School withholding snack as punishment?

It’s outrageous, Op! Children should have a snack every hour or so. No, every 30 minutes in fact. Bring it up with the school as soon as possible.

But they did. It was his snack in his bag. Also this snack is to help them concentrate . They are 5.. I’m a childminder and all my kids get a snack in the afternoon or they get tired and moody.

5 year olds need their snack to regulate their blood sugar etc. how do the teachers expect him to concentrate for the rest of the afternoon without the snack.

I can’t be the only person who grew up having 3 meals a day and no snacks, and whose children, born in the 70s were brought up the same way. I don’t think your son will suffer as much from missing a snack as he will from witnessing his mother disagreeing with his teacher. I hope you have told your son that he should expect consequences when he misbehaves.

I'd be more bothered about the normalisation of all this snacking. It's a terrible habit.

Withholding food is never a planned punishment in schools. The punishment was no break time. If he'd asked to have his snack while indoors, I'm sure the teacher would have had no problem with that.

I don't understand why he has to have a 'snack' between meals. Is he diabetic?

Interesting, so many posters find just the idea of an afternoon break, let alone afternoon snack so triggering.

Presumably lunch is at about 12:00- 12:45 so he ate a full meal at about 12:15? And he gets out of school at 3pm? So he didn’t get anything to eat for a full 2 hours 30 minute?! That’s outrageous, the poor little lamb must be absolutely starving…. Seriously OP he will survive. Tell him not to be fighting and he will get his snack and play time. Seems like a good punishment with a decent consequence to me.

It was a snack not a 3 course dinner.

My son doesn't always eat much at school so he has a snack on the way home... couldn't your son have his snack then?

If we were talking about lunch, absolutely.

A banana? a few hours or even less before school ends and he can have it anyway? Hardly.

It's totally inappropriate to withhold food as a punishment.
It doesn't happen at the primary schools I know

This is one of those great threads that helps identify the 44% of people who voted YANBU as terrible parents.

I'm with you OP. Some very harsh replies. Healthy snacks are good for small children, agree food shouldn't be used as a punishment

@katepilar ok I must have missed that bit.

Why are you making up this theory? OP clearly stated that the child went to get his snack from his bag was told he is not allowed.

As a few PPs have mentioned, the loss of his snack is more of a side-effect of the consequence given.

Saying that the consequence for his misbehaviour was that his snack was withheld is misleading. I'd have agree with you if that had been the case.

Hopefully it'll be a lesson learned for him.

The teacher probably didn't punish by not giving him his snack. The punishment was to miss playtime. It may not even have occurred to her that he would miss his snack. It is no big deal though and if that upset him more then the punishment worked and hopefully he will think of his behaviour next time.

Will it improve their learning? As a teacher we are trained that a hungry child is unlikely to be ready to learn.

Also the bar for how to treat children is not ‘it won’t stunt their growth’ ffs. Dickens’ works are novels not instruction manuals.

True, but who's to say it will be a one-off? It's never good to use food as reward or punishment.

I always think posts about young children in a 'fight' are quite amusing and how people say how they wouldn't want their child being around those who fight. Honestly the OPs son was likely to be involved in rough play, as she describes, with a bit of pushing.
Likewise I don't think the school were 'withholding food' as so many suggest. Kid was kept in from going out which is when they normally would eat a snack. Teacher is busy, focusing on talking to the child about good choices on the playground and perhaps setting up any further activities or beginning to get ready for the end of the day. Totally forgets child hasn't had a snack. Child has done their time. Goes off to get snack but at this point I expect everyone is coming in and the time has been missed. An unintentional consequence of being kept in. Was it the same staff member who prevented the snack? It's always possible someone else just thought they were being slow and using the opportunity to time waste (we have had to talk to year 1s that they get the snack at the start of morning break and then need to eat it before the end of break, if kids are coming back in still eating it has to go - they have 15 mins for break so there is no reason for them to still have an apple with only one or two bite marks in it, unless they haven't taken the snack at the start as asked, or have been cheeky enough to grab a second!).
It's definitely not something I would complain about - it sounds quite lucky that they get to have a snack in the afternoon in the first place (we don't) but also the break in the afternoon as well (we only have morning break and a lunch break). If we are lucky and have enough staff and no one is doing PE on the playground then we might be able to let year 1 out for a little play in the afternoon, else from 1-3.30 they are indoors learning.

Yes food shouldn’t be not given as a punishment

equally it’s a consequences for his behaviour as didn’t get break time

I have never heard of 2 snacks at school. If they have lunch they really don’t need a snack 2hrs later esp if finishing school an hour after that

it he was hungry he could have eaten his banana when you picked up

but won’t kill him not to eat for a few hours

hopefully your son has learnt from this not to push (back) and to eat more at lunch so not starved an hour or so later

Taking away the chance to eat is really poor behaviour management. Your son needs to understand the actual consequences of fighting or reacting with his fists - that others get hurt, and trust you less. And he needs to understand his own anger triggers and learn to manage them. Sounds like the teachers in his school have no skills in that area whatsoever and are just being petty because they don’t know what else to do.

Happily it's now illegal for teachers to physically abuse tiny children.