We should all be able to eat baby nurse nyc like toddlers a bite here, maybe two bites there before we dash off to play, dance, tumble and explore this big, fascinating world. Toddlers, unlike adults, don't buy into that whole "three meals a day, two snacks" that becomes our norm as we grow older.
Penny Warner, author of Healthy Treats and Super Snacks for Kids (McGraw-Hill, 1994), says toddlers really just eat snacks all day. But shesuggests we change our cultural mindset and think of these as mini-meals, which should be fairly well-rounded and healthy, rather than as "snacks," which often have a junk food connotation in our culture.
"We're so trained to eat three square [meals],and this is not the style that toddlers embrace," says Warner. "It's almost impossible for a toddler to sit at a family meal and finish everything on his or her plate. The parent who expects that is merely setting the stage for ongoing food battles."
Parents often fret over how much a toddler eats, worrying that those two bites of cheese sandwich and sip of milk simply isn't enough food to support life. Warner has one word for those parents: Relax!
"Toddlers have very small stomachs, and they fill up very quickly," says Warner. "This is why they need to eat more frequent meals. It's even OK for them to have a snack an hour before dinner, because by the time dinner rolls around they'll have used up all those baby nurse new york city calories and be ready for another small amount of food."