# Playing Before Eating

An episode of [Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1082244480), 19 Apr 2026, 11 min.

Audio: https://mgln.ai/e/187/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/fa326977-3de5-4283-9b8b-af3500c58607/b69b2795-5503-4de1-ac91-af460017906e/01b3817d-0cfa-4d9d-b604-b41f008d59e8/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=a05f1702-0c0e-4b0f-8014-af460017907c

Could it be that your child’s uneaten lunch isn’t the problem… the schedule is? A simple shift happening in Aussie schools is transforming behaviour, boosting learning, and - finally - getting kids to actually eat their food. This episode unpacks the “play first, eat later” approach - and why it works far better than anything you can pack in a lunchbox. If your child comes home hangry, exhausted, or with a full lunchbox… this might be the missing piece. KEY POINTS • Why kids skip lunch (and it’s not about the food) • The “play first” model changing school behaviour and focus • How movement drives appetite, regulation, and learning • The hidden link between uneaten lunches and afternoon meltdowns • Why the last 10 minutes of playtime often trigger the biggest issues • A simple school-level change with measurable results QUOTE OF THE EPISODE “Calories change kids. Food isn’t just fuel - it’s behaviour, focus, and emotional regulation.” RESOURCES MENTIONED • ABC News article on “play first, eat later” school model • Conversations with teachers and school communities • School P&C (Parents & Citizens) groups as a starting point for change ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS • Start the conversation with your school or P&C about “play first” • Focus less on perfect lunches and more on eating opportunity • Talk with your child about when they feel hungry during the day • Advocate for structural changes - not just lunchbox fixes • Watch for after-school behaviour as a clue to under-fuelling See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:05] Speaker 1: Hello, Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast. What if there
[0:08] Speaker 1: was a way that you could actually make sure that
[0:10] Speaker 1: your kids ate their lunch. What if there was a
[0:12] Speaker 1: way that the calories that our children need so their
[0:14] Speaker 1: brains and bodies work well could actually get inside them
[0:17] Speaker 1: rather than sitting in the lunch box, uneaten and being
[0:20] Speaker 1: brought home at the end of the day so that
[0:22] Speaker 1: you can get cranky about it the next day. Because
[0:23] Speaker 1: food costs a lot and the kids need energy and
[0:25] Speaker 1: they're not getting it. What is going on with kids
[0:27] Speaker 1: and school lunch is today is not your usual Let's
[0:30] Speaker 1: talk to a dietitian about how to get kids to
[0:31] Speaker 1: eat instead. Today's a conversation about structural changes that could
[0:37] Speaker 1: and should very easily happen in a school context to
[0:42] Speaker 1: help kids to grow and thrive, get the calories they need, play, eat, survive, learn, grow,
[0:48] Speaker 1: and so much more. All of that coming up next
[0:51] Speaker 1: on the Happy Families podcast. Stay with us. Hello and
[0:56] Speaker 1: welcome to the Happy Families podcast, where you get real
[0:58] Speaker 1: parenting solutions every single day. This is Australia's most downloaded
[1:01] Speaker 1: parenting podcast. We ad Justin and Kylie Course and the
[1:03] Speaker 1: parents of six kids who let's face it, Kylie brought
[1:06] Speaker 1: home way too much food in their lunch boxes. How
[1:09] Speaker 1: many thousands of dollars worth of food do you think
[1:11] Speaker 1: went to school and came back uneaten and ended up
[1:13] Speaker 1: in the bin over the last however many years we've
[1:16] Speaker 1: been sending kids to school.
[1:17] Speaker 2: I actually don't think most of it came home.
[1:20] Speaker 3: I think it ended up just a school rubbish fits
[1:22] Speaker 3: because they don't want to get in trouble and they
[1:24] Speaker 3: bring it home. Yeah, boy, if we want to give
[1:28] Speaker 3: you some real parenting solutions here, Although this one is
[1:30] Speaker 3: probably a little bit more structural, nevertheless, it's something to
[1:32] Speaker 3: bring up at your school, PNC.
[1:34] Speaker 1: It's something to bring up with your school principle. I
[1:36] Speaker 1: love you for it. School principles love it when you
[1:37] Speaker 1: approach them unsolicited and give them advice. Let's step into
[1:42] Speaker 1: this one. This caught my attention a couple of weeks
[1:46] Speaker 1: ago on an ABC news page from early March. The
[1:52] Speaker 1: ABC report the following When the bell rings for lunch
[1:56] Speaker 1: at the Entrance Public School on the New South Wales
[1:59] Speaker 1: Central Coast, students leave their lunch boxes behind and head outside.
[2:04] Speaker 1: Thirty minutes of structured playtime comes before eating. Teachers engage
[2:09] Speaker 1: with the students in activities like soccer, dance, handballt and climbing.
[2:13] Speaker 1: As a result, students are able to get their energy
[2:15] Speaker 1: out before they're expected to sit still and eat Kylie,
[2:19] Speaker 1: just before I bring you in on this. Principal Dave
[2:21] Speaker 1: Stitt says, this, coming off the playground, you had all
[2:24] Speaker 1: this angst and it was coming into the classroom. Things
[2:27] Speaker 1: are significantly calmer now. It's changed the culture of what
[2:30] Speaker 1: happens in the playground.
[2:33] Speaker 2: I love this. Where was this when all our kids
[2:36] Speaker 2: were in primary school.
[2:38] Speaker 1: This is not a hard structural change, It.
[2:40] Speaker 2: Really isn't, but it makes so much sense.
[2:43] Speaker 1: Oh, I am going to stand, I am going to highlight.
[2:46] Speaker 1: We did talk to teachers about the possibility of this happening,
[2:48] Speaker 1: and it was always just too hard. It was always
[2:50] Speaker 1: too hard.
[2:51] Speaker 2: When we understand transitions, it makes complete sense that our
[2:55] Speaker 2: kids have gone from this unruly space of the playground
[3:00] Speaker 2: and then we're asking them to come back into class, hot,
[3:03] Speaker 2: sweaty and agitated and probably still don't have a lot
[3:08] Speaker 2: of their wiggles out because it's never long enough.
[3:10] Speaker 1: And then they're going to have to learn again right
[3:12] Speaker 1: and they usually haven't eaten enough food, which means that
[3:14] Speaker 1: their brains and bodies are depleted from a calorie point
[3:17] Speaker 1: of view, which just makes the job so much harder.
[3:20] Speaker 2: Well, there's three things. There's the wasted food that so
[3:24] Speaker 2: many families are navigating. But there's also the child that
[3:27] Speaker 2: goes hungry because they just want to play. They're not
[3:31] Speaker 2: motivated to eat, they just want to hang out with
[3:32] Speaker 2: their friends. But then there's the other child who actually
[3:35] Speaker 2: does want to eat their lunch, and then they get
[3:37] Speaker 2: left out because they're not part of it because they're
[3:39] Speaker 2: actually more invested in eating.
[3:42] Speaker 1: So there's a variety of different ways that this can
[3:43] Speaker 1: be approached. We never came up with this exact idea,
[3:46] Speaker 1: but we had multiple conversations with school teachers through the
[3:49] Speaker 1: years where we said, is there any way, any way
[3:52] Speaker 1: at all that the school can implement something where the
[3:55] Speaker 1: school bell rings and the first five minutes, so the
[3:58] Speaker 1: first ten minutes is allocated to eating, and once the
[4:01] Speaker 1: eating time is done, then the kids go and had
[4:03] Speaker 1: their lunch. And it was always it was always too hard.
[4:06] Speaker 1: We would beg teachers to please just check that our
[4:09] Speaker 1: daughter had eating their lunch, and fair enough to teach
[4:11] Speaker 1: as well. They're kind of going, well, we've got some
[4:12] Speaker 1: other stuff to go and do, and we would like
[4:14] Speaker 1: to have our own lunch. And how much do we
[4:17] Speaker 1: have to police in terms of kids developmentally young kids
[4:20] Speaker 1: just don't really do it though, And what they've done
[4:22] Speaker 1: here at the Entrance Public School on the New Southwest
[4:25] Speaker 1: Central Coast is just a gentle tweak on that. Let's
[4:29] Speaker 1: let the bell go and let the kids get outside,
[4:32] Speaker 1: let them go crazy, let them have fun. But then
[4:34] Speaker 1: there's going to be another bell. So we've got ten minutes.
[4:36] Speaker 1: Everyone can sit down, eat, you've had your wiggles, you've
[4:39] Speaker 1: had your fun. We can de escalate, we can regulate.
[4:42] Speaker 1: I just it's fair fantastic.
[4:45] Speaker 2: That's I think you're missing a key point to the
[4:47] Speaker 2: structure that they've got. They're not letting the kids just
[4:50] Speaker 2: go off and play because so often unstructured activity is
[4:55] Speaker 2: where kids really struggle to navigate things. But having adults,
[5:00] Speaker 2: it's not even a supervision thing. The adults are getting
[5:03] Speaker 2: involved in the activities that the kids are participating in,
[5:07] Speaker 2: which helps them navigate their world. Like it it's kind
[5:12] Speaker 2: of feels like school for dummies, Like this is not hard.
[5:17] Speaker 2: It's really not hard.
[5:18] Speaker 1: They've got qualifiable results from this. Let me share a
[5:20] Speaker 1: couple of the results. So the change was introduced in
[5:23] Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. By twenty twenty four, there was a seventy
[5:26] Speaker 1: one percent reduction in behavioral incidents in the playground. It's
[5:29] Speaker 1: a big drop. Additionally, the entrance public school is below
[5:33] Speaker 1: average on the index of community socio educational advantage, which
[5:37] Speaker 1: means basically, there's some socio economic challenges in the community
[5:41] Speaker 1: and therefore the expectations around school and education are different
[5:45] Speaker 1: to higher socioeconomic communities. And what the school principal reported
[5:50] Speaker 1: was that Naplan scores from last year show year three
[5:53] Speaker 1: and year five students performing either above or well above
[5:58] Speaker 1: when compared to students with a similar background. And there's
[6:02] Speaker 1: a whole lot of parents in the article who are saying,
[6:04] Speaker 1: we really like it because the kids are eating the
[6:05] Speaker 1: food that we prepare for them, and in the cost
[6:07] Speaker 1: of living crisis, it makes a difference. So we will
[6:10] Speaker 1: link to that article in the show notes after the
[6:12] Speaker 1: break though, Kylie, we need to talk about what this
[6:14] Speaker 1: means in practical terms of parents and what we can
[6:16] Speaker 1: do to help our kids to get what they need
[6:19] Speaker 1: while they're at school. If your school isn't doing this
[6:22] Speaker 1: kind of thing, especially with your primary school age children.
[6:25] Speaker 1: Stay with us, We're back. This is the Happy Families Podcast.
[6:35] Speaker 1: Thank you so much for choosing to spend your time
[6:37] Speaker 1: with us. Kylie, A couple of things we need to
[6:40] Speaker 1: talk about here with this really simple initiative at the
[6:43] Speaker 1: Entrance Public.
[6:44] Speaker 2: School, I don't think we can ever underestimate the power
[6:48] Speaker 2: of nutrition with our kids, the way that impacts their learning,
[6:53] Speaker 2: their behavior, their emotion, regulate their emotion, re It's just
[6:57] Speaker 2: it affects everything.
[6:58] Speaker 1: How often do we say to our kids, have you eaten?
[7:00] Speaker 1: Because they're losing it? We get some calories into you,
[7:03] Speaker 1: maybe a bit of protein, get something into you, and
[7:05] Speaker 1: all of a sudden, they're nice again. They become nice
[7:09] Speaker 1: people once they've got some food in their systems. They
[7:11] Speaker 1: can regulate so much better.
[7:12] Speaker 2: And so when I think about what this school is
[7:14] Speaker 2: doing and how they're just with a simple tweak, have
[7:18] Speaker 2: seen such a massive improvement in their kids, you kind
[7:25] Speaker 2: of become a believer that food makes all the difference.
[7:27] Speaker 1: There's actually a bit of data around here. Schools that
[7:29] Speaker 1: have adopted play first models report that students eat more
[7:34] Speaker 1: fruits and vegetables drink more milk, waste less food, and
[7:38] Speaker 1: a better behaved on the playground and in the classroom.
[7:40] Speaker 1: This is not the first school on the planet to
[7:42] Speaker 1: wherever do something like this, and when there have been
[7:44] Speaker 1: interventions along these lines, here's what's really going on here.
[7:49] Speaker 1: We feed kids by the clock, not by their appetite,
[7:54] Speaker 1: and by shifting things around the way they've done on
[7:59] Speaker 1: the entrance public school. What they've basically said is you're
[8:03] Speaker 1: you as a child, are much more likely to have
[8:04] Speaker 1: an appetite once, yes, you've done some learning, but once
[8:07] Speaker 1: you've also moved your body. Once you moved your body,
[8:09] Speaker 1: you're going to want to sit down and actually get
[8:10] Speaker 1: some food into you.
[8:11] Speaker 2: But not only that. The brilliance of this is they
[8:15] Speaker 2: are utilizing eating time, which is generally a much more
[8:18] Speaker 2: sedate activity than playing in the parayground, as a transition
[8:23] Speaker 2: point to going back into the calmer learning space of
[8:26] Speaker 2: a classroom. Again, it's better, regularly a simple tweak, and
[8:32] Speaker 2: yet it makes all the sense.
[8:35] Speaker 1: Yeah. So the second I think big take home for
[8:37] Speaker 1: me is this the last ten minutes of playtime is
[8:40] Speaker 1: when things usually go wrong. The kids are tired, they're
[8:43] Speaker 1: wound up, they haven't eaten properly.
[8:45] Speaker 2: They also know that their playtime is playtimes.
[8:48] Speaker 1: That's right, and the anxiety goes up and they're like, oh,
[8:50] Speaker 1: we've only got three more minutes, and that's when things start.
[8:53] Speaker 2: See another goal, that's right.
[8:55] Speaker 1: I just want one more to eurn. I can't believe
[8:57] Speaker 1: I got out. The line's too long. And so when
[9:01] Speaker 1: kids can play first and eat second, they're going to
[9:03] Speaker 1: come back inside. They're going to be naturally calmer. And
[9:06] Speaker 1: the eating period, as you said just before, Kylie functions,
[9:08] Speaker 1: is like this de escalation period for them. I just
[9:12] Speaker 1: like it. So if my kids were in school, If
[9:15] Speaker 1: our kids were in school and I heard about this,
[9:18] Speaker 1: I'd actually jump online and shoot an email through the
[9:22] Speaker 1: P and C and say, hey, guys, read this. Definitely
[9:26] Speaker 1: dealing with some challenges at school with our kids, wondering
[9:28] Speaker 1: whether or not this is something to float and bring
[9:30] Speaker 1: up in an executive or leadership meeting as an idea
[9:34] Speaker 1: that could be trialed. We are not the only parents,
[9:38] Speaker 1: you and I to have gone through what we've been
[9:40] Speaker 1: through over the last twenty years, with kids not eating lunch,
[9:43] Speaker 1: being completely depleted and exhausted by the end of the day,
[9:48] Speaker 1: and while our meager efforts were completely unsuccessful. My sense
[9:52] Speaker 1: is that something like this wouldn't be too hard to
[9:55] Speaker 1: implement in any school, wouldn't require an enormous restructure, and idea,
[10:00] Speaker 1: fingers crossed, hopefully, wouldn't add too much burden, if any
[10:04] Speaker 1: burden at all, on teachers who are already going to
[10:06] Speaker 1: be on playground duty anyway. So maybe it's something for
[10:10] Speaker 1: you to bring up with the P and C or
[10:11] Speaker 1: the P and F at your local school. If you do,
[10:14] Speaker 1: we'd love to hear about it. Let us know. I
[10:16] Speaker 1: might also add that the school principle at the Entrance
[10:19] Speaker 1: Public School in the article at ABC dot net dot
[10:22] Speaker 1: au did indicate that a lot of schools had been
[10:25] Speaker 1: in touch saying howd you do it, what worked, what didn't,
[10:27] Speaker 1: how can we implement it in our school. It seems
[10:29] Speaker 1: like a lot of people are suddenly going, as you've
[10:31] Speaker 1: just said earlier, Kylie, calories matter, calvaries matters, so that
[10:35] Speaker 1: our children can learn and regulate well. Anyway, we thought
[10:37] Speaker 1: we would bring that to you because it just feels
[10:39] Speaker 1: like it's a smart idea that we can't live. We
[10:42] Speaker 1: didn't think of before, and hopefully it'll spark something in
[10:45] Speaker 1: your school community to help your kids to do better.
[10:48] Speaker 1: The Happy Family's podcast is produced by Justin roll On
[10:50] Speaker 1: from Bridge Media, Manhattan provides our additional support. If you
[10:54] Speaker 1: would like more info to make your family happier, visit
[10:56] Speaker 1: happy families dot com.
[10:57] Speaker 2: Tre

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