Navigating School Lunch

Starting school with UCD can be overwhelming for parents and kids. Working with the school and a dietitian helps ensure a safe, inclusive lunch experience that makes children feel like part of the group.

When a parent comes to us, when a child is starting to go to school, it's always very scary because for the first time your child will be away from you.

And parents come to us often asking how do I communicate with my child's school?

We always recommend having a meeting with the school cafeteria person.

The school nurse is always a good help.

We offer help to the parent to communicate with school as well.

The dietitian can write letters to the school explaining.

We can have conference calls and explain there's a lot of pressure for kids in school to beat the cool kid to sit on the table and have the cool lunch bag and who has the most special lunch.

And so kids with UCD can feel a little different if they always have a lunch that it's either always the same thing or very different than the other kids.

They might feel left aside or feel why am I different than my friends.

So it's very important to try as much as possible to make the child feel part of his friend.

A lot of times bringing the school menu back to the dietitian in the office is very helpful.

We will review it together and we will cross off foods that are not appropriate to a UCD diet, any meats or any foods that are higher in protein and we would write down options of lower ones that are similar as possible to the foods that's already on the menu.

So we try to keep it everything very similar so the child doesn't think that he or her is different.

So we try to keep it simple and makes them feel part of the whole group of kids.