Did you ever go to the lunch room?

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I used to take packed lunches to school and I never went to the packed lunch room after the 1st year of secondary school. I was always alone, had nobody to sit with and I was worried that I would just be a sitting target for bullies if I went and sat in the lunch room. I wasn't worried about physical bullying, I went to a Church of England, all girls school where physical violence and aggression didn't really happen. But the verbal/psychological bullying was quite bad there and they could make me feel so bad that it just didn't feel safe for me to go into the lunch room and I would have been so uncomfortable I don't think I would have been able to eat in there. I was never in trouble for not going there, nobody seemed to even notice, or if they did they weren't bothered. I used to spend break times and lunchtimes in the library because it felt like the safest place to be.
I got used to not eating at lunchtime and to hardly eating anything all day. At times I hid in the bathroom and sneaked bites of sandwich in there, horrible and really unhygienic I know, but that is how unsafe I felt at school. More often I just ate my lunch on my way home.

No. At elementary school I was always outside (no library designed to hang out in) and both on highschool and now at the university, I spend the break in the library. The lunch room is noisy and chaotic because it is overfilled with people. I really don't like it there. I bring food from home and eat it in the library too. It's allowed if you show discretion.

I didn't go to the lunch room. I didn't even eat at school. When everyone else went to the lunch room to eat, I went to some quiet place to be alone for a while and do my special interest in peace to build up energy to get through the rest of the day.

I found the lunch room way too overwhelming to go there during the busiest time of the day, lunch. There is no way I could have eaten there. It was too crowded and there was way too much noise, too many bullies and strangers, too strong lights and too many odors and movements. The lunch room was the only place we were allowed to eat, and since it was really unsuitable for me, I simply skipped eating during school hours throughout high school and much of my elementary school.

Until I read this thread I'd forgotten what that was like when i first started school. We had to go to the cafeteria up to and including the 4th grade so there was no choice of going anywhere else. The noise seemed deafening in the first months and I hated the closeness of it.
The food wasn't fit for a starving buzzard and I about spit up just watching other kids eat it.
I eventually got used to the noise and crowd well enough that I could block it out and enjoy the company of others to some degree.
When it got to where we didn't have to go to the cafeteria i didn't go there very much.
To this day I still hate crowded noisy restaurants.

The lunch area was absolute torture for me. Fortunately, I had another option; the gymnasium. All through 9-12, I would go straight to the gym, where there was a few others similar to me. It was against the rules to eat there, so guess what? I didn't eat anything all day at school for all those years. That was fine though, since I did not feel comfortable eating in the presence of others anyhow.

I only went a few times because the people I was with forced me to. I hated it in there. I never realised why at the time. I was scared and overwhelmed, but didn't know anything about sensory overload back then!

There was a river and woodlands close to the school. I usually went to eat lunch there, sitting on the rocks by the river.

Until the 9th grade, I always went home for lunch. In high-school, I either sat in the hallway beside my locker (when I had a girlfriend) and after we broke up, I sat in my business classroom with my business teacher and watched Grey's Anatomy.

In elementary school, I was forced to eat in the cafeteria. It was hell. Some people took great pleasure in making me feel miserable.

In high school, we didn't have a designated lunch area. I hung out in an office with the stoners, even though I wasn't a user. They were the least judgmental group in the school.

At work, I eat lunch in my office, alone, almost every day. Maybe once or twice a year, I eat lunch with someone.

In high school, I was able to bring my own lunch to school, and frankly, with the way kids treated me, I chose to eat alone....when I found places I could eat and not be bothered, I started doing that.

i sat outside, in the same spot, with my aspie friend, every day. didn't know either of us were aspies at the time.

I didnt know lunch rooms existed - maybe they didn't when I was at school. We just had a school meals canteen....that might have worked OK for me in the early days, but later I remember a monitor or prefect snatching my drink before I'd finished it, and stuff like that made me want to get away from it......one teacher threatened me for not eating enough and a prefect tried to instruct me in how to hold my knife and fork "properly." Not surprisingly I stopped going, and spent my lunch money on junk food, cigarettes and pinball instead. I was so bored at the school that I booby-trapped the salt pots by unscrewing the lids.

What I now realise was one of my first unrecognised signs of AS happened in my first year of school. We were supposed to spend lunch hour outside - eating and then playing - but I asked if I could stay inside and read.

The teacher said that was not a good idea. Obviously they wanted me to socialise but I don't remember any follow-up to see if I actually played with anyone.