Quick poll on packed lunch

[swedishmum]

OK, so ds can't take fizzy water to school. Fair enough. Just want to know how many of you are not allowed to take chocolate covered biscuits in lunch boxes. Thanks for any replies.

Friday was National Fruit day....how many of you knew that eh???

So I gave my form a quiz on fruit recognition. My dd (9) got all bar the pomegranate and the kumquat. The quiz was out of 14. the winner got 13, but half the class only got 6-7....and I had invluded some very easy ones. The prize was a banana.

As an aside we have banned 'Playboy' branded products. Will MNetter thisnk that this blanket ban is lso unfair I wonder?

I get so irriated by snotty parents trying to subvert a school's authority.
Am a natural rebel but if my dd's scholl aske me to do/not do something,I comply,nio qustions asked.

If you kick against their authority,so will your children.

I didn't know that but dd came out with a fruit salad she had made so it all makes sense now!

I don't see how a blanket ban would work anyway.

For eg, at dd's primary schoold fizzy drinks are strongly discouraged. SO instead of having a can of coke, some children have a Fruit Shoot instead. Whose job would it be to check lunchboxes?

btw I'm appalled the description some of the 'cookery' classes. When did all that start?

dd's school have just done 'Healthy Eating Week'. They made veg soup and carrot buns!

ds's school only allow water to drink.

15 year olds that don't know that chips are potatoes?
14 year olds with table manners that would shame a 6yo?
Haven't these children been to school before? Wouldn't they have learned about vegetables in some lesson or other during the past 10 or so years at school?
Would they have become socialised at eating in the dinner hall over the past 10 years (unless of course they had just started to have school dinners)?
How have these things been overlooked for so long?

Not having a go, here. Just curious now.

We have had to threaten to ban 'sports cap' bottles, as the kids were using them as water pistols and soaking each other with them.

They also take sauce sachets, and squirt them over each other....so we have had to threaten to ban them as well.

I think parents would be surprised at how silly teenagers could be. [sigh emoticon nedded]

In the end school do set down rules and expect parents to live by them. Otherwise we decend to lowest common denominator land.

We have had parenst query 3 days exclusions because a child told a teacher to fuck off. My SIL works in a very rough primary, she has been called a 'fucking cunt' by a child, when called in the parents didn't see what was work, 'Because the kid doesn't know what it meens'

We have had cases where it has taken 3 adults to peel a kid off another, they had beeing beating the other kid to a pulp. The parent said their child had a 'Right to stand up' for itself.

Schools do have to make some blanket rules.

I don't know the answers to that juule but I have had to explain what a leek, a mango and a butternut squash (more understandable) were to a checkout girl

Wrll to state the bleeding obvious, they haven't learned this, or else why do I see it every day!

We don't have the room for a full 'sit down' dinner....it is a cafeteria system. the kids come and go, no-one can make them eat with a knife and fork. We have 1400 kids in the school.

and when the fuck are their parents in all this?

But don't most primary schools have sit down meals?

At primary level yes, but not secondary.

I taught a 16 year old who wouldn't cut up a potato for an experiment as it is 'Too gross'

The majority of children aged 15-16, do not realise that you can eat kidney.....and that if they have eaten a steak and kidney pie or pudding, they will have.

there is a huge disconnect between children's understanding of what they eat and where it comes from. Which leave them wide open to the ad men from the food industry.

Unelss you have made chips from a potato, and most will not at home or in school, how do you know where they come from.

I cook with my kids, you probably do too. But some of these kids come from homes where no-one cooks. And in food tech they get to 'build a friggin pizza! So the parents are not helping and neither are the schools.

And so when you say that a blanket ban is an imposition on you, I can see your point. Sice you would give your kids all the good stuff. But I see kids who don't come from families where 'proper' food is eaten.

And when the schools try to lay down some healthy guidlines the parents object.

In reality we don't have the curriculum time for eating lessosn, this will have to be done in the lunch hour. And you seem to object when the school tries to change the ballence to re-educate the kids food habits

What do you sugest should be done? Not having a pop, I'm interested,

we don't have a hall big enough for 1400 kids. We can only have whole school assembly in the gym. They can't have sit down meals, in the traditional sense, we don't have a room big enough, or a long enough lunch break for different sittings

MB, I wish I knew the answer. It seems whatever approach is taken someone's going to object.

I guess the best way forward is to press on with initiatives like Healthy Eating Week from the very beginning of school - dd is in Reception and food & health issues do seem to be part of the Early Years teaching.

Maybe blanket bans for secondary schools and campaigns for the reintroduction of 'proper' cookery lessons.

Sadly I don't know the answer.:(
Perhaps at primary level children should be shown table manners or have them reinforced.(perhaps this is done now, I don't know.)
As you say, a bit step would be for food tech to comprise of more useful lessons which deal more with food basics.
Perhaps better lunchtime facilities in secondary schools would help.
Maybe smaller groups for lunch as I feel some might not be to do with not knowing manners but as teenagers they do it deliberately to break the rules. Not always in a nasty way but as teenagers strange idea of fun.
Maybe smaller secondary schools.
I'm not objecting to guidelines but to an all out ban and I am usually supportive of most of our school's initiatives.
As I say I don't really know. You have the whole school view and I appreciate that it must be very frustrating.

Agree with you MB, absolutely. This stuff depresses me.

I observed school meals in ds's primary a few years ago as part of a return to teaching course and admittedly was depressed. It was a totally miserable experience.

Dd in Y7 seems to get a good deal in Food Tech. They even make their own pasta! I did question why the muffins needed salt though and apparently it's for taste.
I guess it's not me they are getting at - KitKat on a Friday because we have no home made flapjack left etc. It just seems too many rules really. I know the staffroom runs on chocolate biscuits.

No sit down meals in our primary - most of the primary schools in our city don't have kitchens anymore.

Everyone has to bring in a packed lunch.

I felt quite sad about it until I realised that school dinners were generally crap (I know there's initiatives to improve them now, but still).

My oldest is just about to start school, nothing is banned so far but they have been doing food education drives. I try to give mine a balanced diet, but I do think everything in moderation. For a long time I carried raisins with me just about everywhere I went as a snack for kids until I was advised that because they are dried fruit and chewy they stick to teeth just as badly as sweets! I would have been better of with chocolate ironically!