Lunch? Who needs lunch, anyway?

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Eldest is driving us a bit nuts.

He is not eating his lunch at school, which tends to have a very negative impact on his behavior -- he acts out a LOT more if he doesn't eat. He's a very picky eater, with a limited palate, and I've been making a point of asking him what he wants to have. Which is, 90% of the time, a PB&J sandwich. Right now it's PB&J + Nutella, but god only knows how long THAT will last -- he wanted ham, turkey, and cheese last week, but after two days he decided he didn't like that any more.

I'm doing everything I can to accommodate his quirks.

We can't use a box with a pink lid -- that will make people think that he's a girl, and make fun of him (Gotta love the casual sexism of 7 year old boys....).

I can't make his sandwich the night before. It's not fresh enough that way.

It has to be packed so that nothing else touches it.

A lot of the time, he says that he was too busy to eat...although he can never explain what he was do busy doing.

Today, it was "too messy", and looked "gross", so he didn't want it. Given the choice of either eating when he got home or not being allowed to go on the computer, though, he gobbled it right down with only minimal whining.

I'll pack things differently tomorrow, see if that helps, but I'm at my wit's end here. Any ideas?

lol i am having the same struggles right now with our 5 yo autie. he hasnt been eating lunch since last friday, and his behavior is way off. his school is offering him warm lunch (warm, not hot, i was sharply corrected, as he doesnt eat hot things because they burn his mouth!) and he is eating a tiny bit of that, but then he eats none of his cold lunch.

i make sure everything is packaged separately. snack size ziploc bags are great for this, and no pink colors on them =)
i make sure there is a healthy dessert, and he eats it first because otherwise he may run out of time. tuesday last week was traumatic because he didnt get to finish his dessert, and of course it was all my fault, because i gave him too much food

its a fight to get him to tell me what kind of sandwich he wants, but if i dont ask, i run the risk of him "not wanting that". i plan to make a lunch pecs system, pictures on the fridge of different sandwiches and sides that he can choose from in the morning when he gets up so i know what to put in his lunch box.

you could try to involve him more in the packing of the lunch, or make things more entertaining. they have those dinosaur shaped sandwich cutters at walmart that kids often like. i ordered a "packit" frozen lunch box because my son has been telling me for months i need to get those, and i hope his obsession will make him more excited to eat out of it.

try non-traditional foods for the lunch box. heres a great idea for lunch box hot dogs: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/lunch-box- ... etail.aspx
cheese and crackers work well if your child likes those, shelf stable versions or small packages of things like pepperoni, tuna fish, etc.

oh the hoops we will jump through just to get a sandwich down their gullets.

Last edited by azurecrayon on 21 Sep 2011, 5:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Our preschool was very environmentally concious so they requested that we pack lunches using re-useable containers as much as possible. This forced me to purchase sandwich sized plastic containers (and many other small containers), we even found some with Transformers on the lid which increased the attraction factor considerably. Maybe a plaastic container would help keep the sandwich from "touching anything else". Don't know if hard boiled eggs are on your picky eater's list of OK things, thankfully they are on mine. If so that is an awesome way to get a good dose of protein in. Also, mine would rarely eat a whole string cheese stick but if I cut it into rounds and put it in a container with pepperoni slices, then he would usually eat both. When mine was in a ham and cheese mode (like you, we go back and forth with PB&J and meat & cheese) I would sometimes skip the bread and just send the meat and cheese rolled up together.
Would peanut butter and honey be a tempting change?
Will yours eat something hot from a thermos? Leftover spaghetti is a regular for us. I honestly thought for a while that mine would have starved to death without spaghetti.

About eating at school, can you ask his teacher for help? I imagine the teacher and the classroom get affected by his mood swings as a result of his not eating, so maybe it would help as an incentive for making her want to cooperate. When my daughter was in 1st grade her teacher helped. She would constantly check and give her extra time of needed.

The plastic containers is a good idea to keep the sandwiches in good shape and not touching anyting else.

What I do with my picky eater is sending her only food I know she will eat. She does not have lunch at school. She has a heavy snack, and she eats lunch at home when she is back from school. I send her mini pancakes, bagels, tortillas filled with cheese, crepes filled with cheese and ham, banana muffins, cheese sandwiches, pb&j sandwiches. If I want to try something new I will try it at home first. If the new meal works at home, then I try including it in the lunch box. I stopped asking her what she wanted because she was less flexible when she new she had the option.

You can also try little rewards if he eats all the food you sent. I used that trick with my little girl. She was allowed to eat some dessert after lunch, like chocolate or ice cream, if she fiished all her snack at school.

I think there is a lot of truth to there just not being enough time to eat. Lunch at school is chaotic and fast, by the time you are settled you have to move on, and neither of my kids (now 14 and 10) end up eating very much. This isn't unique to my kids and it hasn't changed much over the years; some minor ups and downs but most of the food has always come back. So, I make sure they get a good breakfast, pack things that won't spoil, and have a big pile of fresh fruit available when they get home.

It does make for a crappy afternoon but unless the schools want to slow down their system, there doesn't seem to be much to be done. My kids are slow with food just like they are with everything else, and the schedule just doesn't fit them.

Still, if you can spend a few lunch times observing and talking to teachers or supervising adults, you might be able to get some improvements. Worth a try. Just because I've given up doesn't mean you have to

You might try packing his meals in a bento-bako. Bento box. Or a tiffin tin. Either will provide compartments so the food doesn't touch, and will prevent it getting squished. If you chose a bento-bako with lots of compartments or a tall but small-diameter tiffin, then you can try small amounts of several different foods. If there's enough different things that he likes, that might help, because if he's not in the mood for one thing, he might at least eat one of the others. A lot of people have told me that little kids will eat more if it's a few bites of this and a few of that.

Tiffins are really nice, anyway.

You are totally right. The time to eat is very limited (15 minutes in my daughter's school). I also stopped trying to send "healthy food" at school because fruits and veggies tend to spoil, and then my kid will just do not eat it. Now I only send things I know she will eat, and give her fruit and veggies when she returns from school. I also make sure she has a good breakfast before going out, but she is not a regular Aspie, she actually eats a lot and needs to eat at regular times, so she cannot wait for food 'til back from school (she leaves the house at 7 am and returns home at 3 pm, but a heavy snack helps a lot. I send her 2 snacks + water (she does not like ANY beverages) + something to eat at the bus (salt crackers, energy bars {she LOVES the Go Lean chocolate peanut bars}, croissants, etc.)

The boxes we use actually are Bento boxes, of a cheap sort -- this doesn't always meet his standards, though, if the sandwiches get jumbled about.

As it turns out, though? This has nothing to do with it.

He confessed the truth this morning. Something that he's been doing a lot recently...last week he admitted (without prompting, although I had suspected the truth) that his recent drive to "go to bed by myself" was actually so that he could stay up and read.

So here's the real TRUTH: lunch tables get to go to out to recess when everyone sitting at them is done eating. It's purely a matter of logistics, I think -- like most public schools, they're understaffed. But that means that the quicker you eat, the quicker your table gets to go out. By not eating at all, he's not slowing his table down.

I *think* that this is his logic, at least -- the explanation was mumbled, and rambly. But unprompted, which is the bit that I prefer to focus on.

Why he can't eat while everyone ELSE is eating their lunch -- he's the only one who skips food entirely, it seems -- I dunno. His explanation for *that* made no sense at all.

I stopped by the office; the principal was out. But I'll check in tomorrow, see what we can work out. I can understand the logic of the cafeteria ladies -- lots of kids to control, not enough people to do it with -- but encouraging the kids to bolt their lunches isn't good either. If there's an alternative, though, I'm not sure what it will be.

It's worth having the conversation, though. And talking to his teacher, it turns his behavior has actually been excellent thus far, so maybe I don't even need to worry.

I hate that concept of letting kids go out to recess when they are done eating. That's what happens at our school too with some of the grade levels but on an individual basis. It's even worse that they put that pressure on kids that the WHOLE TABLE must wait for everyone to be done. It is mind boggling to me that the teachers and adminstrators cannot for one second put themselves in a young child's shoes and just imagine what it would feel like if you were really hungry but had to choose between eating all of your lunch or suffering ridicule from all the kids sitting at your table. What would you do? It cannot possibly just us parents of ASD kids that find this concept totally counter-productive. Thankfully for my ASD DS, they have recess first then go to lunch then back to the classroom so he isn't dealing with that yet. My older son though has it the other way around. I really hate it. We never got to do this when I was in grade school.

Sorry for the rant, OP can you ask the teachers if whatever table your son is sitting at could get special dispensation to go out whether he is finished or not? Then at least he wouldn't feel that pressure that he is keeping everyone else from going out and having fun.

I know this is a little too much, but maybe you could consider getting him his own lunch table, that way he can eat there, take as long as he wants, and not slowing anybody out. We had a problem with the seats my Aspie daughter used at school. We talked to the teacher and to the principal and bought her her own desk and seat. She was thrilled! She loved the fact that that was HER desk and HER seat. Only for her. It was a little expensive, but it was totally worth it! And now she is in a different school and the desk and seat are at home, in her room.

Probably because eating while monitoring other people's eating to be sure he's not the last one finished is a stressful and somewhat difficult multi-tasking effort.

This lunch-to-recess transition system strikes me as quite brutal.

It seems clear that the school, to prevent children from bolting their food, should at the least not let anyone out until the first 20 or so minutes of lunchtime have passed. If they did that, you could simply give him a timer. Or have him rely on a timer that the school uses.

If they won't do this, and he's old enough to handle the project, he could time his classmates for a few days, determine the average, and set his timer to a minute less. Giving him, no doubt, a terribly curtailed amount of time to eat, but at least some time.

DS had huge sensory issues at lunch - lunchrooms are typically very noisy places, plus there's all kinds of people bumping into you and a HUGE amount of social communication going on - it's tailor-made for stressing out kids on the spectrum.

The school had him eat with the social worker a couple of times a week - it was all they were able to do - but it helped. It can't hurt to ask the school what kinds of accommodations they can make; obviously the not-eating thing is not good for anybody. Maybe eating at the nurse's office? Or with the principal?

As for the pickiness, while I'm not inside your son's head, I bet it is exacerbated by his need to give you an explanation of why he didn't eat. DS often throws out random explanations when he can't quite put his finger on what's upsetting him, and it's usually the first concrete thing he comes in contact with - so I could see where "I'm stressed and overloaded" could become "I don't LIKE peanut butter."

He may even be building negative associations with foods he likes, as he might be hoping they will solve the problem.

^^This!^^ (bolded part). Looks like we're on the same page here.

I had the exact same problem, only it was in camp, and I was older, 10 to 13. (In school, I just ate the cafeteria lunch, since my family was poor, and I was eligible for free or reduced-price meals.) The problem was that my parents were very focused on giving me healthy lunches, and there's one thing 10-to-13-year-olds believe about healthy lunches: they're uncool! So, kids would laugh at me when they saw me eating my lunch. For example, I had sandwiches with rotisserie chicken breast on whole wheat, while they had Lunchables.

So, to spare myself the embarrassment, I'd keep my lunch hidden and only drink the juice. One or two kids would be nice enough to give me a piece of string cheese or a cookie, but other times, I just went hungry. I didn't care very much, because honestly, I had a bit of weight problem at that age, so skipping a meal only did me some good. Sometimes when I had extra cash in my pocket, I'd use a vending machine, but it wasn't often.

But when I parents found out that I wasn't eating my lunches, they were angry! They yelled at me for 45 minutes about how it's bad to skip meals and how I'm not supposed to be embarrassed to eat healthy. I found a solution: I'd wait until all counselors weren't looking, so they wouldn't ask questions, then dump my lunch in the trash. At that age, I knew better than to waste food, but it was either wasting food or getting in trouble.

Long story short, I fully understand the kid here. He's probably more worried about getting in trouble for not eating lunch than about being hungry. But since he's younger and less jaded than I was, he hasn't learned to "solve" the problem by dumping his lunch in the trash. So when he learns to do that, it'll be a lot harder to control whether or not he ate lunch.

I wasn't expecting the principal to be able to do much, but I was really amazed by how well things went.

For one thing, he already knew Eldest. Who apparently comes over to tell him "important" things every time he sees the principal.

But he was surprised by the lunchtime arrangment, and will make sure that kids get to go individually. And that Eldest can't go out unless he finished at least half his sandwich -- "But we're not going to force him to eat something he doesn't like," which is what I wanted to hear. He'll also talk directly to Eldest AND make sure he gets a special sticker each time he eats his lunch.

Right there, that's huge.

It's so nice to be listened to, AND to talk to someone who actually understands the way Eldest works.

Oh. This is SO nice. Principal sounds like a nice person, very professional and willing to help. It is SO GREAT when we find these kind of schools were administrative and teachers really want to help your child.

My daughter is always also "known" by teachers and principals, too. She is very quite but she has this ability to make herself noticed in a crowded school. Well, I imagine the fact that she is so beautiful, intelligent, well mannered, and good student helps.

Love!

Rolzup, in situations where my son is doing something difficult for him, we always preface any reward system with "I know this is really difficult for you because [if you even know why, but I've found it's really, really helpful to label the stressors] and because we know this, we're going to give you [reward.] If the principal can back you up on this, it would be great - but just you saying it might help.

Sometimes DS overcomes whatever the hurdle is, and then comes back and says [whatever it is] really isn't that hard. I don't need [reward] (of course, this only works with low-grade rewards - DS isn't giving up any extra screen time he earns for love or money )