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

I'm "that mother".

My children genuinely get excited by strawberries, melon and figs. They love a curry and had duck pancakes & stir fry this evening. They have been brought up on adult tastes.

They have cakes on their birthdays, sometimes we have an ice cream, sometimes we make a crumble for after Sunday lunch. Its not a treat. Sometimes sweet foods just appear & often they don't. It's just another foodstuff but one we eat less off. We don't keep crisps, chocolate, cakes or breakfast cereal in the house as day to day foods. Beige and sweet is not considered part of our diet but no food is off limits ever.

We grow fruit and veg in the garden and at 3 & 1 they are involved in planting, watering and picking so it's exciting to eat.

They live on a small holding and have been camping since a few months old. They love being muddy, know all about where food comes from. They will hike up the fells near our house, they use knives at home for food preparation and attend forest school classes where my 3 year old uses saws and lights fires.

I'm not an over protective, tightly buttoned anxious wreck. I do however think we should teach children healthy food habits from toddlerhood and having weekly cake & associating junk food = treat is not a healthy mindset.

My DDs school doesn’t allow sweets at all and honestly, I’m totally on board with this. They just don’t need it and have plenty of opportunities to have it elsewhere and learn moderation. They do a really sweet ceremony where the child’s parents stay after drop off and show some photos of the child growing up and the child walks around a candle to show they are going round the sun. The kids seem to really love it and everyone still gets plenty of processed sugar at birthday parties 🙄. When they’re really little, they also aren’t “missing out” because they don’t know it’s a thing to get cake on their birthdays!

I’d want to see the ingredients of the sugar free cake. If it contains artificial sweeteners, I would be sending in an alternative for my child.

They tend to be migraine triggers in our family. When dd got older and she tried common sugar substitutes things, we did indeed discover they triggered migraines for her.

Once a week is not in moderation. I absolutely agree with the nursery here. I'm guessing you're not really aware of how damaging sugar is to humans?

Great on the nursery getting kids used to not having regular sugary treats as normal.

Ours did something similar and then gave a piece of fruit instead, what kid wants fruit instead of cake?! As long as it’s in moderation I can’t see the issue at all.

A cube of Sponge once a week is not excessive.

But that’s the problem… for a lot of children it’s not in moderation as sugar (/UPF) is everywhere if they’re getting sugar at home, parties, grand parents, days out etc and on top of that nursery too.

Sugar free cake is the most depressing thing I've ever heard of

It’s not the sugar, it’s the processed crap, why don’t they just have a home baked spongecake and custard?

We always provide an alternative at my nursery. We keep a stash of stuff for the allergy kids on their peers birthdays.

It reinforces the idea that cake is a weekly food item - also some weeks it will be more than once

😂

I'm on the app so can't send thanks, but thanks!

It's honestly ridiculous and these attitudes will end up in binge and secret eating. It's just cake. If the rest of their weekly diet is varied, with plenty of fruit, veg, protein and an appropriate amount of fat, salt, sugar etc, wtf is the problem? They're kids! It's birthday cake!

DD's nursery save the birthday treats (usually a fairy cake) until the end of the day and give them to parents who can decide. If there's a lot of icing I might scrape that off, but for the love of God, just brush their teeth well and make they eat well and get plenty of exercise the rest of the time!

It's the lack of exercise. My son lives outside of UK eats what he wants plays basketball everyday...bikes to school...weekends out and about with friends...he is 11. Uk seems kids are kept at home for their 'safety'. It's actually worrying their lack of independence. ...I've seen some people won't let their 13 year olds walk to school.

My cousin became a health food freak after moving to California. Her son didn’t have a sugar sweet or ice cream during his childhood - everything he ate was monitored along with his weight. It was all sugar and additive free, and raisins were occasional treats. He was a beautiful, healthy child. Once he became independent he went berserk. He’s now in his late thirties, morbidly obese and addicted to junk food. He’s struggling with co-morbidities including type 2 diabetes. Everything in moderation. Parents don’t seem to realise that a time will come when they don’t have control and these regimes can backfire badly.

Can’t allow home baked stuff because the kitchen hasn’t been inspected for hygiene standards !!

Sweeteners are UPF garbage and linked to brain cancer. They also cause diarrhaea in many people. I would be the one complaining if any parent suggested feeding cakes to small children containing artificial sweeteners.

Well why wouldn't the parent cut down on sugar at home then instead of getting it banned for everyone?

Cuntiness of the highest order.

Over consumption of sugar, particularly added sugars in processed beverages and foods, can contribute to obesity which is an important risk factor for cancer. There is no evidence that sugar is a carcinogenic substance or that it makes cancer cells grow faster, or in itself causes cancer.

Personally I think this is OK. The other parent may not be aware of how much cake the kids are getting in terms of portion size if their child is eating it. And you don't know if their child is diabetic or acts differently with sugar which some children do. Everyone has the right to parent their child in the way they see fit and her alternative is that her child is left out every single week. We're careful about how much sugar ds has because he hates getting his teeth cleaned and I'm always scared we're not getting them thoroughly enough and he's like a fruit bat. Do I care enough that I'm going to stop cake in nursery, of course not but I can understand why someone might.

I think that’s a bit extreme calling it that…it seems the parents are more up in arms about it than the kids are.
Equally, parents can always give their child more cake at home if they think it’s that unfair their toddler/child doesn’t get the birthday cake at nursery every week anymore…

Once he became independent he went berserk. He’s now in his late thirties, morbidly obese and addicted to junk food. He’s struggling with co-morbidities including type 2 diabetes. Everything in moderation. Parents don’t seem to realise that a time will come when they don’t have control and these regimes can backfire badly.

There was a parent in another thread who smugly posted that her 5 year old daughter is not allowed any type of sugar or unhealthy food. I told her the true story of one girl from our school who grew up the same way and she scoffed at me in classic MN style.

The story is almost exactly the same as yours. A friend of mine grew up in a strict home with virtually zero sugary or processed foods allowed. She developed a binge eating disorder in her teens and spent her entire pocket money on junk food. During school trips where her mum couldn't monitor her, she bought entire shopping baskets full of chocolate bars, candies, gummies crisps and fizzy drinks and proceeded to eat it all by herself in her bunk bed. Then obviously disposed of the evidence before going home. Other kids were spending their money on souvenirs and random tat.

I actually think that the totalitarian type of upbringing is probably the root cause rather than food itself. However safe to say that parents who impose extreme rules on their kids are odd characters themselves, possibly with personality disorders or MH issues. Their kids are more likely to grow up with self esteem issues and become prone to addiction (sugar being an obvious one if it was forbidden).

YANBU…that’s a bit miserable.

Having said that our nursery no longer allows us to send cake in on birthdays for allergy reasons, which is fair enough. I’m not actually sure if the nursery do anything to mark birthdays for the kids, my sons has always been on a day he isn’t at nursery so far 🤷‍♀️

I can see it both ways tbh. Yes on the surface it's bloody miserable to not just let the kids have a little square of cake. However it can get ridiculous.

On top of every kid bring cake/sweets for their birthday they still serve massive puddings every day at my dd's school for her dinner. They quite often bake or decorate biscuits during the school day. They're then going to birthday parties quite frequently where they get yet another slice of cake and a party bag absolutely loaded with sweets.

I don't want to be 'that mum' who won't allow her kids a treat but then it's really hard when we're inadvertently sending the message to children that the only way to get joy out of a celebration is with craptonnes of sugar. It's massively reenforcing that pleasure-reward part of sugary foods that make them so addictive in the first place.

I also resent it to a degree because I feel that the kids getting loaded with sugar at school means I feel like I can't treat my own daughter when I want to because she's already overloaded with sugar from elsewhere. I think a far more wholesome way to enjoy something sweet is to bake a cake with my kid, for example, rather than getting a bag of haribo from a random kid she doesn't even know.

I’m a teacher, I would not be allowed time off for a child’s birthday! Not everybody can drop a day of work whenever they want.