Hauled into school because dd had no breakfast

[takeastand]

Got called into school as dd(13) felt unwell and it transpired she hadn't eaten. I don't encourage her to eat breakfast although I don't stop her - she rarely gets up early enough to eat it during the week. I honestly thought the school would be sensible about this but what an absolute waste of everyone's time. I thought once I explained that she wasn't neglected or malnourished we could go on our way. Instead a load of hand wringing, unsubstantiated and unscientific bollocks about how important breakfast is and how clearly this is the reason dd felt light headed, even though she hasn't eaten breakfast before school the entire five weeks and this is the first day she has felt unwell.

For context - she is overweight. I'm not going to force another 300-400 calories that she doesn't desire or need at the only point of the day that she doesn't seem to be starving hungry! I make her a cup of tea each morning, she drinks plenty of water. Her house is first for lunch so she eats at 12ish!

It's half term next week and I'm not sure whether I should say anything to the school tomorrow or just let it lie.

Wow!!!
Hopefully with this thread you will see what you are doing wrong.
Your job is to make sure your child is properly nourished.

Laustin wtf are you on about, you don't become overweight from not eating And there's about 5 calories in a cup of tea with semi-skimmed milk. You'd turn into a swimming pool before you became overweight from tea.

My thoughts also 👌🏼

I suffer from episodes of low blood sugar but even I struggle to eat anything pre 11am and have always been the same since childhood. Yes sometimes it does cause me to feel unwell if I’m especially active but that’s actually rare as if I’m not hungry my body likely doesn’t need the food. There could be loads of other reasons OP’s DD could have felt unwell. Breakfast being the most important meal of the day is a result of an advertising campaign by Kellogg’s not based on fact.

A lot of people have posted they don’t feel hungry first thing and that’s fair enough - my hubby and daughter are the same.
But you did not say that about your daughter - you said she often doesn’t wake with enough time to eat. That’s a different thing. I have never in my life heard of a parent pulled into school to talk about making sure their child is nourished before school. I’m sorry but I tend to think the school considers this to be an important issue for your daughter. Schools are busy - they don’t bother making personal meetings for the fun of it.

I don’t eat breakfast. Ridiculous to force u or her to eat breakfast!!

I do agree that by eating earlier, your daughter could find losing weight a lot easier, it worked for me...however, you can't force kids to eat, I hated eating breakfast, still do, but instead I make orange, banana and strawberry smoothies...I think you could have dealt with this over the phone though, being called in, what a waste of everyones time. x

I think the school has done their duty by "hauling" you in. I personally don't think letting a child go to school on an empty stomach is doing the best by them at all, even a piece of toast ready as they fly out the door to kick start the metabolism and give her body fuel to concentrate in the morning.

Neglecting to give her breakfast will most definitely not make her loose weight. Healthy eating 3 times a day with some light exercise and no crap food will do that in no time at her age. And if she needs to be having 300 calories less a day, that is something else you need to deal with, or is that up to her as well as she is 13 after all and can make her own decisions .

Oh Dear God.
Simply, some people need breakfast, some don't.

The research that showed 'just how important' breakfast is was funded by Kellogg's - no bias there then.

Current thinking is that intermittent fasting (only eating between 8 hours of the day e.g. 10am and 6pm) is healthiest as it gives the digestive system time to restore.

Nevertheless, school are overstepping the mark. She didn't feel like breakfast, maybe this made her feel faint, maybe it didn't. There was no need for them to treat you like a neglectful parent.

@takeastand from the schools POV your daughters health and well-being suffered as a result of skipping a meal. Schools will always investigate this.

Explaining to the school that she’s not “up” early enough for breakfast and you wanted to avoid if contributing to her calorie intake would probably indicate a lack of nutritional knowledge on your part.

Suck it up - get off mumsnet and go do some reasearch on nutrition. Good luck 👍🏻X

Trying hard not to be in despair here... have you had ANY safeguarding training?

I think a child having no breakfast does warrant a conversation with the parent - but not necessarily an accusatory one. If it's a one-off or something then it could be brought up at the school's parent-teacher interview day. If it's a consistent problem then I think it's reasonable to request that the parent come in for a meeting with the teacher. But it shouldn't be approached in an accusatory "you don't feed your child" tone. Rather, it should be approached as, "Hey, your child has been saying that he hasn't been fed breakfast. I wanted to talk to you about that." There are a number of possibilities here:

-the child refused breakfast (either not hungry or didn't like what was on offer)
-they were in a rush
-there wasn't any food in the house FOR breakfast (maybe the family is low-income)
-the child is being neglected

Note that in only ONE of those cases is there a true safeguarding issue. If the parent is low-income, that indicates that there is a need for support, but it's not necessarily the case that the parent is deliberately starving or abusing the child.

Then, too, it's possible that a child will make up a story of having had no breakfast in order to get sympathy. I've heard of that happening, too.

I don’t have the time to go through, 17 (at time of writing) pages of thread, so apologies if I have missed, but must ask op why is your daughter overweight in the first place?

I personally believe that all children should eat something at breakfast. It doesn’t have to be lots. What about a piece of fruit, which I doubt is 300 calories. Like others have said, you as the parent should be encouraging breakfast!

Breakfast isn’t the most important meal of the day. That was a marketing campaign line that became accepted wisdom somewhere along the line. Intermittent fasting is proven to be one of the most effective ways to normalise blood sugar and lose weight - if you daughter eats something at 8pm then effectively fasts until noon the next day, she is doing the 16:8 diet and it WILL help her lose weight.

If she’s not hungry, she shouldn’t and doesn’t need to eat. The feeling ill was a one off, clearly. YANBU. School needs to get up to date with modern science - though children that are hungry at that time and unable to eat through poverty or parental neglect are a different kettle of fish.

My DD is 10 on Sunday. I have HUGE battles to get her to eat breakfast before school. She's at the school I work at & we need to leave just after 7. She can't face food first thing. I've tried all sorts of different things, which she will try for a couple of days & then the rows start again. The last couple of weeks I've let it go as the stress first thing wasn't doing any of us any good. But I am worried she won't be concentrating as well as she should with no fuel inside her. After half term I'm going to make her eat again...or try to. I don't want to cause issues around food, & I can't force her to eat but I want her to eat a sensible breakfast. When she's 13 I imagine I'll still feel the same. She is always starving after school & wants junk. I've struggled with my weight since my late teens, & I have always eaten breakfast.
I'm surprised the school called you in ...surely a phone call it or email would have sufficed.

I wish other schools were this concerned about the pupils welfare
Why do you want others opinions
Yes not everyone can stomach breakfast in the morning
Unfortunately your child is overweight and its to do with this as well .Do the right thing stop looking for excuses dont set her up to be bullied send her in with something .Start helping with better chooses at what she consumes
Diabetes is not a joke and children are getting it at a very young age dont get upset

Not eating breakfast affects concentration, so the school are right to be concerned and speak to you.

Did nobody call @minionsrule out on her "breakfast kickstarts your metabolism" pish?

Bunch of absolute bollocks.

Christ, the amount of spite and chronic misinformation on this thread beats it all.

There is no way on earth that shoving refined, processed food (cereal bars/granola/juice/toast) into a person who isn't hungry is better than leaving them to eat at a time of their own choice, unless the intention is to cause a massive insulin spike that will leave the person craving sugar for the rest of the day.

@sunshine11 Kellogg’s did not invent the importance of breakfast - where did you get that from?! They may have highlighted it for their own marketing, of course they would - but they didn’t invent this as a concept. Research has been conducted by nutritionists to derive this information.

YABU. That's part of your roll as a parent to make sure your child as breakfast.

@mumswearstripes - I thought it was widely known? Here's a Guardian article on the matter: www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/nov/28/breakfast-health-america-kellog-food-lifestyle

takeastand

You are right. The school is talking outmoded nonsense. It’s a bit like the fat is bad mantra which has been debunked with sugar being in the spotlight recently.

Breakfast at 8/8:30 is fine if your last meal is going to be around 5, but it’s evident that we don’t fast enough. We should be trying too keep our eating within an 8-10 hour period, fasting for the other 14-16. So if dinner must be around 8pm, starting eating at noon is sensible.

If your daughter’s weight is more than just normal filling out (then stretching) associated with growth, the best thing to do at this stage is to encourage activity, eating for health and fitness, and preparing food from scratch, while reducing processed foods. Nothing drastic, and nothing that sounds like dieting. Perhaps you could start with making some overnight oats together which she could take to school to eat when she feels she is hungry?

So now it’s the guardians word you are taking? What about actually researching official guidelines? Most will point out that children this age should not be on fad diets ie, fasting for lengthy periods of time. Their bodies are still growing. Girls in particular may also begin to have blood loss which can contribute to feeling light headed - especially when there are not enough calories. Thank you for the artical though 👍🏻