To only let my children have fresh fruit/yoghurt for breakfast?

[Sunshinesunflower]

They have plenty of healthy food during the day but I don't really want them thinking the day has to start with them shoving lots of hot food or sugary cereals down themselves.

There is plenty of fruit for variety and just a small amount of plain yoghurt.

Aibu? I have always disliked the concept of breakfast so fruit seems a reasonable compromise.

I really can't see what's odd about a breakfast of fruit - sorry.

No, I explained I disliked the smell of egg, didn't want DC1 smelling all day at school and they made me particularly sick in the morning. Only the first applies to the evening so I don't feel that statement proves rhe thread is a windup: it isn't

Apologies for returning but I felt the need to explain myself there.

Sunshine, sorry I was quoting from the paper I linked to, not saying you said that. Apologies for confusion I can see that bit was not necessary.

I often wake up to the smell of bacon, mushrooms and the dreaded eggs being cooked at 2am in the morning when my teenage sons arrive home. Bet you are looking forward to that OP.

Genuine question, why did you ask AIBU if you think you're not?!

Not at all Italian :) I shall look at that link tomorrow when I'm less tired - thank you. I don't restrict them especially but there is a time consideration in the mornings especially.

It's just water sugar and milk though sunshine. Nothing substantial to set them up for the day

OP I'm sorry but you do seem to have some food issues and your attitude does seem a bit on the disordered side.

Offering fruit and yogurt at breakfast is fine. Offering ONLY fruit and yogurt because anything else is gluttinous and greedy and surplus to requirements is not.

There's a thread elsewhere on MN tonight about parental attitudes to food and how those have affected posters' attitudes to food. Don't let your DC be future 'my mum fucked up my eating habits because she constantly inferred I was gluttinous and greedy' posters...

Well you are going to have to deal with your food isdues for the sake of your kids. If they want toast you make them toast with no complaint, if they want cereal than you give them that. For me that breakfast would be in substantial, I woukd be starving by 10 am.

It sounds as if you have issues relating to food and that isn't good for your children to pick up on.

OP your idea of a healthy breakfast is spot on but maybe if they want wholemeal toast or a good quality unsugared cereal there's nothing wrong with that. Otherwise I think they'd get hungry pretty quickly. There's more worrying breakfast items on too many family's menus. The kids round my way get coco pops and suchlike and they're only little. That kind of turns my stomach. There's so much crap being spouted about the sugar in fruit and that it's just as bad as white refined sugar. Complete and utter bull and I'm sick of hearing that. Fruit contains the most natural and amazing and most importantly ESSENTIAL enzymes and nutrients on the planet and even better, it tastes and looks amazing. Better than sugary bowls of brown milk or white bread with too-sweet jam on top. Your kids won't thank you for such a carb fest when they're falling asleep mid morning.

Again, I understand how morning sickness makes it trickier to give your kids breakfast but as they're not suffering from it, it's not really fair to deny them.

Seeing other kids eating crisps and chocolate for breakfast - yes, that's worse than fruit and yoghurt. But something more balanced and sustaining is better. I teach secondary, we have teenage girls come in after a breakfast of energy drink because they have a completely distorted attitude to food. It has a terrible effect on them. It's really not good to instil the idea that breakfast is greedy into your children.

How do your kids smell of egg all day having eaten one for breakfast? That's nonsense, clearly in your mind but not the reality. the more you write, the clearer it is you have issues around food. You don't see what's odd about just fruit for breakfast. We do and we can't all be wrong. Are you not intelligent enough to see that? You're not thinking straight - as people with issues around food don't. I doubt your kids will starve but you are without a doubt passing on issues to your kids as your mother did to you.

Exactly, please get help before your kids are old enough to be affected by your issues, because they are your issues nobody else's.

Thank you, thank you op, this has cheered me right up, it's hilarious, MN weird food at its best.

Well if you swapped the quantities- full fat yoghurt with a little bit of fruit that would help. Add some oats or plain muesli and you've got some slow release carbs rather than the instant sugar hit you get with fruit. If you are giving them all that fruit then you should ideally wait half an hour before brushing their teeth or the enamel will erode.

My parents went through a phase of only allowing us to eat fruit before midday. They'd read some crackpot book called "Fit for Life", which advocates this nonsense. I was ravenous before id even got to school, let alone lunchtime. I now have quite an unhealthy relationship with food in that that hungry little girl inside me just cant take the chance of being stuck without food for hours.

You need to be careful. It's fine for you to indulge your issues by restricting your own food but do you really want to take the risk of your children developing eating disorders?

You have no more time consideration in the morning than any other parent. Don't use that as an excuse. Where is your husband in all this? Does he know that's all they get?

Funky - I remember those days and setting the smoke alarm off annoying parents sleeping

I don't feel it's unreasonable to give then fruit for breakfast at all; I do absolutely concede I am strange about breakfast.

What people don't see is that I don't verbalise this to the children and nor would I. I often find through posting here you find out things you didn't know you knew and I think I wanted to explore this - but it's got a little heated in places and too fast for me to keep up with properly, hence it looks like I'm ignoring people and I am not.

Just to clarify - I don't have children crying and begging for toast and porridge - they need cajoling to eat in the morning although have healthy appetites at other times :)

I'm going to go against the grain here a bit...

I don't think fruit and yoghurt is a terrible breakfast, for pre schoolers who can top up during the day..and the evening soup sounds lovely! I used to give mine a simple supper when little and it helped them sleep. Nor do I buy into the notion that cereal is essential... I think it's very much a cultural norm in the Uk, but other cultures and countries have very different breakfasts... One of the little ones in my class is Thai and would never eat a cereal or toast... she has chicken or pork every breakfast and always has rice for lunch!

I do think once they start school, a bit of protein matters.. it's a long time til lunch and school fruit won't do much for a child who has only had fruit sugars to burn off till then...children running low on energy food DO perform less well...many studies have shown that.

I have four children... two always needed breakfast , two gave up eating breakfast as soon as they could... but they made up for it at other times (and incidentally the two non eaters are two very high flying young people academically, so it obviously didn't hurt them there)

Nor is there anything wrong in avoiding crisps, junky food for as long as possible (ie school age) AS LONG as it doesn't become a mantra!

I think you are getting a lot of flack here not for the food itself but your feelings towards breakfast and it's place in the daily scheme of things. It's just food. Kids (mostly) and adults (mostly) need to eat first thing because they haven't for a good many hours. I genuinely thing that the only 'problem' here is that your own attitude towards what is, at the end of the day, just a meal , is for some reason, skewed and you really don't want to make ANY meal a big deal.

Why not try a small addition of protein to breakfast? Doesn't have to be a stinky egg ([grin), I get that.. hate the smell too and I'm not pregnant)... a small bit of cheese with apple is VERY nice, not offensive and just gives them a bit of something longer lasting!

Children learn from what you do. Not what you 'verbalise '

You don't have to verbalise your food issues to your children to transfer it on to them though.

Mabey not now, but when they are older they will be wanting much more.

Jelly - I'm definitely not trying to do that. It's just awfully difficult after a lifetime of thinking something to reverse that thinking, if that makes sense. I certainly don't ever say (and not would I!) 'you are greedy' but just the same, when someone mentions things like 'oh I can't function until I've had toast and coffee!' I do inwardly (inwardly!) think 'ugh!'

Stupid I know but it is there and I can't pretend otherwise. Fruit seems lighter, somehow!