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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To ask nursery to Cease and Desist feeding DS chips?

101 replies

CubiksRube · 05/09/2011 20:20

DS has been at nursery for a couple of weeks; he is 7 months old.

Once per week - according to his activity book - DS has been feed 'fish and chips' or 'burger, chips and beans' for lunch.

I appreciate he is PFB and nobody but me would want to spend an hour baking mackeral fillet with herbs, and braising savoy cabbage for a baby who will, inevitably, tip half of it on the floor.

However. Fish and chips? For a 7-month-old? At some point, he was going to eat these things but I didn't imagine it would be now. I want to tell them to stop ... or to offer to bring in some baked sweet potato wedges ... but am I being one of Those Mummies?!

DS is also already rather, erm, large. 95th centile or thereabouts, and does tend towards gluttony. He has gotten larger since nursery started, and I do wonder if the diet has anything to do with it.

So. AIBU?

OP posts:
Original poster
CubiksRube · 05/09/2011 21:28

Northernlurkerr, in which case I agree with your intention. :)

It is a very difficult one, isn't it. Having known quite a few sufferers of eating disorders and done straw polls, it seems that there is no way of absolutely preventing it. Raising a child with high self-esteem, self-worth and the idea that he is a good person who deserves to eat healthily and well is what I'm trying to focus on.

Thank you, AitchTwoOh, your post was reassuring. Good to hear I'm not turning into Helicopter Mother quite yet!

OP posts:
Northernlurkerr · 05/09/2011 21:29

The nurseries I have used have always used one room for eating and fed all the children together for the two meals they had. The food was served appropriately for age - so babies who eat have finger food or are fed mushed up stuff. The older babies get theirs more like 'food' but cut up where needed and the oldest toddlers get the same thing not cut up so much, if at all. Therefore I have never expected them to prepare a baby different things from a toddler. Tbh neither does the OP I think.

ouryve · 05/09/2011 21:29

Once a week for a toddler, fair enough, but for a 7 month old? DS2 still wasn't even taking solids at 7 months. YADNBU.

DoMeDon · 05/09/2011 21:30

Babe can have better food!? Anyone can offer better food than most nurseries. i imagine food is cooked for whole nursery - which will include older DC and lots of people don;t think chips once a week is a big issue.

Northernlurkerr · 05/09/2011 21:31

X posted with everyone.

Op - that sounds like a good plan Smile

AitchTwoOh · 05/09/2011 21:32

i tell mine that they are a human bein' not a rubbish bin, which makes the 5 year old laugh and the three year old just looks at me like i'm an idiot. but it's a good thing to keep in mind, i think, while older relatives are imploring them to finish everything on their plates Hmm and giving them dessert as the big prize.

AitchTwoOh · 05/09/2011 21:34

see, i think of chips as a convenience food (if they are oven chips, let's say) so I want to be the one who has the option of that convenience. not the nursery, who are getting paid big bucks to do the work of feeding my kids. (that said, circumstances were such that mine didn't go to nursery until 2 so i don't have experience of baby rooms, apart from seeing kids eating puree/mashed food at one i visited).

Original poster
CubiksRube · 05/09/2011 21:36

AitchTwoOh, yes, the 'clearing your plate' method really creeps me out. Particularly when the child is already obviously uncomfortably full.

Anywho. Now I have to go and ask the scary nursery lady how the chips are cooked, tomorrow morning! She really is rather scary. Reminds me of my maths teacher from school. DS loves her though!

OP posts:
AngryBadger · 05/09/2011 21:36

You are not being unreasonable at all- although I'd be more bothered about the baked beans than the chips. Beans have a relatively high amount of salt (even more in the cheaper brands) and children under a year shouldn't have food with added salt. I agree, for a 2 year old it wouldn't be a problem but the nursery should be providing your child with age appropriate food - that's part of what you're paying for actually. Even worse that they showed you a sample menu that was entirely misleading...

Northernlurkerr · 05/09/2011 21:38

Oh I hate the clean your plate thing! I like mine to make an effort to taste something and then if they're not hungry or hate it well it's food not blood from my very veins.
Mind you I did take it very personally when dd1 would only eat toast, yoghurt and fish fingers (aged 18 months) and when I hand expressed a bottle of milk for dd2 whilst I was out at the cinema. Came home to find she had uttery rejected it! I am a much more balanced person now. In no way did I freak out a few months ago when I lovingly prepared a chicken stir fry for dd1 who at first refused to taste it.........

ouryve · 05/09/2011 21:43

Nothernlurkerr: How does a 6 year old develop an eating disorder?

Me: In the case of my 7 year old, who doesn't have an eating disorder, but is at risk for developing one, it can have nothing whatsoever with the perceived, media-fuelled rhetoric about little girls wanting to by skinny like supermodels etc etc. My 7 year old boy has ASD, ADHD and suffers from anxiety. When he's anxious about something, his appetite disappears completely. He can easily go the best part of a day without eating. It doesn't take much to trigger his anxiety - it can be something as simple as being given the same coloured plate as his brother or a child he can't tolerate being near sitting on the table he'd organised in his mind that he needed to sit at to eat. He's missed meals because someone pushed in the queue in front of him or because it's raining outside. Sometimes he exists on one or two meals a day for several days and starts to lose weight - which he can ill afford to do because he's already skinny.

There are kids with ASD who have far greater problems of this nature than mine, but there isn't as much shock horror in newspapers reporting on kids like this. But DS1 is an example of how it's possible for a small child to end up with an eating disorder.

AnaisB · 05/09/2011 21:43

Surely a healthy and relaxed attitude to food is more important than rigid ideas about good/bad food?

(That comment isn't specifically directed at the OP. OP I think your plan seems pretty reasonable - good luck with the scary nursery lady.)

Mspontipine · 05/09/2011 21:44

Would it make you feel better to pack him up ?? Give you the control back.

AnaisB · 05/09/2011 21:45

and I hate the clean your plate thing too.

Northernlurkerr · 05/09/2011 21:46

Thanks ouryve. That's interesting. I hope your ds remains well.

sjuperwolef · 05/09/2011 21:47

dd didnt have ships till she was 3 and even now rarely has them, when she does they are homemade oven chips so yanbu at all in my book. just see how they are making them and go from there :)

sjuperwolef · 05/09/2011 21:47

chips obviously Blush

MmeLindor. · 05/09/2011 21:52

Oh, yes, clean plate is horrible.

I had issues with our school recently as they were having "competitions" to see who could clear their plate first. I was not happy.

TeaMakesItBetter · 05/09/2011 21:52

OP I can't believe anyone thinks you are being unreasonable! I too have a 6.5 month PFB who started nursery a few weeks ago, also full time. I would not be happy for him to be fed burger and chips or fish and chips. I suspect its a combination of wording, i.e. it's not really burger/fish and chips as we would think. But also your baby is so young are you sure he's having the same food as the rest of the room? I ask because mine are feeding him veg and fruit mush, as I would still be at home but they did once accidentally write in his book that he'd had chicken curry - then crossed it out, they aren't scamming me!

I realise we have to accept our childcare providers won't do everything exactly as we would and there's a degree of c'est la vie but I don't think we give up all rights to direct the care of our babies.

AnaisB · 05/09/2011 21:58

Sorry for tangent, but just remembered that we used to rush to finish our dinner because the person who finished first was allowed to wash the yogurt pots ready for craft work Hmm

JugsMcGee · 05/09/2011 22:12

You aren't unreasonable to check how they're prepared. My PFB DS is 6.5 months and point blank refuses spoon feeds so we're BLW. I've given him what you would describe as chips, but they were just potato batons par boiled and browned in the oven. No added salt or fat. I did the same with sweet potato. Weird child doesn't seem keen on potato though!

Fish may be in a homemade breadcrumb coating or no coating at all. Burgers may just be mince with egg and breadcrumbs done under the grill. Cut into fingers, sounds like ideal finger food.

Good luck with scary lady!

ronshar · 05/09/2011 22:16

If the nursey have a deep fat fryer hidden under the worktop then no you are not at all unreasonable.
However, if the potato is cut up into a shape that is easier for little baby fingers to pick it up, does that make it a chip or a potato that is cut into a shape easier for little fingers to pick up???
Do you give your children Cottage pie? Chips & burgers in a oven dish? Mashed and minced mind you so it makes it much more presentable!

All food is ultimately the same, it is the serving that we object to.

The dietitian I saw with ds for dairy free advice, told me very clearly that babies and small children need fat alot more than they need veg. Nural tubes need fats to build themselves.

ouryve · 05/09/2011 22:47

I hope so, too, Northernlurkerr. We have to tread very carefully to avoid the subject of food and eating becoming too strong a control issue for him. It already is a control issue, since he stops eating when he can't control all factors around or even vaguely related to mealtimes to his satisfaction, but we have to work hard at not giving him any sense of emotional control over us by eating or not. Last week, for example, he was upset about coming home from his grandparents' and he refused all meal options for dinner - wouldn't even choose himself anything from the M&S on the motorway. We said fine, whatever and made and ate our own meals, serving ourselves salad from a bowl on the table, which contained a bit more than we needed. By the time we had finished eating, he was curious about the salad and ended up eating it with some scrambled egg and a toasted muffin - balanced, filling meal achieved. Other times, in this situation, we've not handled it quite so well and he's gone to bed hungry and woken up still in a vile, angry mood.

Northernlurkerr · 05/09/2011 22:57

I think we associate feeding our children so closely with caring for them that's it's really hard not to flap when they don't eat - for whatever reason. It's like it's a failure of care - even though we know it's nothing of the sort.

eragon · 05/09/2011 23:19

day nurseries do often serve cheap food, some dont, but the ones i have worked in often do. for instance smash instant potato for weaning.
baked beans, chips , burgers and fish fingers are all highly processed foods, high in salt and saturated fats.

u can over do the fruit and veg with regards to fibre, but really, this sort of food shouldnt be given to infants under a yr. and very limited over a yr in opinon.
they are making a great profit on yr baby, thats how it works.

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