AIBU to think parents should provide a better pack lunch than this??

[neverlookback]

My dd goes to the local community nursery a couple of mornings a week and when I pick her up at 12 all the kids staying all day have thier pack lunches ready on the tables, today as I'm waiting for dd to come through I noticed someone had sent in a bowl of cold takeaway garlic bread and chips! You could tell it was takeaway there's only 1 in our village!

I'm all for takeaway sometimes but I don't think this is a nice, healthy lunch for any child to have to take to nursery and eat cold or is it just me??

I disagree - it is completely fucking appropriate to mention Daniel Pelka here because as Blooming said so well, it is the attitude that the parent must be given the benefit of the doubt, every single time, that allowed his parents to get away with this for the length of time that they did. A more child-centred approach would start from the point of view that the child needs better and deserves better. But apparently playing Excuse Bingo is so much more morally sound.

tinmug and sherazade to say that because some kids have it worse still, and that the formal systems do not work as well as they should, therefore we should not try to do anything, is profoundly depressing. I notice that quite a few people have said the nursery should call the parents on this - which smacks of 'they ought to judge so I don't have to', but does at least indicate that people think something ought to be done. It's not logical to say 'well, because you haven't got a five point plan for what should happen now, that proves that doing nothing is the best option'.

volestair all the comments that 'it was just one lunch' don't acknowledge that while we don't know if this is a regular occurrence, we don't know it's a one-off either - though people seem happy to assume that. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

hoiks

Of course it is ok to "judge" a bad packed lunch. Any rational and sensible adult would think "that lunch is so terrible ... I wonder if there is a story behind it?"

If we don't judge very poor parenting then we are doing nothing to protect vulnerable children.

When posters explicitly say "mind your own business" then they are saying "look away, it's nothing to do with you". I'm saying it does, unfortunately have something to do with everybody

Yes, I'd agree with this. Every child's wellbeing is important and worthy of attention and concern. I just don't think that assuming the parent/carer is stupid or cruel is a route to addressing the problem.

to say that because some kids have it worse still, and that the formal systems do not work as well as they should, therefore we should not try to do anything, is profoundly depressing

Where did I say that?

I can't actually remember saying that either!

It's not logical to say 'well, because you haven't got a five point plan for what should happen now, that proves that doing nothing is the best option'

And I didn't say that, either.

Sorry, let me elaborate.

Op if you really feel that a child is being undernourished more than once in a blue moon then take it up with someone who can actually do something constructive.

AIBU is just us bunch of opinionated banshees expressing an opinion.

Use your gumption.

what kwitter said

tinmug in 21: 49 "But what would you actually expect the relevant professionals to do, realistically, in this particular scenario? Daniel Pelka didn't die because everyone looked the other way and no one alerted the professionals"

How is that not saying "the professionals can't be effective even in really horrific cases, so there's no point in calling on them here"?

sherazade in 21:45 "I reserve my judgey pants for when I am able to implement change and I do so every single day. Like children who come in with untreated headlice, or ripped shoes (this is a private school ffs"

How is that not saying 'I reserve my judging for kids who have it worse so a shit lunch is not worth bothering with"?

volestair why is it unreasonable to assume it's a regular thing but not unreasonable to assume it's a one-off, when we have only one instance to go on? You're still extrapolating, just in the opposite direction.

Oh er. All this bolding

Any chance the child ended up with the wrong packed lunch that day.

I'm sure if it was a regular occurance the nursery would intervene.

You are right, it isn't a healthy lunch but I would hope that if it is a regular occurrence that the school would raise its concerns. It is easy to judge others and I think we have all been guilty of that at one time or another but like someone mentioned before we don't know the facts. I have worked for a while with children with ASD and know a few that had very bizarre diets and their wonderful loving parents were nearly at there wits end trying to get their child to eat anything healthy. One boy I remember would only eat dry porridge oats and icing sugar in its dry powdery form. ??? Onlookers would probably have judged his lunch but his mum was one of the most caring mums I have ever met and would have been all too happy to provide a healthy nutritious lunch but that would have meant her son going hungry so like the best parents do she gave her son what he needed.

Hmm, yes - it did look like I was saying "fuck it, there's no point."

I do think that nutrition (and general care) is extremely important in childhood, but at the moment I just don't see how social services can be involved in every individual case.
People feeding their kids total shit is an issue - and obviously a very widespread issue now - and it needs to be addressed but I think it needs to be addressed in a more general way, if that makes sense: I think people in general need to be more educated about what good nutrition is and why it matters, but also how to actually do it in real life. If the cold-chip child is indeed being fed takeaway on a routine basis and then given leftover takeaway for lunch, then he/she is presumably not going to learn anything about shopping, meal planning, budgeting or cooking at home, and is also going to grow up thinking that's what food looks like and that's how humans should eat. That's what needs to be changed.

My dd used to have a piece of chocolate cake and a piece of bread and butter for her lunch. For years. To be honest she didn't eat much better out of school either! The family ate 3 good meals a day - the rest of us (and the other children) ate oily fish, veg, meats, fruit etc etc. But if you saw her at school you could assume she was fed poorly. She was the equivalent of this child but definitely day in, day out.

Funnily enough I am a pretty good parent, fairly knowledgeable in nutrition and we are comfortably off etc. Certainly no depression, lack of money, poor food choices etc here.

DD was a fussy old fish - it was more important to get food into her than nothing. She had had referrals to dieticians and we had sought private help. Nothing did help - she just seemed intolerant to most foods (or the taste of them). She had prescription vitamin supplements at night and fruit juice etc - nutrition where we could get it into her and she did ok, growing well, healthy etc.

She is now a happy healthy teenager who eats like a horse, in the past couple of years has started being able to eat almost all foods - full three course meals of salads, veg, fish, meat etc;, plays loads of sport etc etc. She has a really healthy attitude to food, is very slim but not thin, would choose to make sure she has at least 5 fruit or veg a day but has chocolate etc when she feel she needs it. At the moment I am impressed by her attitude to food. This is the plain bread, plain pasta, chocolate cake eating toddler, young child that we had for years.

Its hard not to judge but unless there are known other problems, it is best not to!!!! The nursery will be-able to tell if the child is malnourished or hungry - and shock, horror - the parents may already have spoken to the nursery about the situation. A parents seeing a snapshot of the situation cannot really see the true picture. If the child was not in school or nursery, and out of the 'public eye' it would be more concerning.

it is the attitude that the parent must be given the benefit of the doubt, every single time, that allowed his parents to get away with this for the length of time that they did. A more child-centred approach would start from the point of view that the child needs better and deserves better. But apparently playing Excuse Bingo is so much more morally sound.

Exactly - that is why I mentioned Daniel. The professionals involved lost sight of that little boy in their haste not to judge his parents and to find excuses for what they were seeing happen to his little body right in front of their faces.

Other parents at the school would have noticed too - I can't believe for a second that other children wouldn't have told their parents about his behaviour in stealing and bin rummaging. If one of them had posted here they would have got a whole load of "don't judge", "maybe he has special needs", "Mind your own business" etc etc.

Yes, perhaps there is nothing the OP can do directly in this particular case (although mentioning it in passing to one of the staff wouldn't hurt), but having an element of 'judginess' in society and willingness to say "actually, that isn't acceptable" is essential to keep people honest (for want of a better word). The slight weariness of 'What will the neighbours think' isn't necessarily a bad thing - this constant excuse making for piss poor parenting leads those people who are more inclined to be shit parents to think they can do it with impunity because it's no-ones business and people don't have the right to judge them and should mind their own business.

The only people who suffer when society has that kind of attitude are the children and the vulnerable who have no voice of their own.

Yuk! Poor kid :( The thought of cold chips and garlic bread makes me want to vomit.

My goodness I didn't think I would cause the much commotion! I'll just point out it wasn't served in the takeaway carton it was in a kids plastic bowl with cling film on, the chips were defo not home made they looked awful with brown bits on looked old and soggy, it can't of been hot the kids having lunch start at the 9am session, there was a lunch box also on the seat so hopefully some better choice of food was in there?
I would say I'll glance again next week and update you all on next weeks menu but I think I'll leave it!
I was judging and I think it's a rubbish lunch for a 2-4 year old to take to nursery glad the majority agree.

tinmug But what would you actually expect the relevant professionals to do, realistically, in this particular scenario?

Well the relevant professionals in this particular scenario would be the nursery staff. I would expect them, if it is indeed the first time this has happened, to tell the parent that it wasn't an acceptable meal for the child and ask if there are any problems at home that they can help with / lend a listening ear to.

If it is the second or third time I would be expecting them to help the parents by giving them a list with suggestions of acceptable meals.

If it is a more frequent occurrence, I would expect them to raise a CAF and pushing to set up a Team Around the Child so that the parents can access early help services such as relevant parenting classes and the child can more easily get access to nutrition / dietician referrals if it is because they won't eat properly. If it was suspected special needs, I would still be expecting them to raise a CAF as this can sometimes help with getting access to services and help while waiting for the relevant assessments to be completed.

If a CAF had already been raised and the situation hasn't improved, I would expect them to make a referral to social services.

I agree with you OP.

I would rather send my child in with nothing than that.

Shit meal, shit parenting.

Bloomin thank you for that.