not eating lunch at school

[smartyjones]

i've seen mention of kids who don't eat their lunch at school.

 

my son (5, kindergarten) is in a mixed-age class where the "morning children" go home at 11:30 and the "full days" stay the day. based on age, he should have moved up to full day last Jan '09 but that was not possible. since dec, we've been working on slowly adding time to his day. he's still not eating his lunch at school. i don't believe there's a reason other than that it's too "different" from what he used to do. in general, this seems to be true for him rather than related to other thoughts. it's just a mountain he can't get over.

 

he used to sit with the kids but not eat. he does tend to balk at certain group activites at school - i'm not sure if it's too much sensory or not clear expectations or something. they then gave him the choice to eat or to read. he happily picked reading and talks about that he reads at lunchtime with enthusiasm.

 

with other things, he has responded well to systematic desensitization like you'd do for a phobia but i'm not there to do it with him, i think it would be detrimental for me to go into the class to do it, the teacher can't put the focus on him with all the other kids at a rather hectic time.

 

he has progressed from first, needing to eat with me at home, to now eating in the car or eating by himself when he comes home.

 

he doesn't seem outrageously hungry and i don't believe his behavior is different in the afternoon indicating he needs food. i just think it would be better to not go so long without eating and once he got over the hump, he'd enjoy eating with the kids.

 

can those that have had the lunch issue share your stories and thoughts? thanks.

[thereishope]

My son had eating issues. Amongst them was not eating at school. Luckily, it was an odd schedule and he came home shortly afterwards, so even if he did not eat it wasn't a big deal.

 

I don't really know why he didn't eat there. If he was fearful of contamination at the school, if he didn't want others seeing him eat...he never told us. But, every day I made his lunch and he brought it to school just in case it was going to be the day that he'd change and start eating again. I made sure it was the same thing every day to avoid changes. He'd bring his lunch with him but never ate.Then out of no where he'd start to eat a few bites. I think it started with one thing...he'd eat the applesauce. The he graduated back to eating everything normal. He didn't do well with a lot of praises so (he hated being complimented when he was in exacerbation) so we never made a big deal out of it when he did eat. Never asked him, just looked in the box to see. We told teh teacher that it was okay if he didn't eat.

 

Some of my suggestions ( and you may have done them already) would be to try to get him involved in making the meal. There were times my son only ate what he made so he made his own lunch. Also, let him know ahead of time what is in his lunch so he doesn't feel caught off guard. Let him know (without making a big deal out of it) that he doesn't need to eat everything in the tote.

Edited April 6, 2010 by Vickie