My two teenagers, dd 16 and ds 13.11 leave home quite early for school (7.15am) and they both refuse to eat at that time of day. They take drinks/crisps/fruit/cereal bars with them, but I don't feel right about this.

What do yours do?

Same age daughters, same habits! Except no crisps, I still try to keep it "breakfasty", to invent a word. Bagels and smoothies are good too. I keep promising myself I'll get up early to make them bacon sandwiches to take, but I never do .

My eldest leaves even earlier so I can understand her not wanting food then.

It's certainly not a vanity thing or I'd be more worried.

i see loads of teenagers go to our corner shop on the way to school and stuff themselves with crisps and mars bars

That's why I'm the food police

Mine can't eat at that time, neither can I TBH.

DD sometimes has a bit of dry cereal with dried fruit but, mostly, she takes a slice of bread and butter with her and an apple or pear. It is not great but, tbh, it is probably better than most sugary cereals so I am not too worried about it!

I honestly think teens are designed to eat more later in the day. As long as they are eating plenty of healthy stuff later on I would not worry to much - maybe just cut out the crisps and keep it as breakfast like as you can?

mine took cereal bars when they were at school as i was adamant that they should eat in a morning.

trouble is - they ate them when they came home too so they went fairly quickly.

anyway...twins are now 16 and wroking.atcollege - if they don't eat - they will be hungry....they are 16 and i'm not forcing them to eat breakfast anymore ( esp since i don't)

i have to say though at 13 mine would eat cereal, though i bought lots of diferent kinds and put them on the table with the milk in the morning - so they ate it.

Mine would leave with nothing unless I told her to eat. I actually don't care what she eats, I just want her to eat something. After that Dr Regan programme where it showed that the benefit to concentration/health etc is just to eat breakfast, any beakfast, I am much, much less uptight about breakfast.

and those litle packets were always attractive to eat

ds (13) has gone right off breakfast this last few months. We try to persuade him, and he'll generally have a yog, or some plain yog and honey, but never any cereal or toast or anything 'filling'. The rest of the day he's starving, and he's not going without across the whole 24 hours, so it's a battle I can leave (although I'd prefer him to have cereal or something to start the day better)