Food: Getting Teens to Eat Breakfast before School

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Getting Teens to Eat Breakfast before School
Friday, September 09, 2005

By Christina VanGinkel

Getting kids to eat healthy can be a constant struggle. Add in a new school year, with a bus ride in the morning that starts long before your child is fully awake, and you can have problems. My son, every inch and pound of his five feet nine inch, 190 lb. frame, is just not ready to eat at 6:00 am, or even 6:30 am. He has to be out the door by 6:50 to catch the bus, so that does not leave a lot of time for a healthy breakfast to be consumed. His bus is also one of the last to arrive at school, so though the school district does offer breakfast, by the time he arrives, he is usually too rushed to eat.

How do we deal with this? A lot of imagination and a constant shifting of what it is he does eat, and when he eats it. I insist that he at least consume juice and a piece of fruit, usually a banana, before he leaves the house. I insist that he do this sitting down, and is the one meal of the day that I allow him to eat in front of the television. I would rather he do this than stand and eat. He often ends up taking a portion of his juice with him on the bus, or grabs a bottle of Gatorade on his way out the door to drink on his way to school also, along with a piece of string cheese, or some other dairy product such as a yogurt. As the winter progresses, we will vary the fruit, and I can sometimes get him to consume a bagel with cream cheese.

During the months of summer and on the weekends, he is normally up for over an hour before his metabolism kicks in and tells him that he needs to eat, and no amount of dietary change through the school years has ever altered this. This is just the way his system works.

While I realize that this is not the ideal way to have a teenager eat, especially breakfast, I would rather he eat these things than not at all. I try to avoid keeping boxed sugar sweets in the house, but I do buy granola bars for him to grab on his way out the door. If you have a child that just cannot gear up for a full breakfast during the morning rush before school, try to get them to eat something. No matter how not hungry they are, their bodies still need fuel, and it is up to us, the parents, to make sure that they have the energy to make it through the school day. While my solution may not be perfect, I feel it is better than no breakfast at all. Offer them a variety of healthy foods, and break the rules about eating away from the table if it will help your teen adjust to the harsh, but necessary schedule of a long bus ride or walk. A tired kid will wake up, but a tired and hungry kid will just slog through the day!

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