Meal and Snack Schedule for Kids

One of your jobs as the parent is to determine when your child eats. As with all feeding recommendations, your child’s personal wants and needs should be taken into account, but the overall decision should be yours. Having a meal and snack schedule is one way to do this.

In general, I recommend a flexible routine more than a rigid schedule. This allows for changes as needed. Some days your child may be hungrier than others. Some days they may need more sleep and take longer naps. The routine allows for predictability while still allowing you to respond to your child’s needs.

Benefits of a Meal Schedule

Having meals and snacks at predictable intervals can have benefits for both you as the parent and your child. First, if your child doesn’t eat much at any one meal or snack, you know that another one will be coming in the near future. There’s less pressure for your child to eat at any meal or snack this way. Pressure can increase picky eating tendencies.

Second, this can prevent kids asking for snacks constantly. Once they understand the routine of having meals and snacks at predictable intervals, they often stop asking for snacks as often. When they do, you can let them know when to expect the next meal or snack and move on.

Third, your child will start to understand that meals and snacks come at regular intervals. This can help them trust their bodies more. Since they know that food will be coming again in a little why, they don’t feel the pressure to overeat. If they don’t like the food at any particular meal, they can be comfortable knowing that more food will be coming.

Fourth, grazing behaviors tend to make picky eating worse. Kids who constantly snack on foods throughout the day don’t come to the table with much of an appetite and may not want to try any new foods. This is not me recommending to starve your children in hopes that they eat – that doesn’t work. However, having some hunger may make food look more appetizing (think about how much more you buy at the grocery store when you’re hungry).

Sample Meal and Snack Schedules

In general, kids should be offered a meal or snack every 2-3 hours. Think of snacks as mini-meals. They can be made up of the same components as other meals.

6 months (3 naps)

6 months (2 naps)

9-12 months (2 naps)

• 7:oo AM: Wake up, bottle or chest feed
• 8:00 AM: Breakfast
• 9:30 AM: Nap
• 11:30 AM: Wake up, bottle or chest feed
• 12:30 PM: Lunch
• 2:00 PM: Nap
• 3:30 PM: Wake up, bottle or chest feed
• 5:30 PM: Dinner
• 7:00 PM: Bedtime routine, bottle or chest feed
• 7:30 PM: Sleep

12-15 months (2 naps)

• 7:oo AM: Wake up, have breakfast
• 9:00 AM: Snack
• 9:30 AM: Nap
• 11:30 AM: Wake up, have lunch
• 1:30 PM: Snack
• 2:00 PM: Nap
• 3:30 PM: Wake up, have snack
• 6:00 PM: Dinner
• 7:00 PM: Bedtime routine
• 7:30 PM: Sleep

You may continue to chest/breastfeed for as long as you would like, just substitute it in place of a snack. Depending on your child’s nap schedule, you may only need 2 snacks instead of 3. That’s fine. The goal is to offer food around every 2-3 hours, but you know your child best.

15 months-3 years (1 nap)

• 7:oo AM: Wake up, have breakfast
• 9:30 AM: Snack
• 12:00 PM: Lunch
• 12:30 PM: Nap
• 2:30 PM: Wake up
• 3:00 PM: Snack
• 6:00 PM: Dinner
• 7:00 PM: Bedtime routine
• 7:30 PM: Sleep

Flexibility

It is fine to adjust your schedule to accommodate your child. You can always do snack time a bit earlier or later as needed. I do suggest that if you do something like a bedtime snack, you do it every night or never and don’t make it dependent on whether or not your child eats dinner.

As kids grow, they will go through phases where they are more or less hungry. It’s important to take this into account when adjusting their schedule. Just as you are sometimes extra hungry between meals, so are your kids. If they seem genuinely hungry, it’s ok to eat, even if it’s not at a normal time. The goal isn’t to be completely rigid, it’s to create a routine for your family.

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