To feel uncomfortable about school giving stickers for finishing dinner?

[chaosisawayoflife]

Dd has only just started reception so I'm new to all this, but she often comes home with 'clean plate award' stickers, and I'm a bit unsure about how I feel about this. I have always avoided forcing my children to clear their plates, or doing the whole 'if you finish your dinner you can have pudding' thing. I believe children can regulate their own appetites and will eat what they want/ need. However, I am also very lucky to have two dds who eat well and aren't fussy.
Stickers are an enormous incentive to most children and I feel a bit uncomfortable about putting this pressure on them to finish their meals, especially with all the worries about childhood obesity etc.
AIBU?

School dinners are tiny IME (have 2DC at school both reasonable appetites and skinny) so being encouraged to eat it all will not lead to overfeeding your child. But I agree that that "clear your plate" sends the wrong message. OTOH as Nosleep says, eating enough is often a problem. I'd be happier with "I tried something new" or "I enjoyed a healthy lunch" stickers.

YAB a bit U. My DS is always telling me to put less in his packed lunch box so he can get out to play quicker. Obviously, I do not do this but he hecis not a big eater, he will not eat crusts and is quite fussy. The upshot of this is that when I meet him at collection time he is 'starving' and generally quite ratty, although this has improved in year one. I think a sticker system would motivate him to eat it all and in his case would be a good thing. I'm not entirely convinced he is self regulating his appetite. I think it's more a case of him thinking, 'I care more about playing than eating'.

I have the flip side problem..... our school doesn't really monitor them and I have twice been called in beccause dd has been tired, emotional and had a tempreture in the afternoon. On both occassions she has hardly eaten lunch. Basically she loves playing outside and wants to get out there with her friends. I have had to ask school to encourage her to eat.

I'm with headlessforhalloween on this one.

the school probably can't do right for doing wrong!

DS declares everything to be 'really yummy' or 'yuck' - quite often something will look really yummy and actually be yuck. He is mainly living on pasta, tomatoes and ribena atm. He declared water, orange and milk to all be yuck and refused to drink for a couple of days.

YABU

School lunches have such small helpings there is no way clearing a plate should be an issue.

School dinners are unlikely to make a child obese!!! They are 'just' enough food, so children need to eat it all to avoid being hungry!
For goodness sake. Some parents complain about everything. If their children don't eat their dinner or packed lunch, school is in the wrong ("Why don't you make sure my child has eaten everything I have given him??" Oh yes, there are 300 children in the school, and each one can be watched like a hawk, of course we should!!!) ...and now, if they do eat up...school is still in the wrong. Nobody forces children to eat, but they are encouraged to eat up, as we don't want them sitting in class complaining that they are hungry...which lots do, because they rushed and didn't finsh properly because they wanted to go play. An awful lot of children don't have breakfast before they get to school, so if they don't eat much lunch either....you can imagine the sort of problems we then get in the classroom. I

I agree it's the wrong message and a very bad idea in households where portion sizes are too big. Probably a good idea for children who are fussy or hardly eating anything.

I imagine the clear plate thing comes from times when once your dinner was gone there was nothing else to eat, 7 kids round the table, not so necessary these days. Clearing your plate is not a good thing to have drummed into you when you're eating at a restaurant where portions are massive, or at a buffet. When we go out to eat my boyfriend gets very embarrassed if I leave food and finishes mine for me even if he's stuffed.

I have noticed that adults I know who seem to be very concerned with not leaving waste are overweight.

Its so frustrating. DS lives on breakfast cereal, cheese sandwiches and grapes most days!

Every now and again he'll eat a full meal completely out of the blue, and then that'll be it for another week or so!

It might be the wrong message, but have you ever seen how small school dinner portions are? My 20mo DS3, that is so underweight for his height that he sees a dietician, would be able to clear the plate that they dish up at my DS's school.

So I wouldn't worry too much about her getting a sticker for clearing her plate. It's probably far smaller than you would personally dish up for her, and far less than the point where you would expect to self regulate and stop eating.

And the portions stay the same the whole way through Primary, too. So a DC that is finishing the plate in Reception is going to come out of school ready to chew their own arm off by Y6!

I grew up with a mother who insisted that everything on the plate was eaten. BUT... she didnt overload the plate. We always had enough room left for pudding too.

And I was certainly not an obese child either. I was a skinny little thing until I got into my late teens and realised that going to the pub was more fun than playing on a hockey pitch.

Food was rarely a luxury item in our house growing up, waste was not an option.

Far too many kids are allowed to be fussy eaters and if a child is obese, it is not likely to be the fault of the school, or the child.

That's very true jam - the helpings are so small a child could easily be very hungry by mid afternoon if they don't eat lunch.

This thread is really bugging me. All the school is trying to do is encourage children to eat a small amount of food in the middle of the day, that parents have paid for, so that the children do not feel hungry.

I never make my DS eat if he isn't hungry at home. But, at school I would welcome this, as he is so desperate to go and au that he barely eats then eats constantly from 3.30 until he goes to bed

They do this sometimes at DC school, they have packed lunches but still get them for finishing. It is a godsend for DC1 as she will chat instead of eat, rather go outside than eat her fruit, etc. The sticker is a good incentive for her to eat all she has, which is really far less than I would like her to have but don't want her to feel overloaded (the more she has the less she eats).

'Clear your plate' stickers are very much the wrong message to be sending children, and they are completely unnecessary.

I quite often work lunchtimes at a primary school, and I disagree that the portions are tiny. By the time they have had pudding (which is another thread altogether) they are not tiny, at least not with the catering company my school uses.

What's wrong with just getting the children to put their hands up to have a staff member check that they have eaten enough? That's what we do, and if a child doesn't like something, then they get offered extra fruit or bread, crackers and cheese. And it's very rare that they don't like anything they have chosen. Lunchtime staff are not stupid, and we can tell if a child just wants to go and play with their friends outside, and if that's the case we can encourage they to eat more if they need it before they are given permission to leave the table.

It's about teaching them to make healthy choices for themselves because they know they need to, not because they want a sticker that will have lost its novelty by Christmas anyway!

Also, as far as I'm aware, most KS1 children will have a piece of fruit in the afternoon, so as long as they eat something at lunchtime, as well as having their morning snack that they bring from home, they are unlikely to starve.

That is not my experience at at all Outraged. Helpings are tiny here.

The real 'carrot' for most dcs is getting to run around after being stuck in a classroom. I dont think the sticker is the problem, and i agree with the op that stickers are giving a daft message. If the problem is that the slower/fussier/more reluctant eaters are wanting to get down when the fast eaters have gone out to play, why not keep all the dcs in the dining hall for a sensible length of time so they all have adequate time to eat what they want, digest it and then run around after?

The lunch break isn't long enough, so it's all very hurried.

My dcs were gutted that they weren't allowed to eat other dcs leftovers, like they do at home. As in " he/she gets babybels and he doesn't even eat them"

Agree with school dinners being tiny. Ds has a mix of both (not on the same day obviously). I pack him a fairly normal size packed lunch but he only ever eats the sandwiches because he is so desperate to go and play. I'm pretty sure he eats all of the school dinner as he only tends to have it when it's something he really likes. On school dinner days he is always starving. Therefore I have deduced that school dinner sized fishfingers and chips is a lot less filling than two slices of bread and some cheese.

I'm with you, OP.

I mean, it's not an issue or anything, DD1 just never gets a sticker for this particular thing and it's fine by me.

She did say to me on the way home today "is it good to eat everything that comes in your lunch bag" and I said "no, the best thing to do is to eat until you are no longer hungry".

My kids are quite fussy eaters, actually. But I'd rather they exercises their own appetite control than be encouraged to clear their plates.

I'm sure different schools and different catering companies will do things differently, but if they aren't giving out enough food then that's a whole different problem of its own. It's not a reason to give out stickers.

Sorry if I'm coming off a bit strongly on something fairly minor, I have a bee in my bonnet about school lunchtimes in general at the moment!

My dd1 is a pleaser and when she was in reception they had the stickers for clearing your plate and about once a week she would vomit after eating it all even though she was full as she didn't want to miss out on the sticker. I posted on another forum at the time and the consensus then was that it was wrong and could lead to an eating disorder. (Luckily it hasn't, she's a healthy year 4 now) However I guess it must be allowed as dd2 is now in reception and they still do it.

Sorry, I've realised I'm probably at cross-purposes a bit with the OP as I'm not talking about school dinners. DD1's school doesn't have school dinners but they give out 'lunchtime awards' to kids who eat everthing in their lunchbag,

DD has recently moved schools, her new school offers both second and third portions :/ she's put on weight, despite being super active. Her home diet hasn't changed, unfortunately it does Seem possible to get fat on school meals . They are encouraged to eat everything.

I was brought up with the " you'll sit there until you've eaten everything on your plate"' now I have no bloody off button when it comes to food.

YABU. School portions aren't big. Most children would just eat their favourite bits and say they were full, probably resulting in a lot of vegetables not being eaten.
My kids aren't fussy eaters, but I'm happy for the added incentive to eat their greens.
Reception children are much to young to self regulate food. They might tell u they r full but that's not necessarily when they have eaten adequately.