This week when I took my six year old to kindergarten, his teacher told me the day before he was very hungry when he came to school. He and ds7 took an especially long time to get dressed and he only had time for a banana or two before he left, so I wasn’t surprised. I pack his lunch box with enough food that he can eat something as soon as he gets to school if he wants to. All the kids eat as soon as they get to school even though the official meal time is at 10 am meal time.
I mentioned that today he’ll be fine since he had a cheese omelet before leaving home. “What, an omelet?” she exclaimed. “Of course he’ll be hungry. I would also be hungry if all I had was an omelet and cheese. You have to give him fruit to fill him up.” (She seems to have missed the detail that the day before he ate fruit and was hungry.)
This same teacher told me a few months ago that he was very hungry when he arrived at school each morning. On that day, I told her he had eaten two apples with peanut butter, two hard boiled eggs and a cup of milk before going to school, literally fifteen minutes before arriving in his classroom and saying he was hungry.
I explained that as is common with foster children, there is an emotional component to his hunger due to growing up without predictability with regards to food, so the hunger is usually not physical. (Dd6’s teachers realized this very quickly before I spoke to them about it.)
After hearing all of the above, she insisted he was hungry because I didn’t give him crackers, because fruit and eggs aren’t filling. I found it ironic when a week later I heard her tell another parent that children need a fruit before going to school so they won’t be hungry. She insisted that she has experience as a parent and she knows this to be a fact. (Her oldest is ten.) I suggested to her that we each know what works best for our children.
Since the twins are one of the first to arrive in their kindergartens, I regularly see children walking to school or to their classrooms eating their breakfasts. I’ve seen this particular teacher’s children eating chocolate bars and wafers, and that’s typical of what I see children eating. Today I saw a child having a bag of chocolate milk, another sucking on a foil bag of fake juice, another with a bag of pretzels. Wafers, tea biscuits and cornflakes in sandwich bags are very common. The twins used to have cookies for breakfast in their last home, and their foster mother was relatively health conscious.
Processed carbohydrates are not foods that will stabilize blood sugar and provide steady energy for the body and brain. Instead, snack foods like these set a child up to have blood sugar highs and lows, with foggy brains, difficulty focusing and behavior issues. There was a study done years ago in which sugar was removed from the diet of prison inmates and they saw an immediate and drastic reduction in fights. Don’t you think that doing the same for school children would result in calmer and happier children?
What do I give our children in the mornings? Until recently, I was giving each child a fruit (usually an apple or banana), sometimes with peanut butter, two or three hard boiled eggs and goat milk. I stopped giving them hard boiled eggs a few weeks ago since the twins only eat the whites.
Interestingly, dd’s teacher told me that lately she’s been extremely fidgety, and suggested I should get her evaluated for attention deficit issues since her inability to sit still will be an issue in first grade. I didn’t think to ask how long they had noticed this increased fidgetiness. I wonder if the lack of protein first thing in the day was a contributing factor to her behavior change to any degree, and am now being more careful that the four younger children all have more protein first thing in the day.
Though we think of fruit as a healthy snack – and it’s better than pop tarts or boxed cereal by far – it still has a good bit of sugar in it. It tastes good in the mouth, but doesn’t have the fat necessary to cause the brain to register satiety and it doesn’t keep their blood sugar levels optimal. It’s important for all children to have stable blood sugar, but particularly those with ADD/ADHD, as it keeps their brains and bodies on a more even keel.
As such I’m experimenting with moving away from fruit in the morning, and am looking to increase the amount of protein I get into them before the school day begins. Since I’m trying to minimize grains, whole grain breakfast bars, muffins, cookies or hot cereals like oatmeal and polenta infrequently make an appearance before school, even though I enjoy making them and the kids of course like eating them!
Here’s some of what I’ve been giving them lately:
Cottage cheese mixed with sour cream – all of the kids like this and it’s really filling so this is great.
Scrambled eggs with butter – sometimes I give them cottage cheese or sour cream on the side
Cheese omelets – I scramble five or six eggs and cook them in butter in a large frying pan. I add shredded cheese on top to half of the pan, then fold it over and slice it into four portions. When they finish, I make a second batch for anyone who wants more.
Spelt pancakes – to boost the protein content, I increased the ratio of eggs from one egg to one cup of flour, to 6 eggs for one cup of flour. They all like this a lot, but since I’m trying to minimize grains it’s not something I’m going to make more than once a week.
Almond flour pancakes – like the spelt pancakes above, the kids like this a lot but due to almonds being so high in oxalates which build up in the body and can later cause painful issues (kidney stones are an oxalate overload issue), I try to keep my use of almond flour to a minimum.
Cottage cheese pancakes – cottage cheese combined with egg and some almond flour or gelatin (fish based) – I haven’t yet made them but they’re on my list to try in the next few days.
Butternut squash muffins – this is a GAPS friendly recipe that uses baked and blended butternut squash combined with eggs and peanut butter with a little bit of sweetener. So far they liked the maple syrup version best.
Chocolate pudding – I used this recipe as a base; it uses hard boiled eggs as a base, blended up, which is a simply brilliant concept. I tweaked the recipe, made this the night before, poured it into individual cups and put in in the fridge to set overnight. Since usually the kids have flavored yogurts for Shabbos breakfast (which they call pudding), this was very exciting for them! However, seeing how messy some of them got, I’ve decided to save it for Shabbos mornings to preclude the need to spot clean their clothes or have them get dressed again on a busy school morning.
I’ve just bought a waffle maker with the intention to ‘package’ high protein ingredients in a fun way. That will be something I begin experimenting with next week.
Eventually if I get around to making cheeses with our goat milk (right now cheesemaking is very much on my back burner) I can add that to the morning foods or foods I send to school. Our teen boys make yogurt and soft cheeses, but it’s somewhat irregular.
I’m going to check in a few weeks with dd’s teacher and see if there have been any improvements in her fidgetiness. Ds6 is already the best behaved child in his class of 9, but I have a meeting with his main teacher (not the one mentioned above) next week and will be asking about if they notice any differences in his ability to stay focused.
A noticeable change in behavior would be a nice bonus, but I’ll continue feeding them in this way regardless. When I eat like this – ie high fat/moderate protein – it keeps me satiated for long periods of time.
What do you like to give your children for breakfast? What keeps them full the longest?
Avivah