Here’s Why I Don’t Feed My Kids Breakfast

Foster Responsibility in Kids 

Before you report me to the authorities, hear me out. Let’s get one thing straight. My kids eat breakfast. I just don’t serve it to them. This approach emerged gradually over time, and it works for our family for a variety of reasons. In fact, we love it so much, we’d recommend you try it, if not every day, then at least once a week.

I am not a morning person. I’ve spent more than twelve years adjusting my natural sleep schedule to accommodate parenthood. So if there’s anything I can do to help myself, it helps everyone in the family.

My kids are old enough to help themselves. They learn resourcefulness and resilience and how to listen to their own bodies. All these lessons will last a lifetime. If they wake up but aren’t hungry, they can wait to eat. If they need more food, they know and can have something extra (second breakfast is not unusual around here) or a bigger portion, without me needing to guess.

How does this work? My kids get up on their own. One wakes up more than an hour before everyone else in the house, including the dog. Instead of working against that, we let him get up on his own. Since he’s hungry, he eats. Usually it’s something simple, like cereal or yogurt, that requires zero cooking and minimal effort. When the other kids got old enough to wake up without us, they watched their brother getting his own food and started doing the same thing.

We have a shelf in the pantry dedicated to breakfast and snack items. We keep it low so that the kids had no trouble reaching it even at young age. They know they can choose anything from the shelf to eat. And our clear containers for cereal make it super simple to tell when items run low. 

We still check in with the kids every morning to make sure they had breakfast. (Sometimes they have so much fun playing or talking, they can forget to eat.) Often, we still end up fixing something for at least one child, and even all three on occasion. Essentially, that first meal ends up being a snack that they choose and prepare for themselves from multiple healthy options. Then we have an actual meal later in the morning.

This arrangement benefits everyone in the house. We all get the sleep and the food we need to start the day, which improves everyone’s mood. And the kids get practice with making healthy choices and simple food prep. Now if only I could get them to make dinner.