To think this is absolutely joyless of nursery?

[Bettycrockered]

DD attends a private nursery and if you want to, on their birthdays you send them in with a shop brought cake and some candles. Everyone sings happy birthday and the cake gets shared out.

There is around 40 kids in the room, so an average of one birthday a week. By the time the cake is cut down to share, each kid gets a small cube of sponge and jam.

one of the parents via a nursery/parent forum has complained that they feel the cube of cake a few times a month is excessive sugar and so now there’s no birthday cake. On their birthday, the child sits in a chair and everyone sings happy birthday. Once a month the chef will instead bake a sugar free cake for each room and they have a little party instead.

AIBU to think this is totally joyless? DD doesn’t even like cake so I’ve seen the minuscule cubes of cake that come home with her. The meal plan at the nursery is really nutritious and varied - a little cube of sponge cake surely isn’t that big an issue? They could always alternate the children’s pudding with the cake rather than getting rid of it.

YABU - kids eat too much sugar as it is
YANBU - moderation is fine

At my DD nursery for birthdays you can't take in cakes however you can pay an additional £5 and the nursery chef will make a cake to suit the class (size, allergies etc) they then have a tea party with the cake for birthday child. Takes the hassle off me making/buying a cake and I'd pay more/the same for a shop bought cake

So the kids whose parents have said "no" get to watch their friends eating cake 🤔

So I guess I’m a joyless parent!
we are taking about nursery kids here (I personally have a 3 year old at nursery) I’m guessing nursery kids around the world are under 4-5 years in age.

1. Average child should take no more than 19g of sugar a day, a slice of average children’s icing cake is 36g of sugar.

Another fun fact- average child consumes one years worth of sugar within six months.
OP is taking about 40 kids in her DD nursery, and like she said that’s a cake on average a week. I don’t know about all the mums on here but my child had 5 cakes this year for her birthday, I have to say one was a shop purchased chocolate cake but the rest was home made. I’m pretty sure an average child celebrates with family and friends, and it doesn’t have to be at nursery so it’s not joyless if they don’t get cake at nursery. If you send your child to that particular nursery that has a set of rules I would just go with it. I try so hard to cut sugar as much as possible out of my girls daily life’s because I know everything we eat has hidden sugars in.
My 3 year old is going to prep school next year, and her new school has already said- packed lunch’s - no crisps, no nuts, no juices, and no chocolate or sweets. I think a lot of schools are catching on with how much sugar children are consuming. (My child will be attending a school listed in the top 100 in the world and are in partnership with MIT)
Also sugar free cake is used by cancer patients (my dad being one) as cancer cells rapidly multiply with sugar.

😂

@Seashor oh how true this is!

In class, children who were doing well with handwriting were given a pen to write with instead of pencil. A parent complained that their child didn't have a pen. No more pens.

We introduced a reward at the end of each week (extra playtime or a fun activity) for children who tried extra hard during the week with work/behaviour etc. Parents began complaining that their child hadn't moved up the reward chart and why weren't they getting the extra play time. Now everyone gets extra play (No longer an incentive to push themselves that extra mile) unless they've been particularly badly behaved.

I could go on....

This. That poor child.
I am all for healthy eating but come on, birthday cake is a given.

Exactly what I have done but if I had a £1 for every time I heard but Jane’s mum lets her do xyz or John’s dad is getting him abc I would have paid off the mortgage early.
My usual response was that’s lovely for ’insert name’ but I don’t care what they’re doing/getting.

I bet they have a broccoli, carrot, cucumber and celery birthday tea at home. The highlight will be an oat biscuit with some vegan spread on.

For fun they probably do mental arithmetic or darning socks and the nearest they'll get to sugar is watching a bee from the safety of indoors looking out of the window.

Parents ruin everything at nurseries and school. My daughter’s school stopped allowing cake and party invites because it made parents who can’t afford it feel uncomfortable. A school I worked in cancelled Halloween because a few parents complained on religious grounds. There is always something, people seem to be happier ruining everyone else’s fun. If you don’t want your child to have cake then write a letter, why should everyone miss out. If you don’t want your child to celebrate a specific event then take them home instead of all children missing out. Let’s please the minority as seems to be the way on society today.

A given at home maybe but why should it be a given at nursery too?

There's a few of that sort of parent on this thread.

At your actual birthday party. You don't need a cake for nursery as well.

Sugar is do I grained In our culture, you see it in thd language. Its "fun" it brings "joy" it has become that people equate it as a necessity for children. It's not. It teaches terrible habits for adulthood if you show 2 year olds that you need a cake per week

(Your nursery sounds huge by the way. There are 12 children in my 3 year olds class and 10 in my 1 year olds & two of that 10 are mine 😄)

DD’s nursery has a healthy lunchbox policy so for the majority of the time there is no sugar at school. But they still get cake on birthdays, everyone here has one made at the bakers. It’a a bit of cake. If your child is otherwise eating well then a bit of cake once a month is hardly going to kill them.

I hate to be a bore but I would be very unhappy with my LO getting bday cake every week. It’s obviously very unhealthy but worse than that, it’s teaching them that it’s normal to eat these kinds of foods regularly, which in turn is just forming bad food habits from a very early age. We are in the middle of an obesity epidemic; the education system should be fighting against this/taking these things seriously and change starts from a young age.

YANBU

I feel very grateful that our nursery provides cake for birthdays and they have it instead of pudding. So every so often it's 'we had spag bol for lunch followed by cake because it was so and so's birthday'

It's a 'sugar free' nursery though so God knows what the cake tastes like. I had to sign a permission form so DD could have Jam with her croissant on 'French day' which I thought was over kill but I guess I'm on the more relaxed end of the scale!!

I feel sorry for the nursery. Not for the miserable bloody parent who complained.

The not allowed sugar kids will be shoveling down Mars bars and necking full fat coke as soon as they allowed out unsupervised.

I’m so glad my DC’s school provides the cakes for each bday! Apparently they’re with a lot less sugar and much more fruit to be balanced but each kid gets a cake for their bday.

Why do people assume that just because someone doesn’t want their child given sugary cakes every week at nursery, the child doesn’t have any sugar at all?

Because normal children like sharing a cake with their little pals on their birthdays. I remember my daughters being very excited picking out the one they would take ‘mum can I have the sooty one/3 blind mice one’ etc.

Is it so bad that the cake is sugarless? The children still get a party. Do they mind the cake not containing sugar at that age? I doubt I would have even noticed. I would have cared more about the color of the cake than how sweet it is, as long as it is a little sweet, but there are otherwise to do that than to dump a bucket of sugar in it.

I recently looked at a recipe of an apple pie my mom used to make and the recipe calls for nearly the same amount of grams in sugar as flower. I tried making one with half that much or replacing the sugar with something else. The taste was pretty good, though not as sweet. But now I wonder if it is the first time I was actually able to taste the cake itself, now that its' flavor was not obscured with sugar.

At 3 my child was diagnosed with demineralised teeth and we were told no sugar. It was only at this point that I realised how much sugar my kids actually ate. There is a tonne of hidden sugar in many ‘healthy’ meals. That aside kids don’t really need more than 1 sugary treat a day. And if they go to nursery or school they will almost always get some sort of sugary pudding. That being the case it means as a parent/grandparent there is almost no opportunity to give your own child a treat. In the UK we have developed dreadful habits with regard snacking and cake. In many work settings there will cake every day. The nursery is setting a really positive example for life long healthy eating.

Yes but isn’t that what their birthday party is for? (And if they don’t have a birthday party then I’m sure they’ll still get one with with family). I don’t think they’re missing out by not having one at nursery every week in addition to that.

Exactly. I bake at home