I’m convinced that my son (9) is a hobbit, That kid would eat 6 meals a day if he could. “Second breakfast” is not an unusual occurrence on weekends. In spite of this, he’s not overweight and actually very wiry and getting fairly muscular for his age.
This morning’s menu: 10 silver dollar pancakes (maybe 3 inches across, each). Two fried eggs, whites only (kid can’t take a yolk). This looks like it’d be a pretty good breakfast for me, let alone a kid his size.
What do your kids eat in the morning? Are they also Hobbits with hollow legs?
Typical breakfast for my kids is protein, carb and fruit juice. This varies from day to day, for example one day it might be country ham steak, eggs and biscuits, but the next it may be sausage links and pancakes. As for the amount they eat, well, for the most part, they both eat the label-indicated serving size (1 egg, 3 oz ham, 1 biscuit) – with the occasional “I’m not very hungry” or “may I have more?” My son, this morning, opted for 2 orange rolls instead of just one, while my daughter left a few bites of hers untouched.
My brother was like your son, growing up. I kid you not, I once watched him eat an entire 15lb roast turkey by himself, with all the trimmings (potatoes, stuffing, corn, etc) and then go for dessert. I doubt he has weighed over 150 his whole life (he’s maybe 5’10").
Boys can be like that – my 8 yo (not overweight by any stretch of the imagination) can put away an entire box of beef strogonoff hamburger helper on occasion.
Mine’s a little over three feet and weighs around 30 pounds. A typical breakfast is an egg and a half, a strawberry and maybe some toast and milk. Well, the breakfast he has at home anyway. He has another at daycare, frequently requesting seconds. Everyone I work with thinks I’m nuts for forcing my family to sit down to a hot breakfast every morning, but my son just doesn’t work without it. I think it’s genetic because I can’t stay awake unless I eat in the morning, either.
I’m so glad you said that. Sunday night my 7 yo ate about 3/4 of the entire thing (beef strogonoff HH). I’ve seen him eat at least half a normal size pizza, or for breakfast eat half a dozen eggs with bacon. Then he won’t eat for a while. Last night he looked at me and said “Sometimes I eat like a bird and sometimes I eat like an elephant.” This was a meal where he only ate a small bowl of soup and a small portion of noodles from a Japanese restaurant.
He’s not overweight and he’s active, but I have noticed a little bit of a belly on him the last couple months. I’m guessing he’s bulking up for a growth spurt soon. I figure if I can avoid his eating marathons (and that’s what they are, they are defintiely not meals) to one or two of the less healthy foods (like the aforementioned pizza) and let him continue is house-grazing on apples and yogurt and oranges and the like then I just let him go.
This morning each kid had a hard-cooked fried egg with a slice of American cheese on a whole-wheat bun. Often that egg is rolled in a tortilla or between bagel halves. My youngest likes mayo on his, the older two often opt for a smear of ranch dressing.
Glass of juice and an orange.
I had the same without the orange (didn’t have enough).
My kids are 6, 8, & 11 but sized like 7, 10, & 13 (they’re all big for their age).
Weekend breakfasts are bigger, often pancakes and sometimes breakfast meat. Sometimes we have fruit smoothies with breakfast.
For a weekend Fun with Dad breakfast, my 10 year old son and 7 year old daughter can typically eat:
two eggs - often in a breakfast sandwich on a kaiser roll and occasionally with a few strips of bacon on it
a banana or pear
a few pancakes - maybe 4 that are 4" - 5" across
And they are hungry in a hour to 90 minutes - seriously. Neither is even remotely fat - both are going to be very tall stringbeans throughout adolescence and onto their early 30’s if my wife and I are any indication…
It boggles my mind how much they can eat and eat and eat. But I know I was the same way in my day…
My slender 12 year old daughter can (and usually does) polish off a twelve ounce package of health food store chicken and sage sausage. One of the wiry five year olds can eat three homemade barley waffles (about 8 inches across). The other five year old will eat a three egg omelet, preferably at about 11am.
Mine usually eat 2 or 3 bowls of cereal on weekday mornings. One bowl of oatmeal and one or two bowls of Cheerios or cornflakes. My almost 9-year-old boy is the big eater, too, although his 11-year-old sister can put it away sometimes, as well. So far they are still mainly growing vertically.
Sometimes they’ll ask for eggs or pancakes on week-ends and trips to grandma and grandpa’s are usually occasions for bacon or sausage.
My 8 year old eats 2 packets of instant oatmeal a day, with a glass of milk, apple, and if he has enough time, toast. He’s tall and wirey and not a bit of fat on him. When he’s especially hungry, as of lately, he grabs a boiled egg on the way out the door.
My 6 year old really isn’t a morning person. He hates to eat before school and really doesn’t get hungry until 10ish. I try to get him to eat a little something on school days - which amounts to a couple of slices of apple, and if I’m lucky, half a bagel. Normally he’ll protest his stomach hurts to keep from eating anything. He gets packed a big lunch because he’s usually starving by then. He’s been known to eat a packed lunch and then buy a lunch.
On weekends, they are all clamoring for the bacon, pancakes, waffles, omelets with meats, veggies & cheese. That’s when my 6 year old develops the hollow leg. He would eat a 4 egg omelet if I let him. He gets disgruntled when I split the omelet between him and his brother. I’ve introduced the skillet type meal, but he wants nothing to do with the hashbrowns.
The 17 year old? So long as it doesn’t have tomatos in it, it’s gone. He’s been known to have beef & broccoli for breakfast. The upside is, I rarely have leftovers during the week. The downside is Saturday’s Fridge Pot Luck is no more.
My 8YO mudgirl, on school mornings, will eat two waffles (the frozen whole-wheat kind) with butter and syrup and a piece of fruit, or a bowl of cold cereal with some low-fat milk, or some leftovers from the previous night’s dinner.
She actually is overweight. I do understand genetics play a part (I was obese most of my life), but it drives me nuts when the docs say “use whole wheat grains, skim dairy products, and make sure she gets plenty of exercise”. When I tell them I do all of that, plus she roller skates, skate boards, rides her bicycle and loves to swim and run, they look dubious. :rolleyes: )
My 5 year old will eat half a nutri-grain cereal bar, or about a half a bagel. I can’t get her interested in breakfast at 7am, so I pack her a lot of lunch and she probably eats half of it at the 10am snack. On the weekends I often cook eggs or biscuits or pancakes at about 10am and she eats plenty, sometimes as much as 2 eggs with 2 pieces of toast, which is what I eat.
Boys, 8 & 6. Both had a scrambled egg with a glass of milk and a french toast waffle (those god-awful Eggo things), plus the 6 year old had 2 slices of bacon.
My kids could eat all damned day. Second breakfast is almost as popular as second dessert around here… plus the 6 year old has decided he has multiple stomaches, like a cow. Halfway through dinner, he will inform me that his dinner tummy is now closed, and his dessert tummy is now open! And the snack tummy is open 24 hours a day!
I guess I’m blessed because my boy (see OP) actually likes things like broccoli and some other good-for-you foods. I’ve even asked him at restaurants if he’d get broccoli with his burger instead of fries, and he complies affably, no complaints – broccoli is every bit as good to him as fries. There’s other things like this I point him at at home, e.g. yogurt instead of (or at least in addition to) bacon, that sort of thing. Thank Og for his flexible diet, I hope to have him avoid heart disease at least into his 20’s, then he’s on his own.
ETA: on the other hand, I recall him eating half of a family size pizza when he was five (!).
The Princess doesn’t like eggs or cereal with milk - she prefers dry cereal. She’ll eat oatmeal if she has to, but she doesn’t like it much. Most weekday mornings she has dry cereal or buttered toast with juice or milk. Occasionally we’ll stop at the donut shop on the way to school, but this is rare. On weekends I make her pancakes, and sausage or bacon if we have it.
Nobody in this house is in any mood to cook breakfast on weekday mornings, so it’s self-service.
The 8 year old has a fairly large bowl of cereal, usually half Cheerios and half Weetos or whatever other chocolate-flavored cereal we have in the house. He uses a lot of milk on the cereal and drinks it all, so he doesn’t feel the need for anything else to drink.
The 14 year old is not, at the moment, a breakfast person. Sometimes he’ll have a slice of toast with just butter, sometimes a slice of untoasted bread with chocolate spread. He usually drinks some water, maybe milk once or twice a week. His appetite basically doesn’t start until early afternoon, so lunch is also pretty light but he makes up for lost time starting with his afterschool snack!
Our 16 month old will eat almost anything, preferably whatever we’re eating. During the week I’ll give her a container of the baby yogurt or banana for breakfast. Although I think I need to layoff the bananas for a bit, one a day for a week is a bit much for those on the receiving end I also like to break an egg, and add a little bit of cheese or some other veggie (mushroom, spinach) and then nuke it all in the microwave for about 45s-1min. She’ll gobble that down too.
We go to IHOP on occasion and we were in the habit of bringing food along for her, well at some point she figured out that at IHOP she gets the yummy pieces of pancake (sans syrup at this point) that she wouldn’t eat what we’d bring for her! So now we just share a bit more of what we’re eating.
