Son not eating lunch

Laura82_2

mrcow wrote: »

I think they can at least make the kids have a good go of it.

I personally don't see the point of waiting until September if it's upsetting/worrying you. Have a word tomorrow morning and see if there is any improvement.

Your son is the same age as mine. I can assure you, even if he wasn't particualrly hungry, he could still manage two sandwiches if told to eat them. I don't think letting him know that he's in trouble is a bad thing at all. Lunch is provided to be eaten, not to be shoved in a bag so you can then eat something else later in the day. My son makes his own sandwiches and puts what he wants in them. Maybe that would help?

Totally agree with all this, thankyou. We actually did get him to prepare his own sandwich for tomorrow. His school doesn't allow parents inside in the morning, but I have put a detaild note in his diary and will then speak to his teacher when I pick him up tomorrow. It's good to know other people understand my concerns and my reasoning. Many thanks mrcow

Laura82_2

McKneff wrote: »

Reward him when he does well, but please dont punish him when he can't, (and note I didnt say doesn't)
I really do hope everything goes well for you and your family.

Annie

Thankyou Annie, I appreciate and acknowledge your comment and will try rewards

meg72

Laura82 wrote: »

I'm at the end of my tether. Before Christmas we found the majority of my son's packed lunches in a mouldy mess under his bed. Then at the start of June we found more stuffed down the side of his bed. His excuse was that he hadn't been hungry. Since then we have cut his lunches to a sandwich made from a single slice of bread, and an orange. Now he is coming home from school every day with the majority of his sandwich uneaten. We've sat him down to eat it immediately after school, which he does so it's not that he doesn't like it. He's been going to bed half an hour early every time he doesn't eat his sandwich, and needless to say we've got very angry with him.
Today I really thought he'd eat it all, but once again he's come home with it untouched, saying he wasn't hungry. I really don't know what to do. Can someone please help me.
I know it's the end of term on Friday, but the thought of two more uneaten lunches is driving me insane, we just can't afford to pay for him to have school dinners or we'd do that.He is 10 years old, so it's not like he's particularly young or anything. I just haven't got a clue what my next step should be, though I'm tempted to send him to school tomorrow with no lunch at all to show him what it really means to be hungry!
Please help me!!!

At the end of you tether,its driving you insane, You punish him by sending him to be early?

Chill out love for goodness sake, you are givingyour Son more problems than he needs.

Dunroamin

Is there any possibility that he's getting hold of money to buy sweets/crisps (or the goods themselves) and eating these rather than his sandwiches?

lovesabargain123

I have a just 12year old who often refuses lunch. He's never been a massive eater and apart from breakfast where he has 4 weetabix with milk and honey he's just not bothered! I got a call from school saying his dinner card had a fortune on as he was loading it and not using it. So I started sending him in with bits that he can eat on the way iykwim ( he doesn't like sandwiches) so mini sausages,grapes,boiled egg, cereal bar etc
Tbh he very rarely eats it,he says he's just not hungry and is too busy playing tennis!
I don't stress at him, theres no point in upsetting him and myself when he's just not hungry. I just make sure he has a good dinner in the evening but tbh he's not a massive eater of that either.

Personally I'd try and lay off him the next couple of days, missing lunch twice isn't going to do any lasting damage and try and get him in a good eating pattern over the holidays x

just_trying

Please try not to worry about it easier said than done !. My son was the same except the head had the audasity to phone me one day and say she was going to phone the social work on me, i told her to do what she wanted as he was sent to school with what he wanted and he was a perfectly normal weight and i would be phoning the council to make a complaint about her which i did ( council did not agree with her). Probably best to leave him it's not your fault he eats when he gets home and i bet he probably eats his snack at playtime. You don't need to train him either as i bet in the summer he'll eat you out of house and home. Try to ignore it doing nothing wrong. One little thing you could maybe is, if you eat your pack lunch you can have a school dinner on Friday, only an idea.

gibson123

OMG what a huge fuss! It's the end of term, he has had a busy year, kids, teachers and parents are all tired and frazzled, kids go through eating stages, my DD can go a full day on a sandwich and the next day she would eat like there was no tomorrow. Leave it for now, make it a non-issue over the holidays let him eat when he is hungry and you will get a good idea of his eating patterns. Under no circumstances make associations between eating punishment and rewards. Good luck and be easier on him and yourself.

coin_operated_girl

I've not read all the replies here, but the first thing that sprung to mind when I read this post was that he sounds like how I used to be. I never ate lunch at school, not because I wasn't hungry (like I would say to my parents) but because I had an issue with eating in front of people. Not sure why, guess I just felt like people were watching me- no idea what started it. I basically didn't eat lunch at school for about 5 years. One thing which helped me was to have food that was 'bite-sized', so that I could sneakily pop the food in my mouth when I felt like no one was looking.

ETA: I didn't have an issue with eating at meal times in front of my family or if I stayed round a friends house etc, the problem seemed to solely be at school.

barbiedoll

Oh dear OP, I do know exactly how you feel. My son has always been very small and skinny for his age and I've fretted about his eating habits since he was a baby.

He has always had a packed lunch because he doesn't like school dinners, he's always been a fussy eater (like me )
When he started school full-time, he still wasn't eating bread because he "didn't like it". Months of persuading him to try it with various fillings/toppings just didn't work until my husband told him that if he didn't eat bread, he couldn't have lunch and he would have to come home for dinner like the toddlers in the pre-school. Which actually worked! When he was at primary school, they wouldn't allow the kids to throw away their lunch remains, they had to take them home so that parents would know how much they had eaten. I began finding squashed-up sarnies in the bottom of his lunchbag and asked him why he wasn't eating them. Eventually he admitted that they were all "squishy" and horrible and he didn't like them because they were "square" and had the crusts on. When I cut off the crusts and cut them into triangles, plus I bought a lunch bag with a "cool" compartment, he began eating them.

At high school, I realised that he was leaving his snacks, after questioning, he said that he didn't have time to eat everything as he wanted to play with his mates. We said that he was allowed to eat at breaktime if he liked, unlike junior school, where they weren't allowed to eat their lunch early. Now, he eats his fruit and biscuits at breaktimes and his sarnies at lunch.

I do applaud you for caring enough to be concerned about this. Many of my son's friends have nothing to eat at school, sometimes they are given money for lunch which they spend in the local sweetshop. A lot of them aren't given breakfast either, so the fact that you are stressing over this speaks volumes about your parenting. In a good way!

I don't have any answers for you but I do think that you need to sit him down and have a discussion. He's old enough to know about healthy eating, they will also be studying it at school. But remember, if he's a good weight, he's eating well at home (maybe try to get him to eat some toast as well as cereal in the mornings?) and he's happy, then try not to get too upset. In a couple of years, you won't be able to feed him fast enough, it doesn't sound like he has any serious issues with food, so take a deep breath, let it go for the next couple of days and get talking over the holidays.
Good luck!

Sally_A

Laura, I can appreciate how this is worrying you. Is your son sporty? If so, it may be worth "accidentally" stumbling across the sporting diet of his hero on the www.

A pasta salad for lunch (tuna, ham, chicken, egg, cheese for protein) gives more energy than a sandwich, if your son has sports lessons in the afternoon a pasta salad acts as slow release carbs. After sport, believe it or not, a pizza (layered with good stuff) is a good replenisher of nutrients.

Just thinking that a "sporty" lunch may seem cooler than sandwiches, so encourage him to eat, and also give him extra energy and possibly confidence for sport in the afternoon.