Snack time

Have you ever noticed that there is a snack time for almost every "children's" event possible?

This is actually very annoying to me.  I know what you're thinking...so before you tell me how I mean I am, please let me explain a little.

First our schedule...We have one snack time in our house at 3:30.  That's it.  We do not eat except for the designated meal times.  Which are 8am breakfast, 12:30 lunch, 3:30 Snack, and 5:30 supper.
No bed time snacks or drinks, no eating away from the lunch table, no extra snacking while walking around or anything like that.

Second, you may or may not know that our children came to us when they were a little older....not a baby.  So right away we had to establish a schedule or routine out of nothing.  
Now given that information....our children also had/have eating troubles in their past.  Like never thinking there was going to be more food or enough food or food at all, or wondering when the next time you're going to get a drink is.  So from the start they would eat, or drink until they would throw up.  So from that background we had to establish limitations and we had to be their judge on if they were full or not.

All this to say, we had to stick to the routine and not allow any extra food from anyone else or at any other times.  This is very frustrating when every single event you want to bring your children to has a snack time.  So I was kinda of annoyed when we'd go to MOPS for instance....we LOVED going to it, but it's from 9-11 in the morning... we get there right after eating breakfast and we eat lunch shortly after getting home so why do my kids need a "snack" in between?  I think they can make it 2 hours without eating.  Then Bible school at night....we just got done eating supper, why do my kids need a snack 30 minutes later?  How about Sunday School?  Again we just came from eating breakfast?  Why do my kids need a snack 30 minutes later?  This is just not helpful when you are trying to help your kids figure out that they don't need to eat until they throw up, or that they need to establish a full button and stop eating, and that the stop eating sign means for a couple hours....not a couple minutes later you eat more.

Do you see my point of view?  I just had to throw that out there.

Besides that, kids get great freedom and comfort out of knowing a routine/schedule, and not having to wonder when the next meal is, but knowing the set times for meals and snack.  See my blog on routine for more about that.