they need. They might often feel hunger cues for other reasons too. And interestingly, a lot of kids can actually have appetite and hunger cues that are responsive to emotional eating or to non-nutritive hunger feeding, where they are just feeling the desire to eat because something tastes really good. And those things can happen much earlier than we realize. And so kids only learn I'm hungry, or they learn I want to eat because something gets fixed, even when it's not hunger. So, yes, our kids are unpredictable, but it doesn't mean we have to be. And this is where I like to lead into the shift that is so important for parents to know and to trust that will make a huge difference in the long run. Bottom line, the key here is to be predictable when your kid is not. And that's actually true for a lot of things in parenting, not just nutrition. But hear me when I say if you start as you mean to go, and even when they are unpredictable, you remain predictable, you'll give them them the opportunity to feel hunger a little bit, enough for them to know what that feels like when they're actually full. Stick with me. The shift here is that it's tricky as a parent because sometimes we get frustrated or feel challenged by the boundaries we need to set for kids. And what I would ask you to do is to think about why that's hard for you. The things I'll often hear from families is, well, I'm worried that if they get overhungry, they're just gonna melt down and I'll have more behaviors to deal with. Or I'll hear things like, I just don't want to restrict them. I don't want them to actually be hungry. I worry that they go to bed hungry. Or I worry that if I set a boundary, that it's gonna feel really restrictive. And then I like to ask why. Because when I hear those things, it tells me that there's maybe more to this and that as a parent, there were things that you didn't like about your own behaviors growing up. Maybe there was food restriction in an uncomfortable way for you. Maybe there was like some consequences that were pushed on foods that feel yucky. And so when we go to set boundaries for our own children, it's hard for us to do that if there are old stories in our head or old voices making us feel like, ooh, I can't do that. And this is my invitation for you because a lot of parents feel this way and we don't even recognize it until we start feeding our kids. I know I did. And it doesn't mean that it has to be this big long therapy thing, but it simply can be an opportunity for us to reflect on why we have a hard time setting that boundary. And for some people, it's just logistics. But this is where you internally reflect and observe and ask yourself those questions of why does this feel hard? And is there something about enforcing this behavior that I'm afraid of doing? Here's an example. What am I afraid my kid will feel or do if I have boundaries on our snack time or mealtime? Sit with that and think, because that is where the inner work needs to go before we think about how to implement this. You can pause and come back if you need to. Here's the other piece to this. You know, our mealtimes and our snack times, we call them those things in our head of a meal and a snack. And immediately most people think that the portion sizes at a meal and a snack are gonna be wildly different. But the reality is, nobody says it has to. What you serve at a meal and a snack don't necessarily have to be really large portion at a meal and a small portion at a snack. For example, I like to use a rule of thumb in terms of portion sizing that I either think about the child's hand as my guide or tablespoon per year of life per serving. For most people, I find that the hand works the best because it's individual to your kid. So when you're making your breakfast plate, the serving sizes you can really think of using can come down to their palm for their hand for their protein, their fist for their grain, an open cup for their fruit or veggie, and um their thumb size for a fat if you're adding that. Now, most of our meals are not quite structured that way. For example, a breakfast can have waffle with some berries and a little bit of a maybe breakfast sausage or an egg. And interestingly, a quarter size of an actual waffle is appropriate for a toddler. But a lot of toddlers will eat the whole thing and then maybe leave the rest behind. But one quick fun tip is that if you keep those portions smaller for the things you know they're gonna love, then you offer the opportunity for them to broaden with variety. And that simple rule of thumb can be just having at least three things on the plate that look like they're different shapes or different colors. It seems simple, but it can go a long way. And if I build the plate with a whole waffle, a handful of berries, and a sausage, then that's a lot more than my toddler's probably going to be able to finish. And if they do finish, they're certainly not going to be hungry for a whole lot more later on. So keeping your breakfast size a little bit smaller and then your snack time can also be about the same size is key. Now, for your additional meals, you know, a lot of families will notice that their kids tend to eat a lot more in the morning or feel really hungry in the morning, and then throughout the day, eat a little bit less and less. And then of course, by dinner time, it's infamously just two bites and then we're done until they ask for a snack again. But the key here is that if you have predictable sizes and you focus on offering them consistently the same time every day or about the same time every day, that really does breed predictability for them. Now, you don't have to be restrictive about any of this, but my purpose in saying this is that that pattern can be really, really helpful. And if you know that you're not serving huge portions at the meals, then it can be really helpful to encourage that spacing out. I also find that with your snacks, it's really key to make sure that there's protein and carbohydrate balance together. Now, I don't mean that this has to be a lot of meat. Remember that beans and that nut butters are great sources of protein for kids, as well as dairy and even some of our soy products. Those are also really great sources. And the point here for the snack is saying that it's essentially not just an apple or not just goldfish crackers, not something that's just a simple carbohydrate, but has some pear to it. And I often hear families feel like, well, I really want to get them to eat more protein. And I just want to caution you that that's not necessarily a huge goal. Bear in mind that your toddler, one to three, really only needs around 15 to 20 grams of protein a day. If you're getting two cups of milk, you are getting 16 grams of protein, meeting almost entirely all of their protein needs in a 24-hour period by itself. So this doesn't have to be a lot of those portions of protein or a lot of protein in general, simply just protein sources with that carbohydrate so that they're paired together. And the other part to this is that when a kid has an offering for a snack and you want to offer them something healthy and they don't want it, they might not actually be hungry. They might be associating that word with something that they like to eat. And it's okay to say, oh, you know what? That's for another time, or we don't have any more of those today, but we have these choices. Here are your apples and your peanut butter, and here are your crackers and cheese. Like you can have those conversations very simply, even when that language, um, even when their language skills are pretty small. So don't be afraid to give them those choices or those options. It's just important to know that it doesn't have to be their choice. They don't get to run the show on this. Your responsibility is what comes into the home and how you structure the meals. Their responsibility is if they're hungry. And if so, how much? And that brings me to really the next point, which is what we say at the table. And I think a lot of times when the kid pushes back or says they don't want to eat that or they don't like that, it can feel really hard to know what to say or do because our initial response is, well, that's what you asked for, or but you liked it yesterday. And or that's all we have, you know. And that can be really tricky because then we start to get into these negotiations over what they're allowed to have or not have. And sometimes we inevitably go into the lecture for a two-year-old that doesn't care. Don't let that be you. I say that in love, knowing that I have been there. And remember that in their language skills, in a one-to-two-year-old, simple two-word to three-word answers are really all you need. Two choices is plenty. And then as you get a little bit older in that two to three range, they're learning cause and effect. So they learn that if they choose not to eat something and they get hungry, that's okay. They'll get a snack at three o'clock, just like they always do. And you can wait until that three o'clock time. Remember that when your baby was a newborn and they had really intense energy needs and they were growing way more rapidly than they are as a three-year-old, they still only needed to eat about every two and a half to three hours. So you don't have to give them something every 20 minutes, even though they might feel a little bit of hunger. Sometimes this hunger cue is also them trying to get attention from you. So it's okay to say no, not simply that you're restricting them or not allowing it, but that you're offering them something else of, oh, I hear you're hungry. I wonder what your belly needs. And what can I do with you? Maybe can we go play a game? Let's do a puzzle. You can think about a craft to do together, or you know what, I gotta hold this laundry. I wonder how many socks you can match. You can think through ways that fit your family. But my purpose here is that holding that boundary isn't saying no or you can't do that, or you have to eat this first. It can be observing what they say about what they need, but then redirecting them to learn what your structure is. And anytime we set new boundaries or structure for our kids, there's always resistance in that. And that's okay. Embrace it. It won't last forever. Kids actually learn much faster than you think. And if you continue to argue, you'll keep getting it back. You'll just teach them how to be a better negotiator. And at the end of the day, really what you want is to let them know that they are loved and they are safe. And they will get a snack at the time you've decided. And it's okay to wait, but we can do some things together. So to wrap this up, what I want to communicate is that we can provide structure without being restrictive. It comes down to the delivery and the tone of your voice, how you say it. And really simple little thing, you can practice this. I mean, you really can. You can practice how you want to say it. You can practice it in the mirror. And I would have a little post-it note written in different places on my house, um, like on my coffee pot, on my mirror, on the sink, you know, in the dishwasher. And it would say things like, oh, I'm sad to know that. They would be posted on other places, and they would say things like, Oh, what a bummer that you hurt your brother. We'll need to do X, Y, and Z. Those were the phrases we had to use a lot in our house. But for these, it can be something simple like, oh, thanks for letting me know you're hungry. You know what? We're gonna have a great lunch together right at this time. I understand that a lot of the times when you're enforcing some of these behaviors, your kids might not understand time yet, but this helps them learn. And it gets that practice in of we will do this then. It comes down to the delivery. You can say things kindly and clearly while still holding that boundary with love. It's okay to provide those boundaries, and it doesn't mean that you're going to create food problems later on. How we deliver that message is really the key. Okay, that's it. Thanks so much for listening. Don't forget to subscribe for more. If this content is helpful and you want to hear more, especially if you happen to have a new baby or one on the way, I would love to invite you over to my website at newsstorynutrition.com where I have a course that is for feeding zero to four months. And it is all about how to feed with confidence so that you don't worry at 2 a.m. if your baby's getting enough or if you're doing everything right or why they're making that sound or why their poop looks that way. All in there with plenty of workbooks to go along with it. So thanks so much for listening. I hope this has been helpful. We'll see you next week.