When you’re the parent of a small child, you become accustomed to never leaving the house without a diaper or “to-go” bag, a sack filled with everything you’ll need to care for your kid. No longer do you bounce to the grocery store unencumbered, now you stagger about, hunched, lugging a load of BPA-free products and soothing baby-safe butt-wipes, among other things. It’s difficult to think of a better symbol of parental responsibility than that damn bag.
I took a minimalist approach, tossing as few items as possible into a small back-pack. Though as Douglas Adams suggests in A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I always carried a towel. Some people, with much stronger arm muscles than I, prefer Hermione-style bags with a million pockets that seemed to contain everything: not just one change of clothes but several, a small nursery’s worth of toys, hand sanitizer, etc.
You can track your child’s growth by your to-go bag’s contents. Eventually, solid food gets added to the mix, while diapers disappear. (And what a great day that was! Almost as good as the day we said goodbye to the stroller for good.) On a bad day, the to-go bag can feel like a 100-pound ball and chain, you can’t wait to be free of it. And then, one day, you are. You have a small child who doesn’t need a diaper or a change of clothes, one capable of waiting a while before eating a snack, or having a drink of water.
The thing is, I still know parents, even ones with children as old as eight or nine, who don’t go out without snacks for their kids, that last vestige of the diaper bag. I was guilty of this myself until recently. My son, now five and a half, became accustomed to me always having a water bottle and something to eat, even on short trips in the neighborhood. No matter how many times I explained that his body didn’t require sustenance to walk a few blocks, he’d whine and moan, and I’d find myself grabbing a container of cheddar bunnies or pretzels or graham crackers.
He had a connection solidly formed in his mind. Walking equals grazing on carbohydrates. When we took the subway, he’d eat to pass the time. I’d be packing a veritable picnic on afternoon expeditions through the city. And though ultimately I was the pusher literally feeding his habit, I didn’t do much to curb him. Until a few weeks ago, that is. I reached my limit when I picked him up from school and he greeted me with: “What did you bring for me to eat?”
“Nothing,” I said. “We live two blocks away. You can have a snack when we get home.”
He started to cry.
“That’s it, no more snacks on the go,” I said.
This required changing our routines. If I think that he’s going to get hungry while we’re out, legitimately hungry because it’s been a while since his last meal, then either I make sure that he eats before we go, or I build in snack time to our trip. We’ll stop somewhere for a quick bite, or we’ll bring something to eat and then find a good place to sit and enjoy it. So when we went to an art museum during his holiday break, for example, he enjoyed a snack between visiting exhibits. This was less a “let’s eat as we walk,” and more, “let’s take time out to give our bodies energy.”
There’s an important difference between the two. When our kids are little, they naturally want little bites all the time to fill their tiny tummies. It makes sense both for their natural inclinations and our patience to strap them into the stroller or car seat and give them food. But at some point they have to develop appetite discipline, and their stomachs become large enough, and their metabolisms slow enough, for them to do so. My son is in kindergarten, and he has a few hours between lunch and snack. In order to get through his day successfully, he needs to be able to not eat for a while.
I take a European approach to snacking, and am hoping to instill the same in him. Why scarf down something while on the go, or in the middle of working? Stop and taste it, enjoy and appreciate the food, and the effort that went into preparing it. You rarely see people in Italy or Spain, say, walking and munching, or even drinking coffee. Instead, they’ll sit down to eat or drink. I think this is healthy, both for the body and mind. It aids in digestion and reduces my stress during the day.
And I certainly don’t want my son just stuffing his face because he’s bored. He can occupy himself on a walk by looking around, talking, or daydreaming. There’s no need for him to eat, unless we’re in a rush and have no time to sit down for our food.
The only time this rule flies out the window is for long trips. There is definitely something very pleasing about taking a long trip to visit friends or relatives with good music on the car radio and a bag full of almonds or apple slices or bagel chips in your lap. But that’s when eating on the go makes sense! Not when you’re headed out for errands.
Liberate yourself from the final remnant of the dreaded diaper bag, my friends. Just say no to carrying snacks!
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