This little infographic shows the typical process we experience when we’re hungry:
And this little infographic shows how hunger turns to hanger and how easily the state of hungriness can lead to escalation in our house (and I suspect we’re not alone):
I love hangryness, its a real joy.
I’ve previously written about Interoception and Adopted Children & Eating Issues and Demand Avoidance if you’d like more info than the little bits here that you will no doubt need to squint at (it does look pretty though).
I’m assuming that time and working on interoception are going to help with this. I also need to remember to leave Little Bear a tray of healthy snacks outside of his bedroom door for when he wakes up at the crack of sparrows and none of us are ready to leap out of bed and make him some breakfast. On the occasions when I’ve remembered, it seems to have worked well in terms of pre-empting some of the issues above. Anticipating hunger and regular snacking and routine mealtimes do seem to keep things as calm and even as possible (though don’t actually take away the underlying issues). If anybody else has any clever tricks, I’d love to hear them.