..to take the piece of paper given to ds2 to write his food diary and write on it myself?

[TantrumsAndBalloons]

Something along the lines of "stick it up your arse"

I'm furious. Ds2 is 10. He has to write everything he eats for the next 2 days, the teacher will then give a prize to the person with the "best" diet.

I hate this. I hate the lunchbox police. I hate that they are teaching DCs that there are good and bad foods when there's no such bloody thing IMO

Food is food. I don't ban sugar or whatever, I don't give low fat yoghurt or sugar free squash to a 10 year old. Or supposedly healthy cereal bars.
He eats a balanced diet which includes "bad" foods.

But do you know what has really really pissed me off?

We are going out for dinner to celebrate my DN birthday. We are going to tgi Fridays cos the DCs love it. My ds2 is now really worried that he is going to get in trouble.
He is saying to me that he won't have the Oreo milkshake that he loves and only has once a year and he won't have a dessert and he will have a healthy main course.

I am furious. We don't go out to eat very often. He eats a balanced diet, he is very active and this teacher is making him worried about going out for dinner? What the actual fuck?

I told him not to write it. And I said that I will write a note to the teacher explaining that we do not have good and bad foods in this house and making a 10 year old feel guilty about going out for dinner or fretting about what they are going to eat is unacceptable

The thing is, at 10, they eat what is provided, don't they?
I mean they don't do the shopping or meal planning or cooking. So they are now made the feel guilty about something they have no fucking control over anyway.
What is this supposed to achieve exactly?

I hate this demonising of teachers. Do you really think we want to plough through 30 bits of paper lies pretending the entire class exists on fresh air and water and has the prescribed 2 hours of cardio vascular brisk walking? its the curriculum not the teachers.

There will be birthday parties and treats, there will be those bounced over to Dad who lives in bedsit and can only see his kids in McDonalds and walk round the town centre, those in hospital because they have ill relatives and will be eating cafeteria food, those with parents on shift, those with food aversions.

So not everyone will be eating 'healthily' some will be eating 'on the go'. But probably most of them will google and lie and say what they think the teacher wants to hear.

Also, a weekend, 48 hours, TGI is one meal out of six and God knows how many snacks that will be offered. It's actually a good way of looking at what you consume. Don't forget to put in a plate of hummous and celery dippers for elevenses! I think you need to manage expectations here.

YANBU
DS2 has the same homework (minus the prize - they're going to discuss in pairs next week so if were lucky he'll get the child who eats wagon wheels for lunch ) but due to a parenting fail DS will eat sausages TWICE this weekend.

I would feed him something uber-healthy on the middle day if only he weren't a properly fussy, gag on certain foods, live in meat/rice/pasta and smoothie kind of 9 yo but he is that child and his issues are not going to be solved by another food diary.

(and in case anyone wants to tell me fussy eaters are made by the parents etc his older and younger brothers have the same parents and eat most things)

some of the parents may not know a good balanced diet, some families live off takeaways.
perhaps this will benefit them.

DarlingGrace: a flawed curriculum is one thing (and I agree that it's full of shit) but the teacher presumably decided that a prize was a good idea. I doubt the curriculum specifies that a prize must be given to reward the child whose parents lie most on the form.

In any case, what is the value in a homework exercise where everyone will lie? All it does is teach children that they need to lie to themselves and others about their food consumption. That's a very unhealthy message.

chocolate, you didn't answer my point about whether I was rude to tell the OP to get some perspective but she wasn't rude to write "stick it up your arse" as a suitable response to the school issuing homework she wasn't happy with

Yabu and completely over reacting.

I'm not making him anxious.

I said to him, as far as I am concerned food is neither good or bad. It is perfectly fine to have a milkshake. If you are that worried about it, then don't worry about the homework, ill write a note to your teacher. But don't let it worry you, let's just enjoy dinner

And then when he said can we buy low fat stuff from now on, I referred him to his big brother who knows all about this stuff as his club has a sports nutritionist and he explained how fat is an essential part of a healthy diet and that artificial sweeteners and what not are not necessary and do not add any health benefits.

I tend to believe the sports nutritionist who has trained and studied for many years in this actual subject rather than a primary school teacher who is most likely following those ridiculous change 4 life guidelines that seem to be every where.

I have a serious problem with these kinds of 'healthy eating' campaigns as I think generally they are such blunt instruments they cause other issues rather than solving the issues they set out to do. For example change4life stuff and 'healthy' eating is being lectured at my DSs class of 5&6 year olds. From this mostly they seem to have got that 'calories are bad', 'fat is bad', sugar is bad, salt is bad. Rather than the more balanced 'too much .... Is bad'
My DS and his friends spent ages looking at the labels on food packets and decided that as they had calories in them that they were bad and that they couldn't eat anything' - I then had to sit them down and explain as basically as I could that what they had learnt at school wasn't exactly right and that a balanced diet and exercise was better.
I don't mind doing this but what about those kids that don't have parents that do this or even realise they screwy message given to their kids.
I have subsequently heard that some kids in the class were being bullied by other kids who were inspecting the calorie content of each others lunchboxes and telling anybody with labels stating calories that they were going to get fat. DS got a stern talking to on this subject especially as he thought that as he had school dinners that don't come with labels that they didn't have calories.
I initially thought it was just my DSs school that was off message but have since spoken to my SIL on the other side of the country after my 6yo stick thin DN decided to tell me she couldn't have pudding because she was too fat - SIL confirmed they were having issues following the change4life campaign in their school.
The change4life suggestions really wound me up because for us they advocated a worse diet than we already had but DS believes as many 5yo do that stuff from their teacher is always right.
I have no problems with schools teaching about balanced diets & exercise but that message seems to have been lost with the anti obesity campaign and they seem to be aiming for a generation of kids with issues about food.
They did report on the local news that the level of eating disorder hospitalisations in the region has now hit a peak level which I find sad and worrying.

molding our DC get given lots of information in school they may not agree with. As parents we need to be encouraging them to work out what they think and not just blindly accepting something without looking at the facts for themselves.

I agree there are not "good" and "bad" foods. I tend to describe in terms of everyday foods and treat food. Your meal at TGI is not "bad", it is a "treat". Your son probably wouldn't do well on oreo shakes with every meal, and I think it is fine to understand that.

If you have a healthy attitude to eating at home, it is easy enough to talk through the choices as you make them and counteract any school nonsense. We recently had the silly Change4Life brochure home, and I talked through with my two about where I disagreed with it.

I would do the homework, but put the meal out in a way which showed clearly it was an occasional treat.

Friday dinner (treat dinner for family birthday)
pasta
milkshake

etc, etc.

Saturday breakfast (reflects usual pattern)
grilled mushroom
porridge

OP, getting him to talk to his brother about nutrition seems like a very good way to gain some perspective on this.

I'm puzzled as to why you didn't just do that instead of posting this thread.

YANBU

That is appalling. It's one thing for a food diary to be given as a piece of Science or Maths homework for analysing (though I still don't like it) but as a 'healthy' eating test with a prize - not on at all.

I have an 11 year old in year 6 who teeters on the edge of an eating disorder. I have had anorexia since I was in my early teens. I am absolutely paranoid about anyone suggesting to my daughter that something is 'bad' for her and she shouldn't be eating something. She already thinks enough of this for herself and having it validated by an adult she trusts (such as her teacher) is unacceptable imo.

Pre teens (regardless of their weight) being made to feel uncomfortable and guilty about food is very dangerous.

I'm sorry, did it sound as though I was going to actually write "stick it up your arse" on the paper?
Did you think it was somehow directed personally at you? Because that would have been an achievement, given that you hadn't actually posted at that point?

There's a bit of a difference in directing a rude comment at someone and saying "I feel like writing this on this piece of paper"

But anyway. Who really cares?

I'm not demonising the teacher. I have had 3 DCs in school, my eldest is 16. I have never complained about any teacher, my ds2 teacher is wonderful.
I am complaining that the way this has been done is wrong.

If the curriculum says that 10 year olds should be provided with lists of good and bad foods, and told they will get a prize for the best diet and told that low fat food is the way to go, then yes, that is a very flawed curriculum IMVHO.

YASooooooNBU

I think it's a really rubbishly thought out exercise and I detest slim, active children being given a message that they should be eating like an adult on a full-on losing weight diet.

I have never talked about 'healthy' food with my 5 year old but now he's started school he asks a bit about food now ie 'Is this healthy?' And I too just try to talk about food is just food - some things we need a lot of, some things not so much. But he is definitely being influenced by healthy eating propaganda where low fat margarine and sweetener squash is a good choice. It is shitty food education. The leaflets that come home from school about it go in the bin.

I couldn't complete that food diary, I would be properly annoyed my son has got a bit worried about something he shouldn't even be mindful of, and I think it's such a shame that this has taken the shine off what should just be a nice treat outing.

It's all in the writing - beef patty and saute potatoes? or burger and chips?

There you go, one is deemed unhealthy whilst the other would be deemed the opposite.

This is just another 'take the teddy home' thing where every parent attempts to out do each other with trips on the London Eye or Ski-ing in St Moritz for the weekend - the reality is - they did bugger all of the sort.

Just write 'My son is not taking part in this exercise because it is fundamentally misguided, nutritionally invalid and psychologically damaging. Please speak to me.'

Well I did surburban

I just said that.

And then I started a thread on here to ask WIBU to write on the paper why my ds2 didn't do the homework.
And to vent a little bit. Because I was annoyed but I didn't want to say all that to my ds2 because I don't think it would have helped.

Is that ok? I didn't realise I had to justify why I was starting a thread?

Err, no OP - I was responding to chocolate, who suggested I was being rude by posting that you should get some perspective, while ignoring the fact that the first line of your OP was rude.

I made it clear in my previous post that your "stick it up your arse" comment was obviously to the school about the homework, which is why I posted "as a suitable response to the school issuing homework she wasn't happy with".

Just write 'My son is not taking part in this exercise because it is fundamentally misguided, nutritionally invalid and psychologically damaging. Please speak to me.'

Love it! And I normally hate the behaviour of 'those parents'.

As a teacher I would probably cry if I received a note like that (have done for less!) but it would really make me sit up and think about what the hell I'd been thinking and realise that I'd made a poor decision. I'd apologise to the class.

What's on the 'good food' and 'bad food' lists?

You don't, OP.

I just wondered why you would feel the need to post once you'd established with your DS that the basis of "good" and "bad" foods was flawed.

We took the class teddy to the bakery to buy Saturday morning pastries. So failed on both St Mortitz skiing and "good food" counts. The bakery staff found it most amusing.

Yanbu. I would at the very least be questioning there list of "good" foods.