In refusing to send DCs to school with plastic water bottles?

[MadameCastafiore]

Right may be a bit long winded but here we go.

DCs have a new head at their school and a couple of months ago were sent home with really shite plastic bottles with sports caps which we were told had to be used for them to drink water in class - now I refused - the bottles were made of the same plastic you buy evian, you couldn't put them in the dishwasher to clean them and IMO you can never get a sports cap properly clean and the ones on these bottles were really soft plastic which after they had been chewed a couple of times (which all kids do I think) they looked grotty and really filthy.

Anyway fast forward to DCs getting in trouble for not having these bottles - I worte to the head and told him about the crappness of the plastic and the fact that they were made of a type of plastic that was not meant to be used over and over again and I said my kids would be using their sig bottles due to the fact that they were easy to clean, did not have sports caps (a urologist I spoke to said sports caps are vile and harbour germs and he told all of his kidney patients not to use them but to sip straight from the bottle) and they were made of metal which did not leach chemicals into the water (don't want my kids drinking from bottles which leach chemicals that mimic oestrogen into the water they are going to drink) and they were not see through so sunlight and heat wouldn;t affect the water and make bacteria multiply if the bottles were not properly cleaned.

He then fought a bit and last week they were selling new bottles (because the first one was free after that you have to pay £1.50 if you lose or break them), new bottles that are made out of a different kind of plastic and can go in the dishwasher but they still have sports caps.

The headmaster says that the bottles have to be see through so he can be sure we are not sending the kids to school with juice or fizzy drink (doh flavoured water is what most of DSs friends have in theirs which nulifies the point to some degree!) I said I am quite happy for him to check the DCs bottles and to make sure it is just water or I am happy to send them in with empty bottles which they will fill up from the water fountain at school.

Now do you think I am making a big thing out of nothing, I do think it is silly to kick off about lots of little things but it grates on me that this man does not trust us enough to do the best for our children and I know some parents don't but really this level of control is a little purile IMO. DSs teacher hasn;t said anything else to him after the first few times but DDs teacher is on her case telling her she muct have this see through bottle.

Can he make us use them is something I would also like answered?

Thank you for taking the time to read my ranty essay.

What cockles said. Why is everyone now so uptight about having constant access to water? Why can't everyone (child or adult) go an hour or so without a drink? We won't shrivel up and die. This constant hydration / 8 glasses a day is just bottled water advertising imo.

NB: my DS is 18 months so I have no experience of school etiquette on food these days and often lurk on these 'school eating / drinking' rules threads and find them absolutely fascinating / appalling.

My dc are told to bring water, we are reminded to send in bottles of the stuff even though fountains are available. At the end of the day I never shrivelled up and died at school from lack of water. In dd's class the boys pour the water from the bottles over the girls head at the end of the day Dd often comes out rehydrated!

Can you imagine the poor teacher that has to make sure everyone goes home with their corresponding bottle at the end of the day..

Bottled water is expensive too!

What an interesting thought jeananddolly

The introduction of bottled water happened around 2002 or so, and I just picked this very interesting correlation from a web-site:

'Bottled water.....achieved rapid growth during the early 2000s. Bottled water growth and volume rates continued to grow by double-digit percentages in two years time between 2002 and 2004.'

Fascinating!

Sorry - meant 'The introduction of bottled water in classrooms happened around 2002 or so.'

Have similar prob at ds1s school. They were issued grotty cheap plastic bottles because some parents were daring to allow their children to bring squash in. Who do we think we are? The bottle started to leak after a few goes through the dishwasher & it was impossible to clean the top properly. I 'dropped' ds1s & thelid sadly broke so I've sent him to school with one of his own bottles with very weak squash in it ever since. His teacher has told him that squash is bad which I find a bit of an over reaction. Surely a child not drinking all day because they don't like the taste of warm plasticky water is worse than a bit of squash. I wouldn't want to drink water that had been sitting in a plastic bottle in a warm classroom for 4 hours.

Myth of 8 glasses a day debunked here.

Sorry about the thread hijack OP. It doesn't help I know.

Four drinking fountains at DC school for 350 children. They would have to spend all of their break times queuing to have a chance of getting a even single drink during the whole day!!

i dont think you are being unreasonable.

I completley agree with all your points and would rather my children drank from a SIG bottle too

I will add though that my charges have SIG bottles and only EVER have water in.... the also go in the dishwasher everyday...

but after a month or so if you stick your finger under the rim it is discusting... you can feel this slimy mouldy stuff [vomit emotion]

it really is gross, so i make an effort to thoroughly scub with a bottle brush every now and again too. (this is washed in a top Miele dishwasher!)

i only found out by accident when for some reason i stuck my finger in... but im glad i did!

I only have a baby so school etiquette / rules are a closed book to me - but just to be clear...

It's now not allowed to send your child in to school with squash?

I'm not a big squash advocate but - really?

Thanks guys and sorry to hear about your daughter Katy!

For the record my kids don;t have a sports cap on their bottles at all - their bottles just have screw off lids on them - the bottles are kept away from the desks in a tray and they have to go over to the tray to drink - are not allowed to drink at their desks.

I think I will stand by my decision and not allow them to take in the shitty plastic bottles and if he has such a problem with it they won't take in water at all but will have to use the fountains - it is very very rare that the kids come home with half empty bottles so I think sometimes they just use going for a drink as a way of breaking of from something.

I don;t agree with taking in squash - if the rule is they have water and water onl;y I am quite happy with that - can just imagine how hard it would be to teach a class full of reception kids if they have been quaffing juice high in sugar and additives which I am sure some mums don't mind giving thier kids but I think a certain amount of trust should come into it.

Glad you are all in agreement with me though - it's not often I post an AIBU and get a unanimous verdict!

Happyseven you can google too and find out a lot on the dangers of plastic in general not just plastic bottles. I remember reading in a broadsheet a few months back on a link between woman drinking from plastic bottles and breast cancer, if I remember rightly it was mainly concerned with woman keeping bottled water in the car for days/weeks and then drinking it.
I just don't trust plastic, it was argued for a long time that smoking was safe and passive smoking didn't cause cancer so I'm in the better safe than sorry camp regarding plastics.

I send my DS a small evian water bottle every day, if you don't want to use the bottles they provide at school, I am sure they will agree to that.

My 3 only have Sigg bottles because of the plastic reason and they are the only bottle NOT to leak.

As a lot of flavoured water has ingredients no better than diet coke can't see why he's making so much fuss. At our school everybody just brings in their own sports bottle and it works fine.

But mojolost I am not buying small bottles of bottled water because it would cost a fortune and would be really environmentally unfriendly - those bottles then have to be collected and recylcled and it uses lots of energy to do that.

Am confused, and only have pre-schoolers

Don't the school provide taps and cups? What about the kids with school dinners, don't they get given a drink to go with that?

madameC you sound NU to me.

But I don't understand why they have to be having all these bottles in the first place.

Drinking bottled water is dangerous - sometimes the stuff is hundereds of years old and passed through countless mts, a;lso it is unregulated compared to tap water, tap water has to pass far more stringent tests than bottles water so far safer to drink

Because their brains will shrivel like little raisins if they are not given fresh drinking water (well as fresh as it can be kept in nice plastic bottles all day) all day.

He is just some kind of weeird control freak which I find sad because I liked a lot of the other measures he has brought in.

Funnily enough our school banned(on advice I believe) the cup and jug system because they were spreading a sickness bug round like wildfire. Water has to be accessible and cups don't get washed in hot water properly.The cups all look the samee and it's very easy to just pick up an identical cup.

If everybody brings in their own named bottle and are told not to share which is what ours do, problem solved.

YANBU and I second the poster who spoke about the obsession with water. I used to have a cup of tea in the morning before school (!) then use the fountain at break before having a glass of water at lunchtime with my food. We all survived unscathed and hydrated.

I'm all for drinking water but it's got a bit obsessive. Grown ups wandering round with huge bottles like they have just wandered out of the desert!

There is no evidence that drinking bottled water even if it has been in the car is related to breast cancer.

But I agree with the general point - what's wrong with tap water...even if drinking bottled water is not bad for you, it's still appalling for the environment, all that plastic.

But it's silly

And v environmentally unfriendly

And what fifitot just said

The head at my previous school brought in these God-forsaken bottles and actually wrote a 'Hydration for Learning' policy.

I shit you not.

He coupled this with a clampdown on going to the toilet during lessons.

I don't work there anymore.

Oh ffs! I'm so fed up of this debate. If a water bottle is the biggest deal in your life then I think that you really need to get a life.

As a teacher, it is so annoying having children swigging from bottles all day long (picking it up with teeth/no hands ? sucking on it all day long ? losing them ? asking to fill them up ? spilling them - answering your questions between swigs) then constantly asking to go to the toilet. And then the ones who don't bother to bring in a bottle asking to go to the outside fountain ever 5 mins because they know that it is their 'right' to be able to have a drink when they want one.

As a 'young' person. I went to primary school 15 years ago and - shock horror - I actually survived with only having a drink at lunch time. We had no water fountains and I didn't take in a water bottle - when we were in class we just got on with our work. I have absolutely no recollection of suffering from dehydration and don't recall drinking ever being an issue in my education.