To think the school has a point about packed lunches

[Rebeccaslicker]

I'm not sure about banning parents from the premises, but is it a bad thing to say no chocolate, sugary drinks etc in a primary school lunch?? (My DD is only 2, so I haven't had the lunchbox decisions yet, v interested in people's views!)

www.google.co.uk/amp/www.stokesentinel.co.uk/news/stoke-on-trent-news/now-mum-48-banned-school-1108690.amp

I think it's silly

Fizzy drinks obviously absoutely no but a bit of squash is fine.

My dd has school dinners at the moment and most of them are healthy but the puddings are things like chocolate crunch, jelly and ice cream.

Why can't children who have a packed lunch have a biscuit or a bit of chocolate as their pudding?

My dd went to school in September with water in her bottle. We tried for two terms to get her to drink it. The bottle mostly came home full.

She got a bad cough so I wanted her to drink something so sent her in with a bit of squash. She drank the lot. She now takes squash in every day and the school are fine with it. I would rather a child drink squash than not drink at all

Sorry for misunderstanding: that nuance wasn't clear from your earlier post.

I do agree children do not need those sorts of things in a lunchbox however my 4 year old had a school Christmas party recently and every parent was asked to pick something of a list the school had made to bring in. On the list was things like pizza, chocolate fingers, cakes, crisps etc so I can see why parents get annoyed they are not given the choice on what they feed their children to them see the school themselves give treat food.

Unless the child has SN that restrict what they will drink (and to be fair the mother in this article says her son has just been diagnosed with autism), I don't understand how you let them get to the stage of not drinking water? Squash either has to be full of sugar or full of sweeteners; how often are you letting your kids have that sort of stuff if they won't drink water?

Or am I being naive PFB mother of a toddler??!

I don't know... I think as a child I would probably not have drunk the water, so surely it would have been better for me to have had some sugar free squash rather than not drinking enough?

Suburban - my DS2 (3.5) will only drink half a carton of juice at lunch and 8oz of milk at bedtime. He refuses drink anything else at any time of the day. We are struggling to potty train him as he only does one wee a day and drinks very little. He would refuse water.

DS1 on the other hand only drinks water. There would be no point him having school dinners free or other wise as he wouldn't eat any of it. Apart from some dry bread maybe.

The problem is that in some schools if you are OK with fizzy sugary drinks and chocolate, that is all some parents will send. There are people out there who think a Mars bar, a Kitkat and a can of Coke are a perfectly acceptable meal for a primary school aged child.

Goodness these rules are all batshit. I get some children we’re arriving with shocking lunches but that is almost a cry for help. Surely concentrate on that rather than than limiting everyone?? My children have a balanced diet but I don’t necessarily want to be judged on it!

Some kids like water

Some don't. I personally hate water. My two seem to have gotten that from me. They drink squash. No fizzy drinks but squash.

They aren't drinking gallons of it either. On a normal day, the max they will drink is probably a beaker and a half

SuburbanRhonda - my school dinner eating days were the 90s so not had them since slightly healthier trends have kicked in!

But to be honest, and I'm not a healthy food fascist, in some ways isn't it not just about what's in the actual food in terms of e.g. sugar being used in cakes but also about the way it influences childrens' views of a balanced diet. In general these days don't parents want to try to move away from the idea that you have cake or biscuits for pudding every day as a normal thing? I grew up always being given pudding after dinner (and not fruit or yogurt!) and I certainly don't think it's helped my attitudes towards sweet treats.

So okay maybe kids are being given sugar-free biscuits and healthy cakes that don't contain saturated fats, air-fried chips or whatever. But when they go out as teenagers and start making their own food choices will they automatically pick sugar-free healthy air-fried options or will they just think hey we had chips several times a week at school, the chip shop will see plenty of me, and I always have something sweet after a meal, what cake/chocolate is there in the corner shop...

Agree it seems stupid/mean if school dinner eaters are allowed it.

But I can understand the issue of a packed lunch consisting of a share bag of Haribo too.

Maybe the rule should be what the lunchbox has to include not what it has to exclude - ie crisps, a cake or a bar of chocolate would be optional allowable items but some vegetables, a piece of fruit, some protein and a starchy carb would be requirements.

I don't think outright bans and pedantic rule enforcement is appropriate. Parents have 21 meals a week to balance their child's diet over. It is up to them how they do this, schools don't see the whole child or what happens all the rest of the time, and the school's (government's really) values are not the ones that should dictate the balance. If a child is suffering in some way, then the school should step in.

Also agree that the hypocrisy with the school serving cake etc. but banning it in packed lunches is annoying and coercive.

We just don't give DD anything other than water or milk*, so on the rare occasions when she's had juice - say at a party - she hasn't liked it much and has asked for water instead. Maybe that's harder to do as they get older?

• not a stealth boast - we try to feed her healthily but she does get some crap too, in fact its pizza tonight 🙈

The funny thing is that no one cares what they eat as soon as they get to secondary school - all this fuss about packed meals at primary and at secondary they just pick up a can of red Bull and a Ginsters pasty on the way to school .

I frequently pass my friends' children on their walk to school (all from frightfully middle class homes where they eat wholesome, home cooked food for every meal) and they are stuffing themselves with a second breakfast of doughnuts & chocolate bars ! And I am sure my teenage DS does the same.

If the child isn’t overweight then I see no reason why parents shouldn’t be free to put treats in lunch boxes. My kids eat a healthy balanced diet with plenty of fruit and veg.. but they also have biscuits or cake every day as they like them. Everything in moderation round here.. all kids are active and the right weight for their height!

My DM was a primary school headmistress and she said that lots of parents/grandparents picked the kids up with sweets or a mars bar every single night. That would be on top of what they'd had in their lunchboxes. Now my DM was a health fanatic (my typical lunchbox was: wholewheat sandwich with cheese, meat, egg), an apple or banana, water and a snack like a babybel, small pack of mini cheddars or something light like Pom bears), and I don't think the constant denial of sweets and treats did me any good long term as I just stuffed my face when I could, but there's a happy medium I think.

I wish my dc did that....

But when my dd was little, I wanted to give her just water..my dh refused and gave her juice stating "we don't like drinking water, why should she?"

So she had juice quite early. I wasn't impressed. I have managed to stop him from giving the youngest fizzy drink as a "treat" though. Put my foot down very firmly over that and he backed down quickly

The nutritionist told us to encourage juice drinking's both my boys are so constipated and ds2 doesn't drink enough. They even told us to offer fizzy drinks as it was better than nothing. But he wont drink them either.

Neither of mine have a dx SN. They are just extremely self restricting on their diets.

I think banning things is the wrong way to go. Surely it would be better to encourage a balanced lunch, so with a small treat alongside other, healthier foods.

It's the drink rule I struggle with. He's allergic to cows milk, won't drink an alternative. If I give him water he will drink the minimum amount to wet his mouth. I need him properly hydrated. He suffers terribly with faecal impaction and is on movicol. I don't see what's wrong with diluted sugar free squash or flavoured water. I don't like drinking loads of water but drink plenty if it's got a bit of flavour. No problems with teeth. Would never give fizzy pop or sugar laden drinks. He has dinners now as he's not a fussy eater and they have diluted juice! It's got silly.

I had a battle with my ds's school over sending in a carton of apple juice with his lunch (too sugary....although the school lunch includes a yoghurt which has the equivalent of 3 tsp of sugar in the pot) Ds has additional needs and will only drink juice or squash. The rest of his lunchbox is - a marmite sandwich, a sugar free yoghurt and breadsticks and dairylea (every day). They then said he could have it, but would have to sit in another room to drink his juice, which led to him having to rush drinking it and then vomiting over the shoes of a TA(he has reflux). We ended up having a care plan drawn up to state he could have apple juice or squash, and that he could have this in the lunch hall, to drink slowly throughout his meal. Which seems insane, considering I have seen children eating whole mars bars in their packed lunch.

Maybe the rule should be what the lunchbox has to include not what it has to exclude - ie crisps, a cake or a bar of chocolate would be optional allowable items but some vegetables, a piece of fruit, some protein and a starchy carb would be requirements.

Now there's a common sense policy. For many children the fruit and vegetables might be stunt only, but still it's a start and a much more positive standpoint.

But I maintain that draconian rules are usually the result of parental pisstaking.

its a bit ridiculous only to allow water IMO. fair enough no fizzy drinks but there's nothing wrong with a bit of squash or flavoured water if it means the kid will drink more fluid.

My children have never drank water. Not from the day they were old enough. It’s part of the sensory processing difficulties they both have. And as one was diagnosed quite old he would have looked like one of those picky children that some people on here scorn.

They don’t like the taste of water. And yes, my daughter has ended up in hospital twice because the school wouldn’t allow water in the past.

They take weak squash to school now. A healthy eating policy that bans weak squash or flavoured water but allows children to end up in hospital is ridiculous.

It must be hard having a child that flatly refuses to drink water. Especially as in our school we allow children to bring in a water bottle but not squash. Obviously if a health professional were to tell us we had to allow a specific child to bring in squash we would go along with that. However it does then make it difficult to uphold the “no sugary drinks” rule with the rest of the children.