Breakfast before school

[Gambino1726]

I am just curious. What are your children eating for breakfast before school?

We’ve got into a habit of making scrambled eggs and a toast. My 8 year old makes this by herself most mornings. Occasionally, if there’s bacon in the house, she’ll throw in a rasher or two!

We don’t do cereal. Mainly because it slides into sugary shit plus we don’t drink milk so wouldn’t know what to put with it (daughter had an intolerance as a baby and we just never got back into it).

The teacher told me she has children in the class eating chocolate bars for breakfast - but is this really true?

Curious what others do

One of mine has 2 x wholemeal toast with nutella. The other has 1-2x weetabix with a cup of whole milk on the side (sometimes gold top if we can get it).

They both have SEN and are not early risers so it's been a long road to get to this point with breakfast tbh! The eldest used to refuse to eat anything first thing in the morning and still needs a fair bit of cajoling.

Yeah sugary cereaL is bad. Fed is not best. Give your kids good healthy food it’s not hard.

Being in the medical field myself, far too many.

Bad doesn’t mean neglect. Let’s not be dramatic about it.

Starving is neglect. Coco pops are not.

Fed is not best? It is, if your priority is making sure your child has some breakfast then getting something into them is the point.

It’s really not that simple for everyone.

Give over, feeding a child cereal for breakfast is not neglect, it's a common normal breakfast.
not perfect is not the same as neglect.
Neglect would be no breakfast.

You make all the excuses you want but comparing one extreme with another doesn’t help your argument. Giving kids sweets and chocolates because that’s what it is, for breakfast, is a form of neglect. Just the one you talk about it is another form. Have a quick search of the child obesity levels in this country.

Cannot believe in this age with all the information you have at your fingertips, literally you would think giving your child coco pops for a meal is ok.

Food poverty is real in this country. Some people feed their kids what they have.

Dietary restrictions and food avoidance mean some of us can’t feed our children freshly baked home made bread, and free range eggs, because they will not eat it. And fed… is best.

Actual child neglect exists. There are parents who actually do neglect their children, in the real sense. The kind social services actually care about.

Feeding your children cereal, is not neglect. It may not be the “ideal,” but it’s not neglect. It might be neglect in whatever leafy suburb you live in with children who eat whatever organic food you give them, but out here in the real world.. it isn’t.

Believe it. I’d sooner send a child to school on a bowl of coco pops than on nothing.

I eat cereal for breakfast. Might be anything from weetabix to frosties. I have done all my 40 years on this earth. I have made it to 40 unscathed whilst eating cereal nearly every day. I work for the nhs and i've seen neglect in children and eating cereal really isn't neglect.

Uh huh, if you say so.

In my experience, it's difficult enough getting one for your child when your child actually has a medical issue. I find it hard to believe that there's all these children out there under one just because of poor parenting.

Anyway, it's irrelevant since my child does have a medical issue and the advice from the dietitian who actually knows my child and his medical issue is eat the coco pops.

Seriously, we are going round in circles here, people are telling you why this happens, that it doesn’t mean parents don’t love their kids, they just don’t know how to care for them, because they weren’t cared for. Are you really in so much of a bubble you don’t know how poverty works?

Food neglect and neglect at home aren’t mutually exclusive. The kids with chaotic home lives, with no proper food in the house, are often also the ones given 50p to buy something on the way to school and they pick a chocolate bar. They might not have a parent who can even get out of bed to think about feeding them, let alone feeding them something nutritious.

Awful isn't it, I've seen kids having sweets for breakfast. Epic parenting fail.

There’s more sugar in a muller light yoghurt than in a serving of coco-pops. Cereal isn’t evil, it would be bad if it was all a child ate but actually a serving of coco pops with milk delivers quite a lot of the recommended nutrition per day.

For those people saying healthy eating information is out there for people to find if theyneed, there are families in this country where none of the adults can even read. I have met a fair few through my job. Some are open about it others are embarrassed.

There are many barriers to why children have poor diets.

Sugary cereal is not the reason childhood obesity is increasing. Coco pops have been sold since before I was a child.

My strapping DGS(20) used not to eat breakfast before school because he just didn't like to eat first thing - he had a very healthy appetite for other meals.

If your son is otherwise healthy and doing well at school I wouldn't worry.

Thank you.

I worry because he’s tiny. He’s the smallest in his year and has been since reception (he’s now year 5), so I really don’t like him skipping meals.

Usually porridge,, Wheetabix or shreddies.
We have to leave by 7.30 and sometimes we’re running so late it’s a car breakfast of banana, cheese sandwich, toasted tea cake or something else portable. There’s food at breakfast club if he wants something else.

We have healthy cereal, bread, crumpets, pittas in the cupboard. Neither will eat eggs. My year 10 DS often takes a thermos food flask of porridge oats and skimmed milk powder to add hot water to at morning break because, like me, he cannot stomach food before 10am. My year 7 DD eats generally eats cereal or toast before school, but both sort themselves out. I just deal with the carnage left in the kitchen as proof they've eaten, or are going to.

Another smug Mumsnet post, congratulations on winning at the parenting. I'm sure there probably are some kids who are given a chocolate bar for breakfast but seriously who is going to put that on here?
" Oh yes it's me! I feed my children a mars bar for breakfast!'

A boiled egg, slice of toast with butter and a glass of milk almost everyday. That's what my 8 year old likes, and I like to give some protein at breakfast.

What a great opportunity for a stealth post.

What is the point of your question, OP?
Any food that you can think of would have been consumed at one point as breakfast.

Do you know these kids?

And just another bitter mum, shaming another mum for being proud of their child. Just chill

Weetabix, seeded bread toast or porridge is what my 7 yr old has in the morning. Occasionally a more sugary cereal like rice crispies.

Youngest is 4 and used to also do Weetabix or Cheerios but doesn't like toast, recently will.onlybeat cereal dry like a snack with a cup of milk on the side and not at breakfast time. She normally has a pancake or brioche roll and a yoghurt. Sometimes she asks for crackers and she's such a bad eater right now that I will let her have crackers and cheese. I offer scrambled eggs every morning and a couple of mornings a week she'll eat a scrambled egg instead of a yoghurt.

I then chop up a couple of pieces of fruit for them on the side, few strawberries and a pear maybe.

Eldest used to hate milk so always had oat milk but now happily has either.

Weekends porridge or homemade pancakes or french toast