After School Snack Tips For Healthy Eating

When your child walks in the door after a long day at the school, it is standard for them to bolt straight for the kitchen for the all important after school snack. They may or may not smile or growl at you on the way by, but you need not block their path or you will suffer the consequence! A hungry child is an unhappy child and a really hungry child is a meltdown in the making.

The convenience factor

It is very important to provide healthy after school snack options to your child that they can access with ease. For example, when you go to the grocery store and buy a bag of carrots intending for your child to have a healthy option for their after school snack, if you bring them home and drop them into the crisper you will find that to be that last place your nutritionally renegade children will opt to look! However if you slice those carrots into bite sized pieces or strips and place them in a clear airtight container or plastic bag on the top shelf, right in plain view of child when he or she opens the door, you may well find that carrots can be a hot commodity.

Our children have been reared towards convenience, and choosing an after school snack is not something they want to have to think about. If it is edible and on the top shelf, they will most likely snatch it up and trounce away with it. So while purchasing healthy food choices is important, it is equally important to provide them with easy access to those choices.

Healthy Microwaved leftovers

A healthy after school snack can easily be the remnants of the dinner you shared the evening before. As long as the child can see it and reach it, and it takes only a few seconds in the microwave to reheat, it is a viable option for a very hungry and typically very rushed child to choose as an after school snack. It is preferable to microwave in a glass dish so the recommendation is to store the food you want your child to have quick and easy access to in a container that can go from fridge to microwave safely.

Lead by example

After school snacks of cookies and milk have become a thing of the past in the health conscious society of today, as we strive to teach our children better eating habits. We want them to be healthy and make better choices than we did. However, we have to be willing to show them that we are willing to put our mouth where our money is! We cannot as parents hoard a secret stash of sugar-riddled junk food all to ourselves. Instead, leading by example is a much better way to guide your children in their snack choices. Will the child be more likely to eat a bowl of ice cream for an after school snack if he or she walks in and catches Mom or Dad eating a bowl of ice cream? Absolutely! So lead by example and get munching on those carrot sticks, or choose a frozen yogurt over ice cream at least, when your hungry child walks into the kitchen. This is not to say you have to become a mortal enemy of your beloved cookie dough ice cream. It just means that you want to lead by example, and raise a healthy child who makes good decisions more than you want to lead them to the plus sized aisle in the department store.