Kids snacks at school - white carbs twice before lunch

[prettyflowersinthesky]

DD is in y4.

I seriously don't want to be "that" parent so am wondering on the consensus on this.

DD's school has started giving the whole school's kids stodgy white carbs with jam twice before lunchtime (bagels).

Once when they arrive in the morning, and then again at break time.

DD is coming home with most of her lunch uneaten.

I fully appreciate about food poverty and that giving the kids food in this blanket way is a way of addressing that without singling out or embarrassing hungry children or families.

But I question

1. Whether or not the white carbs plus jam is appropriate nutrition
2. Whether or not most kids really need this
3. Whether or not two snacks between breakfast and lunch is excessive

There is no requirement for the kids to take and eat the snacks but to say to my child not to take them when the other kids are seems unfair.

I'm a bit torn, and certainly don't want to deny hungry kids access to food. But also wonder if the school needs to give this twice and also maybe the nutritional content of the snacks could be improved (e.g. fruit, whole grain snacks or something instead). I do appreciate that kids need more carbs than adults.

What does everyone think? Is this appropriate? I feel for the vast majority of kids without food poverty issues this is not necessary, so by serving all the kids a snack it is enforcing bad snacking habits, poor food choices as well as encouraging childhood obesity.

In many very healthy countries no snacking is allowed although I appreciate for very young children it may be necessary.

I am wondering whether or not to speak to the school about my concerns about them finding a better way to address the issues for the hungry kids.

But I do not want to speak up if I am seriously misinformed about all of this, hence interested in your responses. Thanks.

Yanbu = this is not appropriate / YABU - give the kids the snacks

Ok, so you're determined to argue semantics over content here?

@CecilyP

How on earth do you know where she lives?

Because sink estate really is a horrible expression used to describe where other people live. It would certainly be unusual for someone who currently lives on a more deprived council estate to say they live on a sink estate. (Someone who once lived in one and now thinks they have moved above it might do so).

It is bad enough to live in an area of a area of deprivation, social problems and anti-social behaviour without people looking down on you and thinking you live in a sink. It also becomes a problem for local authorities when decent potential tenants (even the desperate)
won't take accommodation there because of the reputation. I don't know about the rest of the country, by my local authority certainly wouldn't refer to a sink estate (I have heard it refered to as 'lower demand housing') as they have the problem of managing the void lets and trying to get less marginal tenants to accept housing there.

I am sure if exLtEveDallas happened to meet someone socially who happened to live on the estate, she wouldn't say, 'oh you live on that sink estate' to their face!

I could link you to Government documents that use the term.

I would be interested to see that.

If you call becoming so disabled you had no choice but to be moved to accessible accommodation 'moving above it', possibly. Still miss the view from my window, but I was rather relieved that I wasn't living there when a teenager was brutally murdered in broad daylight directly underneath what would have been my living room window following an argument about gang loyalties.

Nobody's under any illusions that they live in a lovely place or attend a lovely school when they clearly don't. That's why social housing exchanges used to specify 'Not ShitEstate or NotQuiteAsShitEstate', as even the people living in other estates wouldn't want to be moved there because they knew it would make their lives worse compared to either stayed where they were or moving to a different estate.

Unless of course, you think that poor people are too stupid to know when they're trapped living in an absolute shithole?

Am I? Or am I pointing out there is a prejudice at work here.

There is an assumption that ‘FSM’ and ‘sink estates’ do not ‘feed’ their children. That does not tally with my experiences at all.

Fair enough, Eve, although I do find it depressing that even a government press release, rather than just a tabloid, would use the expression.

Ok. So what about this. When I lived down south people used the word Cunt like a term of endearment. I hate the word, never use it and cringe whenever I hear it. But they still used it, day in day out. However I do use the word Twat and have seen people recoil when I have.

Maybe sink estate is like that. A perfectly normal descriptor of a deprived area to some (including my local council which considers 3 estates in my area sink estates and describes them as such on documents), and a terrible description of the people on an estate to others?

Because I see no way around this. I use the words to describe the area NOT the people as do most of the people around me. You don’t. Both of us could be right or wrong.

The OPs post is forgotten now. What is important here is the feeding (or not) of the children who need it. I’ll carry on doing that and let you carry on being horrified at my words rather than my actions.

^Nobody's under any illusions that they live in a lovely place or attend a lovely school when they clearly don't. That's why social housing exchanges used to specify 'Not ShitEstate or NotQuiteAsShitEstate', as even the people living in other estates wouldn't want to be moved there because they knew it would make their lives worse compared to either stayed where they were or moving to a different estate.

Unless of course, you think that poor people are too stupid to know when they're trapped living in an absolute shithole?^

No absolutely not. We were housed as a homeless family with no choice of where to go. We were allocated a flat in the slightly more popular estate not very far from the estate that people wanted to avoid. From our landing we could see all the boarded up houses. I have seen the council exchange cards, saying anywhere but xxx estate. But we could have been offered there and we wouldn't have had a choice. Therefore, I would never refer to the other estate as a sink. Ironically, the actual houses on that estate are identical to the houses (at least 50% now owner occupied) on the most popular estate in my town. I have no idea why one estate became so desirable while the other became so undesirable.

@rainyoutside

Am I? Or am I pointing out there is a prejudice at work here.

There is an assumption that ‘FSM’ and ‘sink estates’ do not ‘feed’ their children. That does not tally with my experiences at all.

Shit parents and poor parents are the ones likely to have hungry children. The two descriptions are not mutually exclusive. However, when you're talking about an area with huge levels of poverty, you're going to get both - instead of just shit middleclass parents.

Because I see no way around this. I use the words to describe the area NOT the people as do most of the people around me.

Are you sure? Maybe for yourself but can you be sure of all the other people around you. I think when people refer to an undesirable estate they are most definitely making a value judgement on the people who live there. As said above, at least in my town, the houses in the least popular and the most popular estate are identical.

You misunderstand me. I’m not horrified. I do however think it is indicative of a wider attitude on the thread and society about ‘the poor’.

Within teaching and I suppose in more general terms public sectors generally there tends to be a viewpoint that has a tendency towards firstly lumping the poor in together as one mass - you can see this in the ‘well my school is in a deprived area ... we have X percentage of children on FSM.’ That might be true but largely misses the point that actually most of those children will come from perfectly loving homes. There is a world of difference between not being able to afford quail eggs and organic milk and starving your child.

When people are presumed unable to help themselves, and you can always see this in where the discussions go - the suggestion is always more help, more intervention, more money, really - but it also means the threads take on a faintly patronising tone and anyone claiming benefits is interchangeable with a drug addict who routinely starves their child. These children exist but in a tiny minority and it isn’t healthy to make decisions for all children on this basis. Furthermore and perhaps most importantly it doesn’t actually help that minority of children, either.

ExLt: When I lived down south people used the word Cunt like a term of endearment.

Where 'down South' did you live? I live in SE London and have never known people use that word.

I'll have to read back a bit because I don't know how we got on to language from breakfasts :-).

When I lived in a particular part of the north west the chosen term of endearment was ‘cock.’

It took some getting used to

@CecilyP

How on earth do you know where she lives?

Because sink estate really is a horrible expression used to describe where other people live. It would certainly be unusual for someone who currently lives on a more deprived council estate to say they live on a sink estate. (Someone who once lived in one and now thinks they have moved above it might do so).

It is bad enough to live in an area of a area of deprivation, social problems and anti-social behaviour without people looking down on you and thinking you live in a sink. It also becomes a problem for local authorities when decent potential tenants (even the desperate)
won't take accommodation there because of the reputation. I don't know about the rest of the country, by my local authority certainly wouldn't refer to a sink estate (I have heard it refered to as 'lower demand housing') as they have the problem of managing the void lets and trying to get less marginal tenants to accept housing there.

I am sure if exLtEveDallas happened to meet someone socially who happened to live on the estate, she wouldn't say, 'oh you live on that sink estate' to their face!

I could link you to Government documents that use the term.

I would be interested to see that.

I call my own town a shithole.

It's one thing to not like a term but it's anothwr to judge a stranger and guess where she lives and what she thinks about a town she may well live or work in. It's a bit personal.

The judgement here is judgement of those on a low income.

People are free to refer to their own towns, streets, however they wish, but once you start making assumptions about the people who live in them, that’s a step too far.

I started the thread thinking the OP was being a bit precious but, actually, I think rainy is right.

No one is saying that hungry children shouldn’t be fed but it seems that a small minority will be hungry from no breakfast. Absolutely those children need food. A larger minority (and there’ll be some overlap) will be overweight. Feeding more children more than they need with processed carbs destined to produce insulin spikes won’t be good for them long-term.

I understand that because of various reasons including Covid this seems to be considered the best or only viable option but I agree that’s it’s a shit one. All the kids on MN are whippet-thin and exercise continuously but as a population we are all - not just kids - getting fatter and the metabolic consequences are serious.

Eh? I may be wrong but I thought the term sink used to describe a school or a housing estate came from the aftermath of dissolving school catchment areas = parents flicked to a better performing school leaving the scoop down the road undersubscribed and under funded abs sinking. I assumed sink estate was a similar concept. Is that not the case?

No

@rainyoutside

The judgement here is judgement of those on a low income.

People are free to refer to their own towns, streets, however they wish, but once you start making assumptions about the people who live in them, that’s a step too far.

Hold on.

If you scroll back through I jumped on folk making stupid naive comments about low income.

Your comment about I hope you're not actually a teacher was far harsher than her comment about potentially her own estate as a sink which is the crux of your problem.

@rainyoutside

The judgement here is judgement of those on a low income.

People are free to refer to their own towns, streets, however they wish, but once you start making assumptions about the people who live in them, that’s a step too far.

Rainy , I've reported my own post as I've RTFT again and realised it wasn't you who made that comment. Rather the comment was made to you.

Apologies. And to you OP as we have completely detailed.

I'm in the Southwest and think the C**t word is hard-core, but twat and crap are fairly common.

I live in the south east and same, @Enough4me . Must be some other area of the south where it's a term of endearment