To be miffed about ds getting 'told off' for the content of his packed lunch

[Squiffie]

DS had a packed lunch consisting of:

A chicken wrap
Banana
Grapes
Rice pudding
A bottle of very dilute squash

In addition to this he had 3 or 4 jelly sweets that I'd popped in with his grapes as a treat, for which he got 'told off' by a member of lunchtime staff. Am I seriously not allowed to choose the contents of his lunch box?!

In think it should be up to you what you give your child to eat. Why should the school decide this. I don't agree with lunch policing at all.

Oh dear - I can see that when my DC is old enough for school I am going to be the rebel mother. When I was brought up my mother did her best to follow new thinking in the eighties and we had a near as to be possible no fat and sugar diet which severely affected my and my sisters attitude to foods in a very detrimental way. Any one remember st ival gold no fat spread? Lizzie Webb advocating a no fat diet? As soon as we started earning we made a lot of wrong choices.
In deciding for my child I have said that no food is to be condemned as bad or held up as good but everything is ok in appropriate amounts. I feel this is the healthiest attitude and doesn't make sweets and chocolate something contraband that is sneaked to you rarely by your very kind auntie who was concerned, actually correctly, that the no fat and sugar diet was not the right way to go. Now my sister and I have interesting metabolisms that cannot tolerate much beyond 1200 cals per day before storing as fat. This is also true of most of the other children in my mothers friends group all who were brought up in the same restrictive way and were born of normal weight parents.
My child is going to school to educated academically - teaching about foods in a domestic science way I have no objection to - but suggesting some foods are bad or good in the lunch room is not something I wish them to teach my child.

I used to work in a school that had a "no sweets, chocolate bars or fizzy drinks" policy as is the same with most schools. The head often put reminders in the newsletters to gently remind parents of the policy.

The lunchtime staff, including myself, would often turn a blind eye to children who had the odd chocolate bar (if that's what their parent wants them to eat then who are we to dictate and the packed lunches were all usually healthy) but it was the other children who would be putting their hand up. "Miss, MISS! Johnny has a CHOCOLATE bar and we're not ALLOWED chocolate!"
To which I would just reply. "Johnny, chocolate isn't allowed in school. Make sure you remind your parents when you get home." No doubt Johnny went home and said that he was "told off" for having chocolate, even though I said it gently.

Lunchbox rules make no sense. Jelly sweets not allowed but squash is? Chocolate allowed, cakes too. Ok so you can make sweet things more nutritious but that would be the home made version - the shit that is put into commercially made cakes - hydrogenated fats anyone, artificial additives, high fructose corn syrup, horrible stuff! they make Haribos look positively innocent. But schools work on simple blunt rules and despite them being contradictory, you have little choice but to comply.

send a baby bel or something as a treat.

What a deeply joyful life some children live.

Defnotsupergirl, I love you!

Your lunch sounds wonderful, nothing wrong with heavily diluted squash, I hate drinking just water and will not drink it, dd6 s te same, as long as they are drinking, heavily diluted squash is no biggie. However the teacher should have out a note in his lunch bag or tell you at home time regarding the sweets

Why can't you wait until they're at home before giving sweets as a treat?

Two things - I worry when parents say their children refuse to drink water and will only drink squash. Who introduced the squash into their diet before making sure they were happy drinking water? What would happen if you were stuck somewhere with only water to drink and no prospect of getting a cup of squash for your DC? Would they refuse to drink and get dehydrated?

And the other thing upthread - "Hope he's ok". FFS.

Suburban I would rather my dd drink than nothing, I untroduced squash as she was not drinking anything, milk or water as a 3 year od. Nothing wrong with heavily diluted squash, total overreaction nowadays. Dd eats a good diet with no sweets or chocolate, soa bit of heavily diluted squashis not going to harm

I should probably be shot for what I put in my 4 kids lunch boxes!

Sandwich
Yogurt
Kit kat/penguin/breakaway
Crisps.
Fruit
Water

All 4 are very healthy and sporty. They eat a homemade meal everyday, very balanced and portion controlled. They do not crave sweets/crisps and only have them in their lunch.

Exactly the same as myself and my 2 siblings had in our lunches. Neither of us are over weight and we have a healthy attitude to food.

The school has never questioned what I put in their lunches and I wouldn't take kindly to it if they did.

Strangely enough my 2 stepsons are both chefs and verging on morbidly obese. Their mum encouraged them to drink litres of fizzy pop a day, multi pack crisps to themselves, family sized chocolate bars each and huge portions at meal times.
I very much think that moderation, portion control, exercise and balanced food groups is the right approach to healthy lifestyles.

All in context really, I home cook, she has a heathy lunchbox

Heavily diluted squash Is a tiny bit of squash and mostly water anyway, itis not like your sending him in with a can of something.

Further to my post above, if you take a look at the obesity rates in French children you start to realise a little bit of everything does no harm and is probably the most sensible way to go. A French person would look at me quizzically and probably slightly incredulously if I suggested that they restrict certain foods or chose "low fat & low sugar" foods for their child. Yet they do not have an obesity problem in children, it is about half of ours in the UK. It is the attitude that nothing is bad, nothing is particularly good that is the difference.

It's all in context, in moderation. Dd is rake thin and hardly eats anything as it is, I would rather her drink beakers if heavily diluted squash than acfewcsips of water every few hours. Not drinking properly is not detrimental to health. But no, the rubbish some parents put in lunch boxes has to be tackled. If you want your child to have a few sweets and chocolates, give them at home not in the lunch box

DS would have happily become dehydrated before drinking water when he was younger. He just spat it out and refused to drink any. He is 4 now and has decided himself that he likes water but hated it when younger.

A watered down squash with your lunch is not going to cause a problem (yes I'm nutritionally trained) neither will the odd sweet. But I think the school sweet policy is down to sharing and allergies as much as the health aspect.

My ds is a non water drinker, he wouldn't drink it as a baby either. He'd flatly refuse it, only drink milk and than eat no solids.

I don't think I'd venture a guess as to why obesity rates differ between countries, it's too complex. Everything in moderation is fine but do you know what moderation is? Because it means something different to everyone. I've seen kids have sugary breakfast cereal, fruit juice, sugary snack/cake and sugary yoghurt at lunch with diluted squash and again after school and after dinner washed down with lots of diluted squash - is that a moderate sugar intake?

I'm often shocked by how much sugar my dcs eat and when they count it up they are too - despite them claiming that they don't get enough treats compared to their friends, they are quite shocked by how much sugar they actually consume, it's a constant battle.