What do you give your 10/11 year old for breakfast?

[cheeseday]

I am really struggling to find healthy breakfast options for my 10 and a half year old daughter.
I usually give 2 pan au chocolate or chocolate crepe or 3 scotch pancakes with margarine or cereal or 2 slices of toast with chocolate spread or peanut butter or jam.

She is over weight and we have started consciously giving healthy home cooked dinner which includes meat or fish and vegetables and of course have not mentioned anything to her but breakfast seems to be our downfall, she likes porridge in the winter but not in the summer.

Also packed lunch tends to be a generic sandwich, yogurt, piece of fruit and crisps.

I give my daughter (admittedly, very active) pancake for breakfast every day. I make the batter though - it’s made with basically as much Greek yoghurt as flour plus eggs (I separate them first so that the batter is really fluffy), so it’s pretty decent in terms of protein. She has a squeeze of lemon and a sprinkling of sugar, but that’s still less than most cereals. And then she will have a glass of milk and a piece of fruit. She doesn’t have crisps, but will sometimes have a biscuit or something small with fruit after school pick up.

Leftovers from the night before? Sounds odd, but I'm not a cereal/ toast/ porridge fan. Leftover soup/ lasagne/ chicken/ stir fry etc- Fills me up and I enjoy it.

My ds2 adores leftover fruit bread and butter pudding for breakfast (homemade with lots of fruit, egg and teacake.) He's also allowed Nutella for breakfast on a Sunday.

I had trouble getting my child to eat anything for breakfast, there was just little or no appetite early in the morning. At any other time it was fine.

I was the same, wouldn't eat anything. Later on, at school, I was starving! A breakfast club would have been ideal for me.

I've no idea what to suggest in your daughter's case so am not much help. Maybe let her feed herself, have cereal, bread/toast and fruit available, maybe an egg sometimes.

Pancakes
cheese, egg or beans on a slice of toast.
eggy bread and a rasher
potato cake with beans
cereal with a banana

My 8 year old loves a breakfast smoothie in the morning. He likes a banana and blueberry one but I also sneak in a handful of spinach. I then add some chia seeds, porridge oats, natural yogurt, whole milk and honey so it’s quite filling.

Buttered crumpets with some sliced fruit at the side

make healthy ( ish) low sugar flapjacks

Whole meal toast with sliced banana beans on toast

You didn't think weetanix was a healthy option but you give 2 pain au chocolate?

My 8 yr old has either weetanix, porridge, bagel with cream cheese and fruit he won't eat eggs and doesn't like yoghurt for breakfast.

Lunch he has school lunches or if packed lunch either pesto pasta or a cheese sandwich with carrot sticks and humous, piece of fruit and a wee treat like a chocolate rice cake or mini cereal bar, that also covers his school break snack. Sometimes he has a fruit smoothie.

Dinner is a variety of stuff, he has asd so dinner can be tricky as he's tough to get protein into. Last night was noodles, peas and chicken, tonight was sausage, mashed potatoes, beans.

Try to get protein, fruit and veg in as much as possible. Fewer packaged snacks, highest protein lower fat version fo things like sausages

It's infinitely better than marg on pancakes or chocolate pastries/crepes.
You can always add a sliced banana, or some strawberries this time of year, and a dollop of greek yogurt

You can also make healthy pancakes or waffles using mashed banana as a base with eggs flour and milk, they also keep for a few days in the fridge or longer in the freezer and can be popped in the toaster. Again serve with greek yogurt and fruit

Take out anything that’s chocolate for breakfast including any chocolate cereals. Full of sugar and ruins their teeth.

Depends which child. This is random selection
crumpets, bacon bagel, weetabix, hot cross bun, pitta, sour dough and smashed avocado (got one child who likes the nicer foods in life haha).

We are not egg enjoyers 🤣 although sometimes just a banana, or strawberries or sometimes 2 crackers with cheese.

As @dontdoothat says, leftovers are a great option if you've a child who'll go for them. 'Breakfast' is just food eaten after the overnight fasting period.

One of my kids will devour a bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup for breakfast, I'm known to raid the fridge for any leftover veggies, or half-portions of leftover pasta dishes. A big bowl of breakfast salad with some protein (eggs, chicken, chickpeas/beans, smoked fish) is a winner, if I've the ingredients.

As an aside, in the UK, having bland cereals in the morning got popular relatively recently, in the last 100 years or so, and seems to have stemmed from a doctor (John Harvey Kellogg), who had a few unusual ideas (e.g. masturbation being a morally and physically bad thing, and bland foods suppressing sexual desire), experimented with ways to get his patients to eat bland foods. His brother saw the commercial opportunity to market a cheap product and make a lot of profit, and found that adding sugar was the way to go to get people to crave the stuff and increase sales. A century of refinement of this model and the associated marketing has led to sugary, commercial cereals being some of the best UPFs that could possibly be create if the aim is to make a massive profit margin, and if there's no concern about all that sugar going into kids on a daily basis.

Pre-emptively adding: Sure, plain flaked / toasted / puffed grains are just processed grains. But if you're buying something other than the plain stuff (i.e. most cereals sold by a UK supermarket), it's worth taking a look at the back of the packet to check what you're getting. For example, the sugars content of bran sticks / flakes is typically mid-range (10-20%), whereas puffed rice / corn flakes / wheat biscuits / shredded wheat type cereals are typically in the 0-10% range.

DS has a wholemeal bagel with peanut butter and some fruit on school days, bran flakes on weekends.

Porridge oats usually.

Porridge as a base, then have nuts, seeds, fruit and greek yogurt on the table and you build your own bowl. The adults like overnight oats but the kids prefer it warm.

Eggs in some form - cut some onion/spring onion, tomatoes, peppers, courgette etc and build your own omelette/scrambled egg bowl. On weekends we might add salmon.

Maybe once a month we have cereal, crumpets, pancakes, malt loaf, kippers etc.

Breakfast bread can be fun too. Like a low sugar, high fibre banana, blueberry and oat loaf cake.

I love all the healthy breakfast options that people have been suggesting. However, I can't face them at breakfast unless I have been up for a long time. I also don't have much time to cook in the morning as we all have to be out of the house before 7.30am. I tend to go for brown bread and sugar free peanut butter.

Mine has either porridge, or an omelette, or I make her pancakes. Occasionally she will ask for just bread and butter which I disapprove of (weird, when toast is seen as normal) and put loads of fruit on her plate if I say yes.

We are now trying to get her to do her own so am hoping the porridge and/omelette continue.

At that age rushing off to school it’d be relatively healthy cereal like weetabix, shreddies, Cheerios, obv w milk and OJ. ideally with a banana. On weekends they’d have toast as well. I allowed coco pops on the weekend too.

It’s not what I’d deem healthy now particularly but it was over 10 years ago and they had a relatively healthy diet overall. My son always liked porridge so if I had time I’d do that for him.

Your kids’ breakfast is v high in sugar/salt and is very processed. Maybe look online for things you can prep in advance like overnight oats, homemade buckwheat pancakes w blueberries (can freeze and heat quickly in microwave), buy healthier cereal like low or no sugar muesli, wholemeal toast, no sugar peanut butter (just peanuts), jams like st dalfour w no added sugar. Baked beans on toast?

I’m the same and I refuse to eat “English” breakfasts. (Although my kids are fans of porridge)
I would much rather a German breakfast of rolls, cold cuts, fruit and cheese. But in this country it’s “weird”. So instead I don’t tend to eat breakfast.

Yoghurt with honey and flaxseed & chia seeds
or
1.5 weetabix with a bit of sugar and milk
or
2 eggs and 1 toast

Summer: Full fat Greek yoghurt with fruit.

Winter: porridge with full fat milk and honey

Any time: whole meal toast with butter and jam, marmalade or marmite.

When she has a lot of sport or is growing and getting hungry before lunch: scrambled egg on toast.

Occasional weekend treat: croissant and jam

I would much rather a German breakfast of rolls, cold cuts, fruit and cheese. But in this country it’s “weird”. So instead I don’t tend to eat breakfast.

@ToffeePennie We (culturally) really need to get over the notion that perfectly normal foods become weird if eaten at breakfast, but some corporations have some puffed or squished grains to sell us....

Good peanut butters without sugar and oil are nice and filling. We’ve certainly done that.

My very active almost 10 year old gets this for breakfast:

• small bowl (11cm diameter) with shreddies and rice krispies mixed, with semi skimmed milk
• 2 scrambled eggs
• 10cm piece of cucumber + handful of cherry tomatoes
• 3 or 4 strawberries etc

We sometimes mix it up with homemade pancakes (no sugar!) with berries instead of the scrambled egg (pancakes freeze well!)

My oldest is 14, he has the following (he ys autistic with a restricted diet)

• single slice of bread with thin margarine and a single slice if ham
• pkain yoghurt
• pancake (no sugar) with berries/grapes. pancake is mostly eaten cold (batch cooked)