Kids Snacks 101-Intro to Insanity

By Deborah Taylor-Hollis

Figuring children's eating habits and their associated rules is akin to understanding written French--some things are feminine, some things are masculine, and all the important things are irregular.

One month, the wee ones demand Cheerios every morning--several times each morning. When you serve them, they will reject them--they didn't want milk. They did, however, want them, in the blue-bottomed bowl, with the plastic spoon. Pretty soon, Cheerios is the only thing your angels will eat, and you are disturbed until you pow-wow with the great guru of all childish things, your pediatrician, who tells you that, while single food items are seldom a good life-plan for an adult, they are regular phases of the toddler/preschool years, and if he had to choose one thing, well, Cheerios are a well-rounded general food that can't hurt.

So, your child enjoys himself at every meal for several days, and you shake your head. The word of warning--don't stock up on the Cheerios. Run out regularly, and have to make midnight drives to 7-11 for late-night snack replacements. If you even, for a moment, have more than one large-sized box of Cheerios in the house, your child will decide he has grown up--and moved past the Cheerios phase. You will be stranded with $200 worth of donut-shaped grain foods.

Other rules of the Sesame Street snack pack include the following:

No sandwich can be served whole. Halves must always be cut the other direction, and just when you have every kind of jelly possible, they will demand "just the peanut butter please".

When I am hungry, I am hungry. There will be no warning, there will be no second chances. The moment will spring at you with a panther's ferocity and unless the edible items are immediately made available, the child will become inconsolable. The need for food will become life-threatening, and as time passes, the small body (which actually believes it is shrinking from lack of nourishment) will become even more finicky than usual, until, if more than say 60 seconds passes, it will reject any idea that doesn't begin with "McDonalds." Even pizza will be summarily dismissed after more than five minutes. Always keep those fish-shaped crackers in your purse.

Speaking of the fish shaped crackers--buy them plain. The last time my son had them, they were the cheese-flavored variety, and he was very hungry. He probably "snacked" on two-thirds of a bag. Unfortunately, he was riding in the back of our motor home at the time, and the heat from the summer afternoon, combined with the rolling motion you get in the rear of large RV's combined--and we now have a motor home that distinctly reminds everyone of burnt grilled-cheese sandwiches on warm summer days.

Oreos must be taken apart and at least half of the cookie outside must be crumbled. Ice cream, no matter how delicious, is always in the wrong kind of cone, and we must complain about it even as we demolish the cone it is in. However, if you try to avoid that problem and put it in a dish, well, you are kin to the devil.

Cupcakes are excellent, as long as the little paper wrapper comes off perfectly. If not, they are mutated and must be destroyed. Eggs are only good the way mom makes them. It doesn't matter which brand you buy, there will always be one flavor of chips in the mixed snack pack that nobody in the family likes (Truck Stop-flavored Cheetos, or Fire and Gravel-flavor Doritos). Fresh juice, while cheaper off the family tree, is "yucky" because of the pulp. But the unwashed, chemical-laden cherries are delicious. Once a color of bread has been established in the home, all other colors are evil. Same with pudding.

All donuts with sprinkles are verboten, and the jelly ones must be sucked clean before the outside is consumed. Vegetables will only be eaten if they come in a package with a cartoon character on the outside and cost as much as a prime rib. Yogurt will only be eaten if it comes in a portable tube from France and costs more than that. And although we will agree to eat anything advertised on our favorite TV show, when mom actually buys it, cooks it and serves it--we want only Cheerios. Without the milk.

The final word of warning--if mom or dad has a snack, whether it is pastrami on rye, cottage cheese with ketchup, or leftover lobster thermidor--then it is suddenly the most wonderful food on the planet and we must have a bite. Which we will try to spit out into your hand almost immediately, because it looked much better than it tastes.

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Deborah can be contacted at DTHollis@metronews.com.

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