To Think This Head Teacher Is Going Too Far?

[RubyFakeNails]

I am so fed up with DD2s school. I'm sick today so Dh collected and has just told me of the latest incident. Sorry doubt this will be brief.

Bit of background, we recently moved from Hackney out to Essex, and DD has had to change schools, she started a few weeks after the usual date so in october, she was very popular at last place and had lots of friends. She's always eaten like a bird but since joining new school she has struggled to make friends so seems to not enjoy her lunches and eat even less. Teacher and I have discussed this and they are trying to encourage her, she just seems to have been very quiet and shy but she always takes a while to come out of her shell so am not too worried.

Anyway, it was DH birthday on saturday but DD was recovering from a bad cold so she didn't have all the cake and sweets etc. Today as a little surprise for her I popped a bit of cake in her lunchbox to make up for what she missed. Apparently the school has confiscated it and DD is upset because she thinks shes in trouble! They gave it back to dh when he picked her up. He explained the backstory and was told the school have some concerns about the lunches we are providing for DD!

Am outraged as I make a real effort to be healthy with her. She swims twice a week, does gymnastics and dancing, we also walk to and from school. I have told the school in the past that DD like me eats a vegetarian (almost vegan diet). Its not like I'm sending her to school with a litre of coke and a snickers.

I've just spoken to the Head of Year, I told her I didn't feel they had any place taking the little food she will eat and as her parent I control her diet not them. She says lunch time staff have noticed a serious of unhealthy snacks and lunches for DD! Have I considered the school dinners? DD would never eat those as she is so picky a the moment.

This new school is the best in our new area but everyone seems so precious and arsey, the old school was quite I guess rough but the teachers cared and still would never do anything like this. DD1 and DS are teens now and I haven't really had to deal with primary schools for a good 6 years. Is this normal now?

Originally I was pissed off they had gone over my head but I'm really starting to question what I give dd.

Also would point out DDs diet is by choice pretty much, DH and DD1 eat meat all the time and DD is regularly offered the meat option. DD generally tended to not enjoy eating meat and about a year ago said she wants to be vegetarian. I never enforce this, she knows she can eat meat at any point. I'm not some militant vegan I just prefer to use soya substitutes over milk and cheese etc when cooking. I never eat meat but the vegan thing is just how its turned out based on what we like to eat.

Sounds fine to me RubyFakeNails.

I honestly couldn't be bothered as I just KNEW I'd never win that particular battle, although I WAS hopping mad Isla, I much prefer ds's school now where the tuck shop serves bacon butties

I wnder if they used gloves when they habndled the food and gave it back, given they are so concerened about health. If she is being given chips everyday then fair enough, but it is really annoying when people decide something is unhealthy based on their own assumptions and not actual facts.

Makes no sense sometimes - DC's school don't allowed chocolate in lunchboxes but had some rubbish made out of Maltesers as the dessert for school lunch one day

Your DD's lunchbox sounds fine to me - something savoury, a drink, some fruit and some kind of 'treat' type item like cake - no idea why they'd have a problem with that or think it's unhealthy tbh.

They do this at our DDs school as well, and they do confiscate food. In our case it was 2 squares of chocolate from a lunch box containing 2 pieces of fruit, a tuna sandwich on wholemeal bread, orange juice and a babybel.

I also spoke to the school. DD was in reception and mortified - she thought she'd been naughty and didn't understand.

2 squares of chocolate is perfectly acceptable within a 'balanaced' and nutritious diet.

I would be furious about this!! And it's not standard school practice either. The school where I teach has Healthy School Status and we've never policed lunch boxes. Occasionally I've seen colleagues wince slightly as they see little Jimmy come in with just a bar of chocolate and a bag of crisps yet again, but it's never been confiscated. We're a bit fussy about break-time snacks, granted, but not lunch boxes.
Ask them on what grounds they're removing food from your child's lunchbox. Well done for telling them that she's your child and you are in charge of what she eats. Damn' cheek.

The thing that majorly pisses me off about this lunchbox policing is that it's so arbitrary. The kids having school dinners will have chips sometimes, cake and custard sometimes, yadda yadda. Yet put a piece of homemade apple cake in a packed lunchbox and that can fall foul of the food police. Shop-bought cereal bars tend to be considered fine, despite the fact that they're held together by sugar and fat, and really no healthier than many chocolate bars. Yet home-made biscuits which could be butter, flour, oats and raisins would fail the test.

It's utterly bonkers, and risks giving kids the idea that a healthy diet consists solely of apples and carrot sticks, which is really not the message you want to be getting across.

It is how it is now.

It is a battle you cannot win.

My DS told me to stop putting things in his lunch box that he then got into trouble for (his view).

it's the obesity police gone mad IMHO

Polly you're right. The thing is there's nothing wrong with a chocolate pudding, chips and pizza as long as it's not the only thing they're given everyday.

It's not an issue because the menus produced by the local authority are reasonably balanced and (intended to be) reasonably nutritious. Unfortunately, they assume that all parents providing packed lunches are uneducated, feckless, junk eating idiots and so they micro-manage packed lunches in a way that school dinners aren't.

It's ridiculous. Neither of my children have had school dinners because the packed lunches I provide are balanced and nutritious and I can control/see what they are eating.

The stupid thing is that when I queried the chocolate that was confiscated, I was told I could have sent a chocolate covered biscuit (e.g. a penguin) in but not chocolate. Crazy!

Why is it a battle you cannot win? I'm pretty sure that if my Head attempted to operate such a Nazi-like regime and a parent objected strongly enough, it would all cave.
Ask him/her/the Governors to explain their rationale behind why the school lunches can include, as Polly said, soggy pizza and chips on a Friday, and a cooked pudding with custard each day and yet your homemade food gets confiscated. Tell them that until they can provide a convincing argument, you will continue to make your own choices.

And although the school lunch menus might look balanced and nutritious, by the time some children have actually made their choices, they're not necessarily still so. And that's before they leave the healthier bits and just eat the stodge, then nip to the slop bucket when noone's looking and ditch the evidence.

DD generally takes something baked or a wrap with vegetables and humus ( DD is obsessed with humus, its her version of ketchup). A banana/grapes/other fruit, maybe some crackers of flavoured rice cakes, something like fruity flakes or the bear fruit rolls, a smoothie drink

If that's absolutely true, then the lunch time staff have clearly got the wrong child.

clam, whilst your suggestion is a great one, the reality is that the children would just continue to have the contents of their lunchboxes confiscated, at least until the governing body (who may well have been involved in the decision to do it in the first place) had met.

Unless the parents can go into school and be present at lunchtime to make sure it isn't happening, we've got no control over it at all.

I've had to confiscate snacks at playtime because they contravene the school's lunchtime snack policy. I feel like a real shit doing it, but at the same time, I'm not going to sit in a staff briefing and be criticised in front of all my colleagues for going against the HT instructions when everyone else is following them. :(

Tell then you expect them to prove their hygiene standards if they're going to be handling your child's food.

I would definitely want to know what the school dinners menu is like! My local primary school doesn't tend to do chips or pizza but there is plenty of battered fish, fried chicken, potato wedges and beans in amongst lasagne and chilli. And the puddings are all along the sponge cake and custard line with the occasional fruit salad.

I'd be livid if the school took it upon themselves to take food away from my child - if they had a problem with it they should have let you know, not taken it away. Hugely overstepping the mark imo.

And what about the kids that do come with just a packet of quavers and a mars bar every day, do the school confiscate their whole lunch?

Unfortunately, WorraLiberty, they don't look at the packed lunch as a whole. If one element of it falls outside of their 'healthy eating' policy, it will be removed, regardless of the rest of the meal.

As much as anything this stops "But Miss, why are you taking my cake? Joe's still got his" and also stops parents phoning in to query why their child's cake was confiscated but their best friends wasn't.

It's a blanket policy applied arbitrarily.

I would be very cross, OP.

DS2 wasn't allowed to eat a jam sandwich once. He had already eaten a tuna sandwich, so I'm not sure what they would have done if he hadn't had that. I was cross because at the time he wasn't a big eater, and obviously small for his age. No one at the school could ever tell me if they had a jam sandwich policy or not.

@ 'jam sandwich policy'

And again if it's homemade jam with a high fruit to sugar ratio, how would that work?

Vegan packed lunches are hard - I make one every day for my 3yo (allergies, rather than life choices).

He has either a hummus or avocado sandwich, or a tub of chickpea salad. Then he has lots of fruit, veg and salad. I would avoid the fruit flakes and rolls - I worry about all that stickiness on their teeth for the rest of the school day, and they are not particularly nutritious or healthy. For extra fillingness I put in a smoothie or a banana, or sometimes samosas or a couple of new potatoes. Nuts would be so useful, but it's understandable why they're banned.

I'd be livid. I'm not even sure that this is legal, regardless of what the LEA say.

I thank God for my dc lovely, sensible teachers. They concentrate on their actual jobs and leave the parenting of my children to me.

Well tonight I broke my own rules and let DD have cake for tea as long as she ate some fruit with it.

I think its all bollocks and will be telling the head tomorrow that she is my child and she will eat what I give her. Will also be pointing out that I think its poor DD seemed to receive no explanation of what was happening and was very upset when she came home thinking "mummy had made her be naughty but she didn't mean it". I will not have my child thinking I'm some food devil who can't be trusted.

I know for a fact the school menus are very cheese and oil heavy, but am not sure about puddings so will check it out.

Thanks for the advice, its madness how they make you feel over a lunchbox, the way they spoke to DH an I you would think we were beating DD.

In fact I'm sorely tempted to empty the box of celebrations we have into DDs lunch box for the next four days with a large note addressed to the head telling her to fuck off but I'm not that antagonistic .

Urgh, nanny-state schools.

I think if the teachers are regularly seeing pasties in your DD's lunchbox they may be automatically thinking "Greggs" without realising that the interior consists of fabulous vegetable goodness rather than MRM. I suspect that's the source of your problem.

I would suggest going in softly softly, asking exactly what has given rise to concern, explaining that there's a misunderstanding, asking them for a detailed set of rules, in writing, and substituting cake for flapjack for a bit. Does school allow nuts?

I absolutely hate this. It is none of my business what you feed your child. We don't police lunchboxes at school and I never want to.