Juice in school

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My DD’s teacher is being very combative about her taking juice to school (primary) in a clear drinking bottle. He says it’s against school healthy eating standards, but if she brings it in a non clear bottle it’s fine! She brings a very healthy lunch and has perfect teeth. She is also very sporty . She point blank refuses to drink water. Yet others in her class bring crisps and chocolate and nothing is said .
AIBU to stick with the (new) clear bottle?
i dislike petty rules that have no bearing on her education ! Especially when the rules are not enforced for others !

No water bottles in the 80s. And I spent time in a country where it was 35C outside!

Do you really not understand why is the teacher asking you to compromise by changing the bottle?

I'll never understand what human doesn't drink water. Juice was clearly an option from the get go. And that's bad parenting. You can tell yourself what you want (and I'm sure many will agree with you), but this is not good for dc and it is on you.

You are going the right way about having your child banned from taking juice altogether.

The teacher doesn't want to spend half the class explaining to the kids who will drink water but prefer juice why they can't have it.

Accept the compromise the teacher is offering you and stop wasting their time.

And it's not teaching your child to be "sneaky", it's teaching them not to rub other children's faces in it when they're allowed something and another child is not.

On Fridays, I bring a mini pack of Haribo for my DC to have on the way home. It's our "thing". But my DC enjoys it out of sight of the school gates because I've explained that having it in front of friends who might not have similar or be allowed sweets then is fairly tasteless behaviour.

Similarly, we have friends who rarely let their children have ice cream, whereas we'll let our DC have a Mr Whippy at the park at the weekend. Guess what - no Mr Whippys enjoyed in front of the friends. We don't create additional aggro that the parents don't need if we can help it. It's unnecessary.

Teachers definitely don't need the aggro of explaining to aggrieved young children why your DC is an exception to the rule. So get over yourself and send an opaque bottle.

As if people are having to post links to back up claims that water is the healthiest option to drink for a child. 🤯

What has this thread come to 🤣😂

I actually feel sorry for primary teachers especially at this time of year.
Petty things like this that are easily solved by the parent, that the teacher does not need to be dealing with.

It's probably the no added sugar stuff, which is like 2kcal per serving.

This is a common school rule, it isn't that it's fine in a non clear bottle it's just less obvious. The official policy is water only. DD won't drink water so she has a lovely pink bottle that we fill with squash.
She has had problems from refusing to drink enough so we are happy to give squash to get her to actually drink

Actually just snorted water out my nose reading that (yes because I drink water! I was parented so I didn’t get to dictate that I only consume crap). Don’t like air HAHAAHAHAHAH that will come next. Who would be a teacher ehh?

Elderflower cordial (homemade in my case) is undetectable visually in a clear water bottle - my eldest too was sporty and disliked plain water (in Yr 5-6 would lap the entire class in the 600m race on sports day), so elderflower was a compromise (preferred orange)

Just in case it helps, my 5 yr old is the same about cold water and we've had success with an insulated water bottle and popping a couple of ice cubes in. It stays nice and cold for hours, even in the middle of summer. I've even had the cheeky monkey complain it's too cold once when I got a but generous with ice cubes!

Ah, the "fifty pints of water a day" crowd acting as if there are no benefits to drinking (a moderate amount of) juice. Whatever happened to "one of your five a day", good for vitamin C etc?

I think the problem is that as drinking is restricted to breaktimes and lunchtimes, it's difficult to encourage enough drinking enough water when they can't just help themselves 'at the moment they are thirsty' , and thus they do drink enough when not just plain water in the 'allowed' times, because flavoured is more palatable.

She is an anxious child

With a parent who has spent half a morning whanging on about this, and battling a primary school teacher over a drinks bottle? No fucking shit.

Our school has a water only policy too. As a teacher I have to be seen to follow school policy but personal I don’t have a problem with squash. I will speak to the parent and if they agree to bring water that’s a win. However, if their child doesn’t particularly like water I’ll tell them to bring an opaque bottle. That way the child still gets to drink and they won’t get in trouble with other staff members if they bump into them on the way to the dinner hall.
If you disagree with her being asked to hide the squash it’s quite simple. Don’t bring it. And give the teacher a break when he’s just trying to help you out.

I disagree. Obviously a teacher's authority needs to be respected, but at the same time slavish deference to authority figures, regardless of whether they are being reasonable, isn't a particularly helpful message to instil. There's room for questioning imho.

The fact that many people don’t seem to understand what “moderate” is or acknowledge the impacts of a high sugar intake is what happened.

I'm the same with water, I have to put some bottles in the fridge/freezer for a few hours, or add ice cubes. 😂 nothing better than an ice cold drink of water!

That's not the kind of juice OP is talking about, she's talking about squash.

But I don't think actual fruit juice would be a good thing to sip all day long anyway? Terrible for the teeth surely, and the sugar couldn't be good either. You're supposed to limit to a glass a day with a meal, aren't you?

You are the one being difficult. It's not just for the sake of the teacher. I'm sure the teacher doesn't give a toss your kid has juice. But the other kids who drink water because it's healthier will be whining every day that so and so has juice and why can't they. It's a nightmare. It will cause a load of grief for the teacher and the other parents who send water, but it sounds like you don't care there is a reasonable alternative being offered as it doesn't affect you.

Tap water tastes revolting in some areas. It does where I am. I'll drink sugarfree squash made with tap water, but not on its own. I imagine some kids similarly dislike the taste of tap water.

@SquigglePigs That's actually a great shout. We invested in a great insulated bottle for our holiday recently and he loves it. However, he's a prolific bottle breaker at school and our insulated bottle was £20 so I'm reluctant to let him take that 🤣 Do you have any recommendations for other insulated bottles we could consider? Xx

You're right. A little bit of actual juice is fine. Too much is bad for your teeth, and also, by juicing the fruit, you throw away a lot of the fibre and other stuff that's good for you in fruit

That's why we have bottled water. The tap water tastes awful. I tried to get on with a filter jug but still tasted bad.

We've always been a water family, and then it turned out I have intolerances to artificial sweeteners (which were not as prevalent when I was a kid, I basically live on water these days because I can't be bothered figuring out an alternative to have it taken away by a recipe change). But when I moved to a new area I had to switch to bottled.

FFS just follow the school rules.

Exactly. How can human beings not drink water?

Squash sends our DD up the walls, but she absolutely loves it. We don't have it in the house as she can't control herself when we do, she is proper addicted to it. The final straw was a whole bottle of 4x strength (hate that stuff) gone in two days, so we stopped it in the house but she can have it when she is out/at a friends/grandma's house.

The school rule is water in bottles only, last term i had a call from them saying DD was drinking out of other kids water bottles, I knew straight away that it would be the ones with squash in and I was right.

Whilst i had a word with DD about taking others things, I could not tell her off as actually, if the other parents weren't breaking the rules, it wouldn't have happened.