“Mommy, can I have a snack?”
My newly showered 4-year-old was standing in my office doorway in his pajamas.
“A snack? You just had dinner!” I said.
Literally, it had been less than 30 minutes since we’d gotten up from the dinner table. And he’d eaten well — a couple legs of chicken, some rice, maybe a few bites of kale if I recall. How could he be hungry?
“Are you hungry? Or do you just want a snack?” I asked.
“I just want a snack.”
Something wasn’t right. And it wasn’t his fault. As parents, we’d gotten lazy about evening snacks. Almost nightly he was requesting (and getting) a little bowl of chocolate bunnies or crackers or peanut butter-filled pretzels. I was concerned about the habit …. this almost Pavlovian experience where he thinks that upon showering, he needs a snack — even if he’s not hungry.
I went ahead and got him the snack that night, and then, I started thinking … How can we rein this in? How can we teach a 4-year-old that no, he doesn’t need a snack every night?
Introducing snack coupons
What I settled on was a snack system that worked in concert with our reward system. First, we had “Conner bucks” — little dollars I’d made with his face on them. This system is a work in progress and changes as he grows. But basically, he is rewarded for chores and good behavior.
Then, I created snack coupons and established a rule system. I explained to him:
He gets three snack coupons every Monday.
He is welcome to save them, but once they’re gone, they’re gone.
He cannot use a snack coupon if he has not eaten dinner. Real food first.
He doesn’t have to use a snack coupon at Grandma’s house.
He doesn’t have to use a snack coupon if a dessert is part of a planned meal/experience — a family or friend’s birthday or we happen to order dessert out or we’re at Grandma’s house.
If he’s actually hungry and wants to eat real food — for example, fruit — he doesn’t have to use a snack coupon.
He may choose to trade in his snack coupons for Conner bucks (1-to-1 value) to buy a new toy sooner.
What happened in the first week
I introduced this program to my son on a Sunday night and gave him his first week’s set of coupons. I told my husband that I expected our son to use up his three snack coupons by Wednesday, and Thursday was going to be a very hard night of parenting.
But what happened surprised us both.
He saved them.
He realized he wasn’t hungry and didn’t need snacks. He asked for strawberries one night.
I think it was Friday before he used his first snack coupon.
In the second week, he continued to exercise self-control. The most important thing to me was that we had broken this cycle of snacking. We’d created an environment and a structure where he had choices, and he was learning to understand his own cravings — and make choices about when to give into them.
What else happened
Any time we humans have a set of rules that we’re expected to work within, there’s always an opportunity to figure out how to manipulate the system or get clever about how to apply the rules. My son, then 4, was no exception.
He’d ask for a snack and use his coupon — but then save half the bowl of pretzels for the next night. Clever, I thought; there was no rule about that. Often, he’d even forget about them the next night (because again, the habit had been broken).
This system has had many benefits in our household, including:
Curbing our son’s snack habit
Empowering him to make decisions about his food and health and to recognize hunger vs. cravings
Encouraging him to decide what he values (and many times, it’s been saving for a toy, rather than crackers)
Teaching him how to delay gratification and save his “money”
These days, he asks for snacks very few nights of the week and has countless snack coupons banked.
Mission accomplished.