Teachers' Experience and Perspectives of Traditional Breakfast and Breakfast in the Classroom.

OBJECTIVE: To understand teachers' perceptions about Breakfast in the Classroom and traditional breakfast. DESIGN: An electronic survey was sent to teachers across the state of Utah. Teachers responded to an open-ended question exploring what they liked and/or disliked about Breakfast in the Classroom and traditional breakfast. SETTING: Schools across the state of Utah. PARTICIPANTS: Kindergarten through grade 12 teachers who were members of the Utah Education Association. PHENOMENON OF INTEREST: Teachers' opinions regarding Breakfast in the Classroom and traditional school breakfast ANALYSIS: Researchers independently coded all responses and then grouped codes into themes. Themes were reviewed recursively over time. RESULTS: The 3 overarching themes were food and nutrition, administration of school breakfast, and student outcomes. Aspects most commonly disliked were the nutrition or quality of food, the mess created, the time required, coordination and logistical issues, behavioral issues, and waste. Aspects most commonly liked were breakfast being available to all students, students being fed or not hungry, coordination and logistics, and student learning and academics. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Teachers liked and disliked aspects of Breakfast in the Classroom and traditional breakfast. Schools could potentially increase efforts to garner support and feedback from teachers to create buy-in and identify best practices. Future research could focus on identifying the effect that the School Breakfast Program model has on teachers' perceptions as well as confirming results with a larger and more diverse population.

Breastfeeding, Parenting, and Infant Attachment Behaviors.

Objectives Infants and toddlers need secure attachments in order to develop the social competence required to successfully navigate later peer and adult relationships. Breastfeeding is a parenting factor that has been associated with child emotional development-specifically the attachment between children and their mothers. Yet, this link may simply be the result of other parenting behaviors that are associated with breastfeeding. Thus, our objective is to examine whether the link between infant attachment behaviors and breastfeeding endures when accounting for a broad array of in-depth measures of parenting. Methods We use the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study of children from 9 months to 2 years of age collected by the National Center for Education Statistics. Using Ordinary Least Squares regression, data analyses examine the association between the Toddler Attachment Sort-45 (TAS-45) measures of toddler-parent attachment (infant attachment security and temperamental dependency) and breastfeeding practices. We also examine individual items of the TAS-45 to isolate specific attachment behaviors that have the strongest associations with breastfeeding. Results We find an enduring link between children who are predominantly breastfed for six or more months and infant attachment security. However, we find no evidence that breastfeeding is linked to a child's temperamental dependency. Of the nine items used to examine infant attachment behaviors, we find that breastfed children are rated as having slightly higher scores on two measures ("warm and cuddly," "cooperative") and lower scores on one measure ("demanding/angry"). Conclusions for Practice Breastfeeding has an important link to the child's use of their caregiver as a secure base for exploration and a place of comfort when distressed (infant attachment security). Yet, breastfeeding does not appear to reduce a child's temperamental dependency or level of clinginess as measured by how demanding, fussy or distressed the child becomes when separated.