Not Eating

A few days after starting the new school I received a panicked phone call from Samuel's teacher.  My heart of course almost stopped when I answered the phone and she told me who she was.  Then she said that Samuel didn't eat lunch and now that school is over she is worried about him because he must be so hungry.  She offered him some goldfish crackers and he is scarfing them down!  I took off work to go get him - I wasn't worried but I also didn't want the teacher to think I was a horrible mother because I was just going to let him wait until David normally would pick him up.
When I arrived at the school Samuel was happily sitting with his friends in the aftercare program.  He was eating his snack and laughing so I was relieved.  As we were walking out I asked him why he didn't get a lunch.  He said he just wasn't hungry.  I asked why he wasn't hungry and he responded, "I only want to eat every once in a while."

Unfortunately the cute little anecdote doesn't end there.  I told Samuel that even if he isn't hungry he needs to go ahead and buy the lunch.  He was concerned that this would be wasteful but I told him that he needs to try to eat something otherwise the teacher worries. 
I explained to the teacher that sometimes Samuel just isn't hungry and that even at home sometimes he just doesn't want to eat.  He is not starved - he is growing and gaining the appropriate amout of weight.  Sometimes he eats everything and sometimes nothing.

Well, one week after the first incident of him not buying/eating lunch, I get a phone message from the school that Samuel didn't eat even one bite of his lunch and that he was sitting with his lunch in the nurses office because they are worried about him.  Upon receiving this message (an hour after the message was left because I was in a meeting) I called the nurse.  Samuel had been allowed to return to class.  The teacher had told them to not worry about it that I said sometimes he just chooses not to eat.  Now, however, Samuel knows that the school has a nurses office....a place he will choose to visit whenever he feels he should get some medical advice (see blog post titled School Nurse).

New rule for lunch:  Samuel gets to choose whether he will eat school lunch or pack his lunch.  However, when lunch time comes, if he is not hungry, he at least needs to bite parts of his lunch so that the cute little lunch ladies will not worry about him and send him to the nurses office.