Parents complaining about this in school?

[WillowAnn]

DC are not properly watched whilst eating at dinner time and allowed to just go outside whenever they’re finished. So they could basically have no dinner or just a very small amount and then go out to play. Staff don’t advise them to eat more or say they can’t go out until they’ve eaten. Parents are complaining. Any thoughts?

Parents are asking teachers/ midday assistants to do an impossible job there.

children aren’t going to come to any harm missing one meal as long as they are catered for appropriately when they are at home.

I think there need to be a middle ground. I like what a PP said about a fixed time they are staying in but not making them to finish their food. Often it will lead to eating more. It also teaches social interaction during meals.

But definitely no control, if an adult says that they are finished eating, nobody will tell them to clear their plate or "just one more bite", we expect them to know what they want to eat. Children are actually more intune than conditioned adults.

And defintiely no "clear your plate before dessert".

At the school I work at, the chn are encouraged to eat. Some chn want to leave most of their lunch and obviously that’s not good so the staff would say can you eat this bit and some of that etc. We have parents that complain if they don’t eat enough and parents that complain if you try to get them o eat more. You can’t win, you just have to do what you think is reasonable.

My DM was traumatised by nuns forcing her to eat diced beetroot that had leaked pink juice int o the lumpy mashed potato. Doing God’s work apparently.

This can also be problematic. One of mine was a slow eater. When the school introduced a policy that they couldn't leave until everyone on the table had finished their food (they also adopted the empty plate policy) suddenly my child was deeply unpopular to be sat with on a table because the other children didn't want to wait for my child to wade through their lunch.

Yes. Our school did this and soon gave it up. No one benefitted from it.

Exactly, it's not fair on any of them

I can’t vouch for the current situation, but when I was young enough to eat in a cafeteria, my school hired a “cafeteria monitor,” a woman specifically to watch over us while we ate.
The food was nauseating, so I took my lunch every day, but we still had to sit by classroom at long tables.
We weren’t allowed to talk. I mean, she demanded complete and total silence.
We were, in my cafeteria group, 9 to 11 years old. It was a small school in a small town, but I remember the cafeteria being full.
We weren’t happy kids, though.
We were terrified of the lunch lady.
The lunch lady terrorized a bunch of little kids.
She demanded that kids eat everything — every last gross thing on the tray, and if they didn’t, she’d berate and single them out.
And she’d scream — no lie. She’d literally scream at us.
And if one child didn’t finish his lunch, we’d all have to sit there the entire lunch period. No exercise, no fun, just her screaming and yelling and berating that kid - or kids.
It was verbal abuse and harassment and the people who should’ve done something about it, did nothing. She lasted that entire school year.
So yeah - this shit happens and it’s traumatizing to little kids.
I STILL remember the outfits she wore and the brooches she wore on her lapels and she never even singled me out.
I didn’t have a tray, I had a lunchbox.
And I imagine her tactics were the same as the ones her country used in WWII to torture their British and American and Allied POWs.
She truly was that awful.
Sheezus that was almost 60 years ago.

My child's school now has an enforced 25 minute sitting period. No one leaves until then. It's to address the issue of slow eaters being left or discouraged from eating. However it is imperfect and if you get served last you have to bolt your food anyway.

How little are the children? I think it’s worth reminding them generally as frankly most children I know prefer playing to eating. Teaching a room full of hangry little ones sounds like a miserable way to spend an afternoon.

Many Primary schools have to operate a rota as not room in the hall for all children. Many of them will be on minimum level of staffing due to budgets. Gentle persuasion and monitoring of children who don’t seem to be eating anything is good, DS’s school operated a system of having to ask if you could eat your pudding but no-one was made to eat all their main, but might get a ‘you sure you don’t want anymore peas’ etc.

But the whole operation of children in and out and having enough staff in the hall and enough staff in the playground is quite a juggling act on no money!

Schools can't win on this one. Though less of an issue if they get a good cook.

Hope the OP does not drive their child/children to school given that they started this thread at a time when good sleep should be a priority.

I wouldn't like for my dc to have to wait for slow eaters to finish up during their lunch break and miss out on fun play with friends.

When DD first started school she was a very slow eater and hardly ate any lunch because her friends would finish before her and go out to play, so she would go with them. Also the school hall wasn't big enough so the children only had 20 minutes to eat before the next sitting for the rest of the school.

I was grateful that the school let me know she hardly ate anything, so I started giving her packed lunches instead. They often came back barely touched as well.

You sound fun at parties!

This. I give up.

Yet another reason teachers are leaving in droves. (Inane parent complaints) It is not school responsibility to get a child to eat. That is parents. It is a schools responsibility to EDUCATE. We can ask a child if they’d like to eat more and if they say no that’s it. Let schools teach your children to read and write. Parents have got to start stepping up these days!!

This brings me back to the 60's when me and daisy stayed for school dinners.
Practically force fed cold mashed potato and fatty meat.
We had to sit there until we'd finished eating.
My diss ran away one lunchtime .It caused untold stress and anxiety for us.
I vowed that if I had kids, they wouldn't go through what I did .

Exactly.

On one hand, they’ll be people whose kids eat and then go out to play saying, oh the teachers shouldn’t get involved, leave them alone etc.

Then on the other, kids who haven’t eaten a thing all day, parents will be complaining saying teacher should’ve told them.

Most private schools eat family style with the pre-prep kids. It means a teacher on each table encouraging them to try new foods, mind their manners, use cutlery properly and to eat enough so they aren't hungry in afternoon lessons/sport. It seems to work really well. Plenty of little ones won't eat until starving if play time is immediately on offer.

I’m so bored of people posting then not responding. How do you want a discussion about something if you can’t respond to questions or provide further information

what does this mean?

We were forced to finish our packed lunches at school in the 80s. It’s not one of my favourite memories. My mum used to pack seeded jam sandwiches every day (hate jam on bread, even more so if it’s seeded) I got shouted at in the middle of the lunch hall when the dinner lady saw me trying to put them in the bin. She walked me back to my seat and stood over me as a I tried my best to eat them.
After that, I started to hide them in my knickers (I was under 10) and drop them in the bin when I threw my rubbish away.

Is this how you want your DCs school to be? Because this is the other end of the scale. Humiliation and no autonomy

Most state schools are lucky if they have a couple of midday supervisors and a few TAs. They can't afford to employ enough staff for one to sit at every table.

What age? For younger children ours get taken out by an adult. If they don't eat their lunch we try and ask them to eat more, but if they don't I can't make them. I usually tell the class teacher so they can let the parent know.
For slightly older children who don't eat their lunch and say they don't like it, unless it's a sen child, I will tell them to tell their grown up they didn't like whatever they had that day and not to order again. With older children however they clear their own trays, so staff wouldn't necessarily know if they are not eating it.

There are some children a teacher might ask us to keep an eye on..again we can encourage them to eat but if they don't we will let the teacher know how much they did manage and what they said about the food (e.g. didn't like the main, would have liked what a friend had).