To wonder why so many children go without breakfast

[Sunnydays999]

Iv seen these adverts Kellogs are doing - it made me wonder why the situations so bad ?
Now I totally get some children won't eat breakfast - totally different .but not to be able to afford it on a regular basis ? Breakfast has to be the cheapest meal of the day. Not the best but value bread for toast is penny's ?
If parents can't afford breakfast what's happening with tea

I hate the advert, it's glorifying neglect to a degree by sayings it's ok not to feed your children as others will by buying cereal.

It's like free school meals, if you can't afford to feed your child then SS should step in. Hand outs don't solve the problem and mean the parent still doesn't prioritise food.

There's no excuse in this country for any child to go without three meals a day.

I never ate breakfast at secondary, waste of sleep and it made me feel sick on our bumpy coach.

Always ate the maltloaf out my packed lunch at break and in later years school started selling welsh cakes.

I think it's more laziness in the mornings rather than a cost thing. Older ones may not want breakfast but many kids I work with leave home in the morning and parents are still in bed. I also help at messy Church - craft activities plus sit down hot meal for whole families. For some of the dc it is their only fresh hot meal of the week (happens once a month and families rely on it). One mum once said she couldn't afford to make the sausage casserole at home. Sadly she told me this whole also showing me her new tattoo (not cheap). People have different priorities.

Personally I think a free bit of toast annd a glass of juice for all juniors when they get to school, would be far better than universal infant meals, a lot of which are going to go in the compost bin.

I help in a food bank and for a significant number of families it is sheer laziness and a lack or prioritising what is important. . I hate to sound like a DM reader but I do despair sometimes; we have people coming in with their iphones/expensive clothes etc etc and then claiming they can't afford food (it's a small community and we often bump into the very same people in Tesco stuffing their trolley with alcohol).

One of the local initiatives set up is to provide school children with free lunches during the school holidays - as obviously they are not receiving the free lunches at school that they are entitled to.

It is such a huge problem. covering so many wider issues, and I am not sure that middle class do-gooders (and I class myself as one of those ) will ever really be able to understand and tackle the issue in a meaningful way.

I think its a case of cant be arsed/chaotic household rather than being unable to afford breakfast.

Breakfast clubs are great, if the children are old enough to get themselves to school. I doubt parents who are not feeding their dc breakfast due to being unorganised wether it be forgetting to buy stuff in/ not getting up early enough will manage to get the children into school in time for breakfast club.

I started walking to school at 8/9 so my mum stopped getting up in the morning (never worked).
I used to get my younger sisters stuff but never had the time to get myself something too.

Very similar to everyone else at my school (I'm 26 now), either unemployed parents who cba or working parents who were too busy/had already left for work & left money to pick something up.

In my experience it's not lack of money, it's that these households are chaotically "run" by parents with drink and drug issues and parents that don't know or can't be bothered to learn how to parent. This generally goes hand in hand with poverty so while a simplistic view is that its down to poverty, the issues are much more complicated than that. There are plenty of parents on very low incomes who work incredibly hard to feed their children healthily and provide the best they possibly can. Unfortunately there are plenty of parents out there whose children come far behind drugs, fags, drink, socialising, boyfriend etc in the priorities

Pickled you sound like a lovely teacher (or whatever you do). A handful of children who don't get breakfast has been constant in the classroom for the past 60 years, nothing new. However offering free breakfast doesn't really tackle this type of neglect- as you say, many people just don't turn up for it!

At my children's school there was a mum who was late every day (lovely children). They came in a good 30 min late every day. I used to see them starting out for school at the time I was coming home, not even walking fast, just strolling up there. The authority paid for them to get a taxi - they were always late for the taxi and the taxi turned up just as everyone else had left for school. The children were put in free breakfast and after-school club, failed to show for breakfast most days. The mum must have been depressed/had issues, although she hid them well, quite chatty and nice, but just lived a chaotic life (house appalling).

Breakfast is just a symptom of something bigger and I don't think encouraging more people to rely on charity for basic needs is a good idea- what about when Kelloggs decide not to do this anymore? Targeted help for those really struggling with a range of issues is a better idea (although my example shows that even if you give people a lot of free stuff, it doesn't always work).

I do believe that is what i just said

Dd1 was horrible about breakfast, so I just put muffins or breakfast biscuits in her bag to eat at break.

Sadly, I know people who just don't get up early enough to make sure the kid has so etching to eat.

It is true lots of families don't eat breakfast, it is also true that many families are finding things very tough, including feeding themselves.

However, for a very large proportion of children arriving at school without breakfast it has nothing to do with the cost.

It's either lack of organisation (no-one's up and ready early enough) or children who "refuse" and parents who don't think it's important enough to fight about.

Breakfast clubs can sometimes help but families who struggle to get Dc to school for 9am without breakfast aren't going to get them there for 8:30 (or whenever)

I agree that those parents who cannot get up early enough will not get up for the free breakfast, as I am assuming it will be before school rather than in school time.

Do other schools have fruit schemes, so that infants get a free peice of fruit every day?

I struggle to get my 12 and 14 year old to eat breakfast on a school morning, one feels sick as i often do in the morning and one just cant be arsed.

plenty of cereal in and bread, they just dont want it.

my 7 is going the same way, i suppose ill have to force feed her that way ill please all the judgers

Why buy your own kids breakfast when someone else will provide it free?
Providing free breakfasts is a lovely idea, but it hasn't solved the problem.
If someone isn't providing their children breakfast, and everyone in the uk can afford to do so, then something needs to be done and it isn't simply providing free brekkie.

I don't like traditional breakfast foods. So perhaps offer non-breakfast foods, ghost.

My Mum could have brought me any breakfast but there was no way I would eat it.

She will eat a piece of fruit sometimes. Or a cereal bar. Ihave even made cake before now, she eats that

Dd normally has a brioche and a babybel for breakfast, so I agree that anything you can get down them is good.

And we are not talking about teenagers, we are talking about young, primary age children.

You have to be able to imagine what a household must be like where the kids aren't fed or do not want to stick around in the morning to eat breakfast.

My school friend used to come to my house (to walk to school with me) very early in the morning. Mum would automatically put a place out and she'd eat breakfast with us.

I didn't think anything about it but later my friend told me that if she and her brother didn't get up, dressed and out of the house before her dad got up, they'd bear the brunt of his (violent and bad tempered) morning mood.

This was a functioning, professional household with 2 cars, holidays etc.

Dd2 doesnt go to school on an empty stomach, its just a struggle to get her eat.

ive just grown up with the thought that anything other than cereal or toast or a fry up is unhealthy or inadequate. Thats years of childhood primary school and my parents telling me this, my headmaster was obsessed with breakfasts. So to give my dc anything else other than a conventional breakfast makes me feel very guilty.

i know. I sound weird

I do of course but i still feel bad

Yak to cereal and toast. Just no. I had onion and tomato pasta with gammon thrown in for breakfast this morning.

Offer leftovers, pizza, burritos, make your own sausage McMuffin. Mmm.

DS (6) hates breakfast. Solid food makes him gag early in the morning even if it's treat stuff like a donut or chocolate brioche - it's weird. In the holidays he will eat cereal but only after he's been up for an hour or so.
We have ended up giving him Oatly chocolate milk which he will drink. It's not for the want of trying. He eats well the rest of the day.