To think this is PC gone mad?

[Frasersmum123]

DS is 8 on Saturday and I have bough him some sweets to give out to his friends tomorrow. He has done this every year so far without a problem.

Today his teacher came to see me in the playground and told me that he wasnt allowed to give out the sweets, as the school cant condone giving them out and that it goes against their healthy eating policy

Surely a fun-size bag of Haribo isnt going to hurt anyone? Its not like its done every day!

I'm sure taking the dc's to school and nursery is also about socializing, making friends, sharing experiences but as I said, if it is something you find hard to deal with, talk to the teacher!

why don't you just tell the school you don't allow sweets?...my children don't have sweets from Birthdays for religious reasons...not because they are banned or anything i'm not a veggie...but I don't like too many sweets ...I think banning just makes them more desirable...personally I prefer chocolate.

i've been flamed on here and had insults because of it- but i really don't see that it is at all necessary TBH.

We all ahve different lines in the sand for our kids, for behaviour, for what they eat, all sorts of things.

It just seems to me that there is a lcak of respect for that when other parents/school do stuff that makes it harder for me to follow the path I'd like to.

I'm not a particularly precisou eprson,I think most people actualy find me pretty laid back and i let my kids do their own learning about consequences for their actiaons etc.
Certainly not the "helicopter parent" type.

Anwya, I've said my bit.

I'm sorry you feel like you've been flamed oops. and I'm sorry if you feel like this is a final dig ... but.... even though I appreciate you wanting to follow your own rules, I find it hard you feel that you should dictate to others in order to get what you prefer. Respect for others swings both ways.

There was a child at DC school who handed out blowing-bubbles instead.

There are mums at our school who meet their DC with sweets almost every day. Two lads we know fairly well often hand DC a pack of Haribo they have nicked from their mother's stash. I feel embarrassed that I don't bring any sweets for my DC to give back.

Funny enough, our school does a lot of baking sweet biscuits and cakes with the children, which is great as it involves tactile learning and numbers (DS is a daft hand at using weighing scales). Today for RNose Day biscuits decorated with icing and sweets were being sold as fund raiser. So would be pretty silly if the school banned birthday sweets!

i don't dictate how others live their lives.
Quite the opposits- I'm asking people NOT to give my children sweets.

Wahtever their motivation is- i just don't want them to.

I can't see that i am acting out of lack of respect for pther people... respcet for their right to feed my kids????
I'm sorry 0 it must be a blind spot for me.
I really don't understand. Honestly.

How is ok for some other person jsut to hand my kids random things to eat....I really really genuinley don't understnd why people feel the need to do it... especially when they are giving my kids stuff that they don't/can't eat.
And then we are supposed to say thanks too

Sorry, the reasoning behinfd it is totally lost on me.

On another thread i was insulted by somebody's respnose, they claimed that there were people starving in africa and I should lighten up.. Obviously nobody ahs any idea about how i live my life, my ethics and what charities i support-
I appreciate that on this thread it hasn't got so nasty.

But i still don't see that i have to respect someby's "right " to give my children stuff i don't want them to have.

I don't give your kids stuff that i think they shoudl eat...

i'm off now- need to stop being annoyed about this
I've got pleantly else going on jsut now.

It must be some sort of weird thing in me- i think that my kids are my respeonsiblity and i don't want other people to give them stuff unless they've checked with me first.

BUt i accpet that this seems strange to most people on here, so I'll elave you all to it

oops
people aren't giving your dc's sweets, the teacher is!
Those sweets are given in a kind and celebratory way for all the children in the class. Surely you can see the distinction? If you have a problem with it, you must tell the school. You cannot reasonably expect every other parent to know your views on this and decide not to celebrate their childs birthday because of your specific views. You are starting to be unrealisitic...
I have just checked back through this thread incase you said parents are giving them out, I can't see anything. But if they are, why can't you just say no?

I think YABU (to the OP). The dss' school has a healthy eating policy and we are not allowed to give sweets/cakes on birthdays which I am glad about as we don't eat gelatine so it makes it easier for me. They ask us to give a book to the class instead or fruit. This was fine at nursery as people would bring grapes or something. People have started going a bit OTT now though - giving out party bags and books to each child for example. Someone once even put a chocolate in each Christmas card.

Today was ds2's birthdays so I sent a book for the class, and some fun pencils to hand out to each child.

oopsagain, if you are going to quote me in order to criticise me, at least get the quote right.

Apologies for referring back up/down the thread all the way to last night but I did not suggest that "other people" should not have to alter what they do to accommodate the needs of kids with allergies, only that there was a limit to the extent to which they should do so.

So, for example - child has potentially fatal allergy to peanuts = perfectly reasonable to ask for school to be a peanut free zone, however

child is being brought up vegetarian (and mother insists on referring to jelly sweets as "melted pigs") = unreasonable to expect other kids to refrain from sharing sweets with their friends just to avoid giving offence. If you want your kids to be vegetarian, it's your reponsibility to teach them what to eat and what to avoid (until they are old enough to make the choice for themselves), not mine.

On Monday my 3 YO DD`s Nursery launched its "Oral Health at Nursery Campaign "
All parents were invited to attend which we duly did and together with the children we participated in a question and answer information session from the local dentist.
All very good informative stuff and the kids loved getting their own little toothbrushes to clean their teeth after snacktime.

DH and I were most surprised therefore when DD came home on Tues with a party bag handed out by her teacher as another parent had handed them in for all of the class.

Said party bag contained :

2 packets Fruit Gums
1 packet Fruit pastilles
2 lollipops
1 large flump mallow thing
1 bar scottish tablet

All packets were large !! This haul (obviously a very generous parent ) was intended for a 3 YO ??????

Whilst we are not going to complain or anything as obviously the other parent was well intentioned we cant help wondering if the teacher didnt feel the littlest bit embarrassed handing these out given the oral health initiative launched the previous day !!

(Obviously as responsible parents we removed these sweets from our child and dealt with them appropriately)

OP don`t think you are BU , but I imagine sometimes the teachers are damned either way...

I don't really like haribo's due to e numbers etc, and I wouldn't buy them myself, but I don't have a problem with the odd packet every few weeks. At DS school they hand them out at the end of the day, and I usually take them saying 'you can have them after tea' which my DS accepts - sometimes he eats them, sometimes he forgets.

What concerns me more is that the school doesnt' seem to have any eating guidance at all for packed lunches, and according to dS (who I suspect exaggerates a lot), there are some children who have chocolate spread sandwiches, two choc bars and a packet of crisps so my DS feels very hard done by with his ham sandwich and apple!

BTW I must be very thick as I've only just realised that the melting pigs referred to in earlier posts wasn't actually a make of sweets

I'm not especially bothered about the dc having a few sweets, although on the whole I'd rather they didn't eat gelatine.

Dh & I are veggie, relaxed about dc making own minds up & eating meat in restaurants/other houses, but instictively quite at melted pig sweets.

OTOH, I'm surprised no-one's mentioned that Haribo are obviously not Halal unless you buy these.

That would be one good reason not to start dishing them out at ds's school.

Cheap novelty pencils sounds like a far better birthday idea.

Sorry, I thought that on your birthday you were given presents rather than gave them out?
We had an american girl at our primary who brought in cake for everyone on her birthday, we thought she was weird!

My Dcs school has a healthy eating policy, however there has never been any apparent problem with sending in funsize packs of sweets (Haribo or similar) for the class on a birthday - they are put into bookbags at the end of the school day, not eaten in class. My DS's best friend is Muslim, and he always takes in a special pack of non-gelatine based sweets for him so he's not left out.

I fail to see why schools would or do object. My experience of school policy over the last few years has been that my DS has been told he can't eat a fruit/oat flapjack, whilst the boy next to him was eating a chocolate spread sandwich , and they can have any drink they like as long as its still (so Oasis etc is fine, but sparkling water is out....)

My view is the whole dictating what we can feed our children thing is largely bullshit, and schools would do much better making some effort to ensure pupils got some exercise on a regular basis rather than interfering with their eating habits. My DCs do just one hour of sport in school a week; they do swimming for a grand total of 2 terms in their whole time at primary school. My Ds & his friends had to beg the school to set up a football team to play against other primaries in the area - the school has no other sporting teams (yet when I was at primary school 25 years ago, we had teams for netball, football, rounders, cricket, athletics, swimming etc.....)

I'm not sure when this handing stuff out for birthdays thing got going. It certainly wasn't part of my childhood. It must be tough if you are really hard up, one of those unnecessary but somehow required "traditions". Even worse when party bags are required too. When I was small families with less money just had smaller parties, and pretty much all parties were a few friends at your house with some games and a bit of tea. Now it seems that birthdays require the whole class, vast amounts of sweets and tat, entertainers, soft play etc etc. Perhaps a return to a less excessive life would be a good thing all round. Plenty of fun can be had without sweets and stuff.

I also wonder just how much hassle is being expected of teachers what with separate selections for children with allergies (I'm not minimizing the problem, just wondering if this is something teachers should really have to be involved with for something that has bugger all to do with education). I expect the school handled their change in policy badly, as schools seem to be very poor at communication, but really can't see "depriving" children of a couple of sweets every now and then as a big deal. If the birthday child didn't expect to hand out sweeties then they wouldn't miss it - plenty of other nice things can happen on a birthday.

Have sweets at your kid's party. School is school.

I didn't do a cake or sweeties or anything for ds's school birthday. They sang him happy birthday at mat time and then he got a bonus version in music class. He got a birthday card from the headmaster. I thought this was a much nicer touch.

I have an ice cream tub that I put all the sweets ds gets given as a "treat". He is allergic to food colouring (which haribo doesn't have) and also kiwi fruit - (which it does.) It all adds up. I am lucky that he is very sensible and gives them to me and doesn't get upset that all the other kids put them straight into their mouths.

His school has a ban on sweets full stop. I think it might be a boarding school thing.

It's the parents bringing sweets in and then handing them to the teachers, or directly to the kids themselves.

I don't know all of the parents in the vclass- there's about 28 i think...
so either my kids have a label on them to say no sweets... or i have to do some wrestling.
It would be reat if i told my kids and then they did what i asked them- but have any of you got kids that do that straigha way without any stress?

Mrs H, I suppose we jsut beg to differ. I believe that as a society we should look at the ones that need outr help most, so if there is a potential nut allergy kid then i would be very very aware of it and , yes, bend over backwards to make sure that they didn't come into contact with something potentially fatal.

And thritypence and nooka- yes, exactly.

I just don't see that sweets= celebration etc,
But to the poster re the pencils- lol
can you imagine a whole class of 30 five yr olds with shar pointy pencils running out of class in the afternoon

I'm just wondering what you do with party bags after birthday parties. Do you take all the sweets out and take them away. Bringing sweets in is a way of saying hey it's my birthday, please help me celebrate it.

Yep - sweets can be removed very swiftly with out small children noticing.

Is the 'well if you want to feed your kids melted pigs...' thing getting on anyone else's nerves?

Oops, I completely understand your view on gelatin and would never judge you on that, but I would expect the same courtesy in return should I chose to feed Haribo to my child. As it is I don't, but can I just point out that the sour haribo were great for my morning sickness

Not a single e number in Haribo Gold Bears. I went to get a packet to make sure - and then ate some to make sure.

Funny isn't it that mentioning where gelatin comes from did nothing at all to put me off.

Fair enough small children, but the discussion began about 8 year olds. The party bags are quite often handed out before the parents pick up so therefore the contents are known.

I grin and bear it with party bags in those circumstances. DS1 doesn't like sweets anyway, so it's not an issue with him. I do accept that if I send my DC to a party they will consume processed meat and sweets. Not what I would give them at home, or what I would want handed to them in school or on the playground.

i haven't read the whole thread but agree with not handing out sweets at school.

in my school it was suggested that instead of handing out sweets, the bday child bought a book to give to the class. we printed out a special label with the child's name and age etc to stick inside. then the child got to stand up and say why they chose the book and i read it at the end of the day.

much nicer and children like it just as much as eating sweets. they actually don't care and ime it's the parents who are more concerned with eating sweets.