Teachers said my DD didn't have enough to eat

[StoppinBy]

First off I think I am BU at how much I let this upset me for personal reasons but I am seeking clarification on whether I actually do send her enough.

When I picked up DD6 the teacher in charge at the time said to me that one of DD's teachers had said that I wasn't sending enough for her to eat, yesterday she had :

A vegemite sandwich, two cherry tomatoes, an apple, a chunk of cheese cut off the block and a big handful of nuts, she brought home a cherry tomato, some of her crust and some of her nuts .

The reasoning behind saying she didn't have enough food was that she had eaten her sandwich and a tomato and her cheese at 'snack time' - 11am and then had her nuts and apple at lunch - 1pm. Apparently she often does this.

We usually have lunch at 11:30 - 12 at home to fit around DS's naps so personally I can't see the issue with how she ate and I feel that if she was actually hungry that she would eat everything in her lunch box but she regularly brings stuff home.

AIBU to think that she does have enough food and that the teachers are actually wrong or do most kids eat more than that?

To all the naysayers about the Nutella on toast, thank you to the poster who said it's the equivalent of cookies and milk.

She had breakfast, break, lunch, dinner, dinner and then Nutella on toast was an excuse to stay up later lol. As I said, she had 80% of her food intake before I got home from work.

7.30am Porridge
11am Cheese-string/fruit or Yoghurt/fruit
12.30pm Lunch - Sandwich
3pm Dinner at after-school (e.g. Shepherd's Pie/Spag Bol/Chicken curry etc.)
5.30 - 6pm Dinner at home (typically fish at her request, otherwise steak, pork chops, beef stew with potato & veg) - never ate too much of this as she was eating two portions of her after-school dinner!

7.30pm when bedtime was mentioned and she could get around my OH, she would demand Nutella on toast so that she could stay up later. She was no more hungry! She'd eat one bite of it and then try to drag it out. OH was a soft touch.
Most nights it was a milky hot chocolate. When it was me on duty I'd offer a banana if she was hungry and send her tiny little ass up to bed.

My DD4, aged 17, walks a pair of 6 and 7 year old kids to school and back, then babysits afterwards from about 3.15 to 4.30. One of her afternoon tasks is to pack their lunchboxes for the next day and put them in the fridge. They bring items like hard boiled eggs, deli meat and cheese tortilla wraps x 2 each, hummus, bread sticks/ carrot sticks, grapes, bananas, apples, frozen peas that defrost in a little container, ham and cheese sandwiches x 2 each, Greek yogurt, gyros with gyro meat (large, equivalent to two sandwiches or wraps) and lettuce, tomato slices, cucumber plus a little pot of yogurt sauce, string cheese or babybel, little boxes of raisins, small bag of potato crisps or corn chips and occasionally a treat like a mini KitKat or a cookie or granola/muesli bar or something like that. They drink milk that is served in school. They don't bring all of this every day of course but a selection that seems to cover a decent number of food groups. They have a PB&J sandwich or a quesadilla with salsa when they come home from school, with a glass of milk. They finish whatever they bring to school and always demolish their snack after school. Their mum comes home at 4.30ish - DD doesn't know what they have for dinner or if they get more snacks after she leaves.

Does your DD choose the quantity of food that goes into her lunchbox or just, for instance, sandwich vs wrap?

Why dig in so hard against the idea of sending extra food and insist she isn't hungry? You say she says she isn't hungry, but would she be eating her sandwich, cheese, and tiny little tomato at 11am if she wasn't hungry at that point?

Why not make an extra sandwich and pack it in your DD's lunchbox and see what happens to it?

The worst case scenario is that the sandwich comes home uneaten - is that a problem?

The Principal and school exec have said that we can't ban nuts outright - I'm not just making it up
I certainly didn't think you were making it up. But your school CAN ban nuts if it wants to. Maybe your Principal and School Exec don't want to. When someone shows that something you've said is wrong, it doesn't mean they think you're lying.
Maybe you should get nuts banned at the school if you've got an anaphylactic child there. You could lead it. You might save their life

I think this is the most middle class bollocks thread I've ever stumbled across.

@ElliotBoy on yer way then

If your DD is bringing home food in her lunch box that she likes then she isn't starving.

There is little point in "putting in an extra sandwich" simply to pacify the teacher. You might as well cut out the middle man and dump a slice of bread and a slice of cheese in the food waste each day.

My son eats most of his lunch at break time and then the snack stuff at lunch. This is because they don't get lunch break until 1.30. At our welcome meeting tge head of year told us most of the children do this.

It's good that schools keep an eye on what children are eating and some children have terrible lunches, think 2 family sized chocolate bars and a pack of crisps. But in my experience teachers arent always that well versed in nutrition.

If your DD is bringing home food in her lunch box that she likes then she isn't starving

Shes bringing home her crusts and the odd cherry tomato ffs

Hi OP, ignore the poster who seems to have really latched onto this thread for some reason, and is doing more harm than good by their manner. And who has had a lot of their posts deleted I notice.

Anyway, OP, I agree with you completely about your assessment of what is probably happening with your dds eating at school. What I question slightly is your response to it.

Adding a little extra food is not tantamount to ‘just throwing it straight in the bin’, as it helps demonstrate to others, (& gives your dd the choice ‘in situ’ vs reporting back / anticipating forwards which is always hard for young children), that you are correct that your daughter isn’t coming to school hungry, and being underfed there too.

If you are sensitive about all this, I really would do this for a week then go back to normal if she doesn’t eat anything more. It’s by far the easiest way to show to anyone and everyone how reasonable and open you are about food choices, and that there’s just nothing to worry about here.

As you can see from this thread, the tighter wound you get abs the more detailed you get and stronger your convictions get... the more it could be seen by some as ‘protesting too much’ and that there’s something here simply because of your strong reaction.

I know that’s not fair, but I’d be mindful of TWO needs here: the need to reassure others, as well as the actuality of what your daughter eats.

As you have a sensitivity around this area, I’d just be mindful of what is going to be best for you. To take your words from earlier, are you really going to choose this hill to die on? Be strategic and don’t go in being spikey, and potentially raising eyebrows!

It’s about handling situations to your advantage, nothing more, nothing leads

If you put in an extra sandwich and it doesn’t get eaten at school, surely it won’t be wasted as your DD and her brother can share it as a snack after school when he goes looking for scraps in the lunchbox?

I might be wrong but I am getting the impression that this is not really about the food but more about feeling criticised as a parent

*If your DD is bringing home food in her lunch box that she likes then she isn't starving

Shes bringing home her crusts and the odd cherry tomato ffs*

Which is ........ food! Why would you want to give more for her to bring it home and it be wasted? FFS

howwillwedeal surely it is obvious to anyone that bringing crusts home, which most kids do not eat anyway does not mean that the child was not hungry at lunchtime. She has only had an apple and some nuts for her lunch.

And since the OP has stated that she MAKES her dd eat the crusts it's doubtful that it's food that she likes

Shes bringing home her crusts and the odd cherry tomato ffs

Which is ........ food! Why would you want to give more for her to bring it home and it be wasted? FFS

She might not like it? I like apples but if I’m not hungry for an apple I won’t eat it. Do you have to get your kids so hungry to the point they eat food they don’t want?

Its not a restraunt though.

Surely most of us grew up with the whole "eat it or go without"

Least she has food she will eat even if it's not all the time.

No one says the same things to parents who make their kids eat school dinners even when many and many a dinner lady will tell u alot ends up in the bin as they are often nasty or poor quality.

It's not that different in fact its more than my dd ever ate when she was on school dinners.

@Motherofcreek but she does like it she eats some, so should OP put in 17 different items in case DD fancy's one of them!

My son will not eat at school. His two favourite things are eggs and tuna which both smell so he won’t eat them in front of people who comment. Ie school friends. And so he’ll have a smoothly, apple, packet of crisps and a ginger bread man for lunch. Having had a full English breakfast.
I’m just waiting for the comments

I've skipped the middle of the thread; but one point that occurs to me is that if the weather is still very hot where you are she may feel more like drinking than eating much anyway!

Hope that you can just tell the teacher, lunch at home is early and if she wants to eat lunch at recess that's fine, you'll give her more in her lunchbox if she brings it home empty and sounds like she was actually hungry!

The child is 6, helps to pack her own lunch and has been asked numerous times by Mum if she wants more. She is surely capable of saying "can I have another sandwich Mum?"

It doesn't matter if she's bringing home a cherry tomato or half a sandwich if she was hungry she'd have eaten it wouldn't she?

The teacher also didn't say that the child had complained about hunger...she just shared an observation which even if you are a teacher can be wrong.

IN CONCLUSION

I spoke to the teacher at drop off today and asked if my daughter had mentioned being hungry - response again was no, so I asked why it was noticed s obviously it was noticed for a reason and her reply was

'we just noticed her eating all of her sandwich at snack when all the other children were only eating their snack and said why don't you leave some for later', my DD replied 'I just eat it now'

Teacher replied 'ok'. That's it, no big story about it.

So again I asked why it was brought up as clearly someone thought it was an issue and if it is I would like to fix it, teacher replied with a smile 'No, there's no problem, it's just how we do it in this class, we let you know if something is unusual and if it's a problem you can deal with it, if not then you let it go over your head so just leave this one'

The end. Thank you again for all the rude comments about my starving neglected children but even the people right in front of them actually don't see a problem and personally I am still baffled as to why they would raise a 'concern' that they're not even concerned about but there you go.

Again I asked the teacher

I suspect this is the reason why we have lunchtime at 11 at our primary school, Stoppin! a fair number of children are hungry enough to eat their sandwiches by then.
Glad it's all been resolved - although maybe the teacher could work a bit on their communication style in future, so you're not left worrying all weekend that there's something "wrong" when in fact there wasn't anything to worry about at all.

@thumb, yes I feel that 1pm is too late for lunch.

I agree that hopefully the teacher will learn to put a bit more thought in to saying what she actually means, there is a heck of a difference between

'We noticed your DD didn't have enough to eat' and 'Your DD ate all of her lunch at snack and then only had her snack for lunch', it might be worth checking if she is getting really hungry at school to a parent and these two sentences provoke different reactions.

Any who, people all make mistakes and put themselves across wrong sometimes (especially after a long day of dealing with a bunch of young children ), at least it's all sorted now.

Sorry that should read

I agree that hopefully the teacher will learn to put a bit more thought in to saying what she actually means, there is a heck of a difference between

'We noticed your DD didn't have enough to eat' and 'Your DD ate all of her lunch at snack and then only had her snack for lunch, it might be worth checking if she is getting really hungry at school' to a parent and these two sentences provoke different reactions.

I suspect that the teacher was sounding you out in that conversation because she does think there is a problem and I don't think you have heard the last of this.

Most people faced with the remarks that you received would just put an extra sandwich into the lunchbox instead of wondering if the teacher was playing mind games with you.
I agree with WellThisIsShit's post of Sun 03-Mar-19 11:00:19.

If this is the hill you choose to die on, why?

To those concerned about waste - it is far preferable to waste food than to have a child hungry in school.

@StoppinBy that seems all in order, nothing to worry about move on.

@mathanxiety that sounds very far fetched and I do not believe for one second that anymore will be said. A child chooses to have lunch early, drama because she's not conforming to the norm that's all!