To insist your child chooses a certain lunch option?

[Kelzbelz87]

Just curious really! Not saying either is wrong.
My children have 3 lunch options at school, a meat option, a veggie option and a jacket potato. Each morning the teacher tells them the options and the pick which one they like. I talk to a mum at the school and she was saying she insists her daughter chooses a certain option each day, whether she says she likes it or doesn’t, and mum gets cross if she picks something different to what she’s been told!
What does everyone else do? :)

Does she insist on the same section every day ie the veggie option then no not unreasonable if their veggie family and she’s worried that the daughter will choose meat.

Why can't the child choose meat if she wants to? Parents shouldn't force their eating choices on their children.

Waytoosoon that’s true! I hadn’t thought of that! Clearly her choosing for her daughter is what works for her family and that’s fine, I was just curious how other people did the meal thing! 😀

My family didn’t eat beef so I used to love picking the beef ravioli at school. When the whole mad cow disease thing happened my family was very righteous and said well at least we’re not at risk. I spent the 90s in fear of my school meal choices in the 80s! Thinking I had caught the disease.

Currently awake due to anxiety (not over mad cow disease) but this thread has just added to it.

Btw I let my kids choose what they want to eat!

I sort of do this but... we pay for school meals now (year 3) and there is currently limited choice - one hot option and sandwiches. I’ve said to my son I’m not paying for a packed lunch at school when I can send him in with a (better) one. So he has a choice of taking a packed lunch in or the hot option. We have the menu at home and talk about it the night before.

My DC has chosen a ham roll almost every day since September! I am now trying to gently nudge into exploring other options (also just bland rolls, it's cold food only - but that's another story)

Easttowest I’m so sorry if this thread isn’t helping your anxiety! Anxiety is the worst :(

Even if the mother is wanting her child to be vegetarian she is unreasonable. Being veggie is her choice not her child’s.

How often do we see threads on here where a child wants to be vegetarian and people say she should be allowed to choose to be? Well the opposite also applies. If the mother isn’t cooking for her child when she chooses the meat option then it’s her child’s decision.

No, never. It would be a waste of 2.32p and they would come back starving. My child is a very, very fussy eater and therefore has complete control over the decision-making.
In fairness, I am grateful that they choose 13/15 options in the first place. On two days there is nothing they will eat and so they have a packed lunch that day.
They have changed one of their regular options three times, which shows an improvement/willingness to try something new. Fortunately my school are fabulous at accommodating them (they are atypical).
The only thing I might do is remind them of what they have told me in the past about certain choices if the menu changes and then they remember our conversation.
If I did not approach it like this, I would have a child with worsening eating issues and they would call my bluff and choose to eat nothing/sit at school with an empty stomach so I choose my battles as their issues with textures, tastes and butter are not going to go away by 'If you were hungry, you'd eat it.' (In the past I tested that theory - not something I will repeat any time soon).

In my school, there are three daily options, the menu is sent home and parents order online. Most parents sit down with their children and choose the order. I used to have a little girl in my class who would regularly cry about what her mum had chosen for her, she wasn’t a particularly fussy child, so it seemed a bit odd that mum would consistently choose an option she hated when there were two other reasonable options the child would have preferred...mum admitted she did it, but we never quite got to the bottom of why...

@EasttoWest

My family didn’t eat beef so I used to love picking the beef ravioli at school. When the whole mad cow disease thing happened my family was very righteous and said well at least we’re not at risk. I spent the 90s in fear of my school meal choices in the 80s! Thinking I had caught the disease.

Currently awake due to anxiety (not over mad cow disease) but this thread has just added to it.

Btw I let my kids choose what they want to eat!

It won’t end well. Eventually the kid will tell the mum what she wants to hear, not what they actually had. ‘Yes mum, had the vegetarian option, it was x and was nice’ while they really had the baked potato with a mince topping.

My mum did this in Secondary school and it is one factor in why I have an eating disorder as an adult.

Once my kids went to high school (10 here) I told them if they chose chips everyday I would stop school lunches - I could check their accounts to see what they bought and they knew it. Dd1 was a nightmare, chips, mayo and a biscuit - hardly nutritious, hence me laying down the law. (Dd2 chose meat mash and veg or lasagna and salad)

Maybe the family is trying to keep the child a healthy weight.

We used to have parents come in and eat with kids once a year. It was surprising how many parents tried to control what the child ate, roast dinner day, they tried to choose which meat and veg the child had. They wanted the child to eat what they themselves had picked for their own meal. They would say to the child why you picking green beans instead of carrots and the child would say because i like them.

Maybe if she's cooking pasta that night she doesn't want her to have the pasta option, or she's tired of paying £2.70 for her dc to have half a baked potato, or she has dietary requirements. Lots of other options, although if the child wanted and ordered something different I'm not sure how she'd know anyway if they are picking in school. We order ours in advance via parent pay so I just pick to make it easier (pre covid, they have packed lunches now)

At my school it used to be a choice of pick and mix (sandwich) or hot meals. We had one parent who specified hot meal on certain days she knew she couldn't cook a hot meal at home.

We have an online system we book the meals on. There are only 2 options at the moment, so if mine are school dinners I book whichever one they will actually eat.
Side note - do kids really eat things like coronation chicken?!
Mostly they go with a packed lunch of things they like.

My eldest is at comp. He has more options, we top up his parent mail account and he chooses whatever he wants, we wouldn't even know what if he didnt tell us. I would like to be that controlling parent in some ways, the comp have all sorts of junk food and fizzy drinks, which at home we reserve for one night a week, but I would also hate to give him a reason to resent me as he grows up.

Depends how old the child is. My ds is 5 and a fussy eater. He’ll eat a jacket potato and cheese every day at school if we didn’t chat about other options. So we have a deal that he eats the roast dinner and fish and chips each week when they’re on offer, to keep some variety and get some fish in etc. So I remind him on those mornings but that doesn’t mean he remembers when it comes to lunchtime!

@NeonGenesis

Is it because of dietary choices? E.g. she is raising them vegetarian?

I can't see any other reason why she'd bother intervening. Did she say why she does it?

But should a child have to follow their parents’ choice to be vegetarian? At home, obviously, the child doesn’t have a choice but to eat the food prepared. But elsewhere, can the child not choose meals that he/she wants? Just because your parents are vegetarian doesn’t mean you have to be. Children who have been raised in a meat-eating household can opt to be vegetarians (my son is one such example, and he was accommodated by me when he was growing up to do so). So why does a child have to follow its parents’ choice to be vegetarian? Re the op’s question- I think it’s good to give children the freedom to choose whatever meal they want in school.

I think if my child was choosing jacket potato with cheese and beans every single day then actually I would try to steer them to the other options on some days for dietary variety.

My 8yo currently chooses her own meals, they do it a fortnight at a time, I have no use what she has. My 12yo has what she likes but she has one sausage roll 'credit' a week otherwise she'd live on them. She knows I can see what she's picked so she sticks to it.

They both love being able to choose their own lunch although obviously the 12yo has more of a say in lots of things now.

My dd had jacket spud every day for lunch from reception to year 4. It was hot, tasty and she ate all of it.

I would be encouraging my child to choose a varied and healthy diet. My dd at at secondary school and it's entirely possible for them to live on chips and cake. I can see what she chooses each day and if she has a run of unhealthy lunches then I'll have a word with her- if she still continues to eat entire junk then I threaten to send a packed lunch- this usually nudges her towards some fruit or veg

When DD started secondary, she had pasta with cheese sauce nearly every day. We challenged her to have at least one different meal each week - one week she told us that had been macaroni cheese!