Breakfast

[williams2008]

What is the purpose of serving breakfast if the kids don't eat it??:confused: It's not just breakfast either, I am constantly throwing food in the trash because the kids will not eat. I only have 2 out of 6 kids that will actually eat whatever I serve and will eat seconds if allowed too.

With the parents prying chips, donuts, candy and what have you out of the kids hands at drop-off, I wanna just stop serving breaskfast all together!

[Blackcat31]

I don't serve breakfast here. ALL children are required to have already ate before drop off.

At 9:00, we do a large snack. The components meet the food program guidelines for breakfast.

I call it breakfast for the food program and snack for the parents.

Alot of kids aren't even awake enough to eat when they first wake up or upon arrival so we wait til 9:00.

[williams2008]

That's what I was thinking of doing serving a snack instead! Thanks, your input is always helpful!!

[blandino]

I actually really like that idea. We serve breakfast, at 8:00, and most of y kids do eat it. But a lot of them also Eat at home/in the car. So they are getting two breakfasts, which I think is a little confusing to them (encourages picking at both, and they know they won't be hungry because). And then we he the kids who get up at 6, and parents don't feed, so they are starving and crabby by 8. So maybe then parents would feed them at home, if they knew we didn't feed "breakfast".

Blackcat, did you always do it this way ? Or did you have to switch ? I wonder how parents would take it if I went from serving breakfast to not.

[williams2008]

I actually really like that idea. We serve breakfast, at 8:00, and most of y kids do eat it. But a lot of them also Eat at home/in the car. So they are getting two breakfasts, which I think is a little confusing to them (encourages picking at both, and they know they won't be hungry because). And then we he the kids who get up at 6, and parents don't feed, so they are starving and crabby by 8. So maybe then parents would feed them at home, if they knew we didn't feed "breakfast".

Blackcat, did you always do it this way ? Or did you have to switch ? I wonder how parents would take it if I went from serving breakfast to not.

I wonder how parents would take this too. I only have 2 kids that come at 6, they're twins and their parents say they get up around 4:30 every morning so they may already be feeding them something.

[Crystal]

What is the purpose of serving breakfast if the kids don't eat it??:confused: It's not just breakfast either, I am constantly throwing food in the trash because the kids will not eat. I only have 2 out of 6 kids that will actually eat whatever I serve and will eat seconds if allowed too.

With the parents prying chips, donuts, candy and what have you out of the kids hands at drop-off, I wanna just stop serving breaskfast all together!

Don't ya know you are only supposed to serve Cheetos and Pepsi to children? That is ALL they will eat, after all.

[Blackcat31]

Blackcat, did you always do it this way ? Or did you have to switch ? I wonder how parents would take it if I went from serving breakfast to not.

No, I used to serve breakfast but had several issue with it.

Kids ate granola bars or something quick in the car so they either didn't want to eat, ate twice or said they wanted to eat and then wasted the food.

Plus with ALL my kids (10-12) being dropped off between 7:15-8:30, it was chaotic. Some kids who arrived early wanted breakfast and then wanted to eat again when the later group of kids arrived.

I also had a hard time with the constant interuptions since we try to eat family style so I was constantly having to get up/stop cooking/serving etc to greet new arrivals. It was just too much.

I actually started using the NO-breakfast rule because another provider did it as a way for parents to get some face time with their child in the morning as well as being able to assess their child's overall health and mood for the day if they ate breakfast at home with them rather than pulling them out of bed 5 minutes before they left, feeding htem donuts in the car and then dropping htem off at daycare without so much as a minute of quality time with their child.

I wrote up a notice letting parents know how important breakfast was, as well as that face to face time along with the health and attitude check importance and basically said that I would be serving snack at 9:00 a.m. and discontinuing breakfast altogether.

Almost ALL my parents completely understood and agreed with me. Whether they really do, I don't know...but I did let them know that I WILL know if their child ate or not and if I felt that they were not feeind their child, I would call them out on it. I am a VERY upfront person about what expectations I have for parents.

The only parent that gave me grief is one parent I have trouble with about everything.....she questions me about everything!! What I did was simply give her two options..... Either feed your child or I will raise the rates to cover the costs.

She choose to feed her child.

Hope that helps

[allsmiles]

we do not serve breakfast either..
we have morning snack, lunch and afternoon snack..

same reasons as mentioned.. i WANTED to offer breakfast but my toddlers dont come till 830 (end of breakfast) and wouldnt be hungry anyway.. I have infants that come earlier but are on bottles of course..
so it just evolved that we now dont even offer breakfast unless a parent maybe specifically asks for it because they got up earlier than usual or didnt eat that day.. and we always have cereal and fruit on hand but nothing special..

[williams2008]

Don't ya know you are only supposed to serve Cheetos and Pepsi to children? That is ALL they will eat, after all.

LOL!!! One of mine came in eating Funyuns today and skins on yesterday, now wasn't that a healthy breakfast!?!?!?

[blandino]

LOL!!! One of mine came in eating Funyuns today and skins on yesterday, now wasn't that a healthy breakfast!?!?!?

A few years ago, I had a child who would habitually come in eating zebra cakes. One of my favorites was a child who came in with orange fingers and when I asked what it was - she said "Cheeto dust".

[MNMum]

I was considering this awhile back, then changed my mind. But this week none of my 1-2 yo has been eating their breakfast (7:45-8:15). Then they are all crabby and hungry by 10. I am not desiring making snack a normal thing, so I am also thinking about changing breakfast time to 9.