to be annoyed that my dds school has been giving out certificates to children who bring in healthy packed lunches?

[spudmasher]

Today she took in a ham roll, four cherry tomatoes, a few slices of cucumber, some fresh pineapple and a small apple pie.

She was not given a certificate because she had the apple pie in her lunch!

When I was making her lunch tonight she asked me not to put a little cake in because it was unhealthy and she would not get a certificate.

I thought it was unreasonable to reward a child, or deny a reward on the basis of decisions made by the parent.

I also feel that six is too young an age to bear the responsbility of deciding what they should eat. Surely the child should be carefree and just trust the parents to know what is healthy?

I also thought that a little fat and sugar occassionally, will not be harmful to a child.

I also felt that they are encouraging children to deny themselves small pleasures - could lead to eating disorders imo.

Thanks. Feel better now.

Am I over reacting?

Have sent snotty e mail to school........

[3andnomore]

Oenophile, that is awful.

Littlebella, completely agree ,if you make children eat everything on their plate it's a recipe to disaster...and indeed asll the person learns is to override their instinctive eating, knowing when they are full and all that!

[Oenophile]

"I try not to make food an ISSUE at home because I know that she is probably going to spend most of her adult life OBSESSING about everything she eats."

Probably, and for me it got worse than that with my DD1, who was at at a private school where enforced eating was the norm - 'sit there till you eat some of that' and 'no pudding until you eat your main course' (shocking to me as I don't think you should bargain with small children this way, giving them the idea that pudding has to be earned - surely it should be considered as part of the balanced lunch? makes it even more attractive and 'forbidden'.) DD1 developed severe anxiety about school lunches, had bulimia in her teens, and even now in her 20s has food 'issues' - now I know it's not as simple as cause and effect, maybe DD1 was already susceptible to an eating disorder and it would have happened anyway, but I am sure the school's draconian policy helped set it on its way. Well, hell, that's not quite true - secretly I DO think it caused her problems, and she does too, but I'm erring on the generous side.

DD2 went to the same school (was I mad?! must have been) but was a much more rumbustious character and simply refused to do the whole 'eat it up' thing - was kept in at playtimes with plate of food in front of her - but robustly refused to eat it. Just sat there, with bored supervising teacher. When called into the school to sort out what they saw as a big problem, I told them I didn't want any pressure put on DD2 to eat and the whole idea of making food a big deal is very dangerous, IMO. (with magnificent self-restraint I did NOT cite the example of DD1, who was then in the grips of bulimia/anorexia.)

We seem as a nation to have got into a big muddle over the whole eating thing. But on the whole, the fewer issues and complications there are over the simple human/animal function of getting oneself fed, the better, IMO.

[LittleBella]

I don't really agree with forcing children to eat everything on their plate, tbh. If they're full up, they're full up, forcing them to eat more than they need merely takes away their inbuilt ability to regulate their appetite and can lead to eating problems in later life. It's a good idea to let them be guided by their own sense of whether they've had enough or not, rather than teaching them to override it. I think a lot of adult obesity is caused because we don't listen to our stomachs' signals telling us that we're full up, we've learnt to override them and eat more than we need, hence weight-gain. I do insist that they eat a bit of everything on the plate though, so there's some balance. Otherwise DS would be quite happy just eating the meat.

[SpiritualKnot]

I think it's bizarre to dictate to children about what's healthy/unhealthy and restrict them to low fat crap as if they're mini versions of overweight adults.
I have visions of these kids leaving school and gorging themselves on things they missed out on once they leave home!
My kids are daughter, 8 and son, 15 and skinny as anything and when the 8 year old tells me that she's not allowed crisps etc..I feel so irate about it.
Our only rule on eating are that we never ask our kids to finish their meals, once they're full they can leave whatever they want. Their grandmother came once and told our son to finish his meal or else "the vultures would come and steal it away from him" He was so puzzled about it!
I still have memories of putting an unfinished meal in the bin as a child and my mother geting it back out and forcing me to eat it! There was ash from the coalfire in it...mmm crunchy! However I was one of 5 kids and money was tight..so I spose she had an excuse.

[LittleBella]

Well there's lots of evidence that the 2 hours after lunch are an intellectual and energy dip for most human beings, so that school might be on to something. In Germany school used to end at about 1PM, it started much earlier though.

[Lorayn]

DD's school is packed lunch only and they all eat in their classrooms so space shouldn't be a problem, but time still is. Maybe on top of the 'you must not eat anything with more than 4 calories in it' they have a 'you must spend 30 minutes running around even if you havent finished your lunch' rule, trying to keep them exercised as well as hungry!!

[nightowl]

Have only read the op but wrong wrong wrong.

humiliate the child to make a point to the parents?

how can you "reward" a child for something that is out of their control?

what next? a certificate for the most expensive uniform?

[Blandmum]

Our school day (when I were a lass!) ran from 9 to 4 and we had an hour for lunch.

The school I work in runs from 8.50 to 3.00 and they have 45 minutes for lunch.

the 45 minutes isn't the major problem, it is more that we don't have enough space for them all to sit and eat for the 45 minutes, they have to eat and run.

The school I went to had enough canteen space for us all to sit. Both of these examples are in secondary.

I do know of one school local to me who don't reallu run school lunch at all (except for the children who have free school meals). their school days stops at about 13.30-1400. They found that if the tried to teach the children after lunch, many of them would skive off and not attend in the afternoon.

[LittleBella]

I seem to remember that because of mad ole spoonwoman, we just weren#t allowed to gobble. She'd knacker the fingers of anyone eating too fast or too slow. Adn anyone who left their veg.

I'm not saying we should go back to that btw

[Lorayn]

And on the subject of table manners.
ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
DP eats like an animal!!! You'd think I was going to take his plate off him he eats too much, too fast and his knife and fork are in the wrong hands, oh, and he scrapes the fork across his teeth.
The children however eat like little angels

[Lorayn]

My dd starts lunch at about 12 o clock, but she has about fifteen minutes then has to go out to play, when i was at school we had the whole lunch hour to finish our lunch, although we would rush to play outside there was never a child sent out that wanted to eat more.

[3andnomore]

Really stupid question here...as it was broached that there isn't enough time for the children to eat at lunch...how was that when you lot were younger then, seeing that you mention that it was different...
I truely don't know, as in germany simply starts earlier and Kids will be home at the latest by 2, so, lunch is not taken in school...

[LittleBella]

No this one wasn't a glider, she was more of a scattergun...

[Blandmum]

LB, did she 'glide' like the Nuns in The Blues Brothers????

I try not to be anal over the eating thing. But it does break my heart when I see children who will not pass food to each other, will push and shove, throw food at each other and on the floor etc. And when asked to pick up their mess will say 'That is what the cleaners are paid for'

It is fire on my skin.

Being good at This sort of basic social interaction is what helps to just be nicer to be around!

[LittleBella]

We used to have a mad teacher come round and rap us over the knuckles with a spoon if we did any arbitrary bad table manner thing.

Catholic convent infant school..

[LittleBella]

I once started a thread about how pissed off I was that DS still insists on eating with his hands (he's 8) and was told to lighten up!
I also have an aversion to bad table manners.

[Blandmum]

Hathor, we are lucky and still have proper cutlery/ plates etc. We have rather nasty institutional trays, but that is all. So I think we get away lightly!

[Blandmum]

LB

you said,
'I think how we eat is almost as important as what we eat, in establishing good eating habits.'

Agree 100%.

Sadly we don't have a lunch hall large enough for all the children to sit down to eat (1300 in the school). Staggered lunchtimes would help, but they would be a devil to timetable, and still allow the staff a lunch break too!

Lunch is a 45 minute break, which isn't ideal.

We do have good school meals provided, and we also have a breakfast club, which offers ceriels for 60p, toast etc for 30p. And still some of the kids but sweets etc for breakfast from the local shops. It is such a shame.

And to be fair to the children, and their families, we have not been teaching good food in schools in helpful, appropriate ways for many years.

[OrmIrian]

We had that too hathor. Everyone sat at tables of 10, a prefect at the end to serve the food and everyone had to pass plates down and then help each other to vegetables and water etc. And help pile the plates up at the end.

But that was a private girls school in the 70s

[Hathor]

Moons ago when we were little we had proper crockery, cutlery and pudding bowls and glasses for lunches. Now they seem to have plastic prison trays and blunt cutlery. Not a good start.

[iliketosleep]

yes not being able to eat with a knofe and fork is not good, i give my 4 year old a knife to practise with (newly sharpened carving knife) and he either sits for around half an hour trying to cut his chicken on his own or he amnages and shoots said chicken across the room often into the greedy cats mouth! but he tries bless him

[OrmIrian]

I hate bad table manners. It's one of my real bugbears. And I have to confess that even my DCs who eat at least one meal a day at a table (with or without parents) and proper knives and forks, still have a tendancy to try to pick things up with their fingers and eat with their mouths open . It's a constant battle to remind them. However it has paid off when we go somewhere it really matters. I wonder if it is because they spend a lot of time with other kids who simply never get told how to behave when eating.

[LittleBella]

Actually MB this is one of my bugbears with schools, they don't give children enough time to eat in a civilised fashion. They're encouraged to wolf down their food and rush outside to play.

I think how we eat is almost as important as what we eat, in establishing good eating habits. That thing of sitting down nicely, rather than lolling in front of the TV while grazing, should apply to school as much as home. But I suppose they'd have to cut play time, or lesson time, or extend the school day to deal with giving children a good amount of time to eat.

[Blandmum]

It is quite sad to see some of these children eat. They have no table manners at all, have no concept of the normal polite behaviour that makes eating a more pleasurable experience. And their food choices are often very poor.

A secondary school near to us has started taking some of the children to lunch early, as part of a nurture scheme. They teach them how to sit and eat, to pass food to each other, and to chat in a normal way.They also make sure that they eat a reasonable hot meal in the middle of the day. They have seen significant improvements in the children's behaviour in and out of the dinning room.

We have students who would benefit from this sort of help.

[Hathor]

I eat chocolate bards with a knofe. All the other junk food with my fingers.
Good practice for when they are older and eating lunch over their computers I suppose.