The Snack Box

A common tip for parents of children adopted from poverty where lack of food was likely is to create a steady source of food for the child. There are a myriad of ways of implementing this from having a bowl of fruit always out to letting the child carry a packet of crackers in his pocket all the time. It is meant to be an assurance that there always will be food- just in case and also to nip behavior problems that might stem from feeling a bit peckish.
We always have fruit in the house and the kids could always ask for a piece of fruit if they were feeling snackish, but they rarely did. We did not give Adisu a personal snack item to carry around for a variety of reasons.
But things change and now we find ourselves at a stage of giving both Eirena and Adisu a snack box. They don't have to ask to eat from it (but they do need to sit up at the table so as not to create a trail of crumbs and vermin). It has simple (boring) snacks in it like banana chips, puffed millet and roasted edamame.
So far Adisu is eating from it about every two hours. It is hard to say whether he is testing its constant availability or feeling a void. (I'm pretty sure he isn't eating out of physical hunger.) Eirena is less interested (as we expected). One night she picked her way through her dinner and then ravaged her snacks but most of the time she is pretty happy just waiting for dinner.
I'm not entirely sure what success or failure looks like with the snack box. I certainly don't expect it to cure all behavior problems but it will be good if Adisu learns to trust a little more through it. Learning self- regulation with food would be good too.
Adoption tends to take your "normal" life and turn it upside down and you end up doing things you never thought you would need to do. This is just a minor example of a change we've made because of adoption.