I'm furious with dd1.

[lou33]

She started year 7 at secondary school in September. We agreed that she could have hot school dinners instead of her usual sandwiches, on condition that she had a portion of veg and fruit every day with her meal. This was all agreed and I thought it was going well. However the last week or so when I asked her what she had eaten, she said pasty, chips and baked beans twice, and mash with beans and cheese once. Call me fussy but I don't class beans and chips as vegetables. Anyway after talking to dd and dh about it he called the school to ask about the supposed healthy eating plan they had and got to talk to the head. He said we could have a printout of everything dd had eaten over the last 7 days, and if we wanted to, could restrict the amount of junk she is allowed to eat. So today in the post comes the printout. There is not one thing dd said she ate on this list. She has lied the whole time, and her lunches have been consisting of crisps cake and biscuit, every single day!

Confronted dd with it when she came home, and just got a huge tantrum , so she has been put back onto packed lunch until we speak to the head about her food intake.

I'm really hurt and upset that she has lied to me so consistently, and that she obviously planned it. She would have got away with it too , but she didn't know a printout could be made.

Anyway rant over, thank you.

We have this with our DS1 who also started yr7 last month. He tells us what he has eaten, but we have no idea whether he is telling the truth. To be honest when I was their age I used to spend my lunch money on 5 bags of crisps and the odd penny mix ! We just make sure he has a proper meal in the evening just incase he has been a little 'economical' with the truth.

Oh dear .. I am dreading the teenage years!

You're welcome, lou!

I've always jibbed at school dinners because they cost so much and are mostly crap. Did you see this week that the average school dinner ingredients cost 31p? So where does the rest of the money go? According to DS1 his canteen charges 45p for 20 chips. They are private companies now.

I should stick to packed lunches. The lying is upsetting I know but pretty normal.

I see this every day when I go and get my lunch in the school canteen, and break time is even worse I am sorry to say. The school will have some healthy options but, if anything like ours, the chips, pizza, sausage rolls, etc will look far more appealing and possibly cost less. I am annoyed all the time when I try and get something healthy for myself. The only fruit they have is blacken bananas and horrible apples.

I am afraid I don't see much ways round it if there is a canteen system as the children I see (both here at the failing school and at my last very successful, very middle class school) are always choosing the 'wring' choice.

Mind your daughter's is better than some I see - a plate of chips, a couple of bags of crisps, fizzy pop and some ice pops!

I think the only way to keep tabs is with packed lunch. But if she has moiney on her she could still be getting this anyway and not eating the lunch. I am sorry I really don't know the answer but can truely sympathise/ empathise.

Keep complaining to the school and they may try and do something. Mind, mny canteens are now run by private companies out for their profit so I am not sure.

CnR she only said that was what she ate, but she actually had crisps, cake and sweets.

The school has this great cashless system in place , whereby they credit a card with the money and the kids use that instead. This means we can get printouts of everything she has bought, and also restrict what she can and cant have. I know it can be got around, and we can get her eating properly (ish) but I don't want to be like Big Brother iyswim.

lou, I understand how you feel about Big Brother but it sounds like a brilliant system for parents who actually care what their kids eat at school. They are all (or 99%) devious little sods so maybe now she knows you can find out she will eat good stuff instead!

I did think at one point that I wouldn't say anything to her, but just tell her that as she was eating a good hot meal at lunchtime she wouldn't be getting one at night, but chickened out.

I agree it's a great system. You can even put a spend limit on the card each day. She didn't bank on us getting a printout and her face was a picture (before she stormed off sobbing). I think she was quite shocked, because usually she looks at dh and he jumps to her rescue, but he was right behind me this time, lol.

I'm just looking at senior schools for one of mine and I too was horrified at the cost and content of the school dinners. I worked out that if you chose one main course, portion of chips, drink and pudding it was nearly £2.50. It's all very well saying put a limit on your kid's card, but if it's not enough, they'll just switch to junk anyway. Don't want mine to be the "geek" that has packed lunches though (don't know the ratio of packed lunches/dinners at seniors) but would imagine that most kids have dinners. LOL at the printout-great idea for me to check out his variation of the truth next year. LOL)

She used to have packed lunches with her mates before they went to secondary school a few months ago, and it was never geeky to her then. And tbh she isn't buying anything more than a bad packed lunch is she? I think £2.50 is plenty per day. And if she doesn't have enough then leaving the pudding out won't kill her .

I used to buy sweets, fizzy pop and crisps with my dinner money. I think that 99% of the children do. The thing is that the novelty soon wore off and I ended up buying "proper" food because I got so hungry and bored with junk.

I think that most children do this lying about what they've eaten for lunch but if she has a packed lunch whats to say that she won't swap it with others for junk or that she won't ask a friend to share their junk?

Imo I would allow her to eat this junk and trust her to grow out of it, what you've done is like reading her diary, you've proven that you don't trust her or her judgement and I think that you may need to say sorry to her for checking up on her.

I know that there will be others who will disagree with me and say but she's proven that you can't trust her yet you've proven that you don't trust her.

I don't trust her Jenie, and I am not ashamed to admit it. She has been given plenty of chances in the past, and again she has blown it. I won't be apologising to dd, sorry if you don't agree. It would be different if we hadn't sat and talked about it extensively before and since starting school, as she wouldn't have known what I expected, but she did, and she agreed with the conditions of having hot lunches..

Lou if you don't trust her then she hasn't got your trust to loose. Are you angry with her or just feeling disappointed for giving in to peer group pressure and eating what her friends were eating?

I'm angry that she deliberately lied to me. I know being 11 she won't always pick the healthiest option but she hasn't eaten one thing she told me she had. I know a lot of people will diagree but she's going on sandwiches until we get a list of the type of food the school provides. Then we will put a limit on the amount of cakes etc she can have in a week. I don't think she should be totally restricted but otoh she can't eat crap everyday. The amount of sugar she would willingly ingest is extreme, and it affects her bedwetting. Plus she is v irritable, argumentative, and has fallen aout with all her friends in the street, and I wonder if the type of food she is eating is having that effect. We have always had to monitor her sugar addiction, and it definitely has a knock on effect to her moods.

As an aside to that, if schools are supposed to have a healthy eating policy, why the hell are they selling such junk in the first place?!

lou I sympathise. When DS2 started secondary school we agreed he could take money every day for dinners. When I went to parents evening his witch of a form tutor (we had a lot of problems with her) had a go at me because "I was sending him to school with chocolate sandwiches and crisps having given him chocolate cereal for breakfast". I was really shocked and it transpired that the little toad was spending his lunch money on sweets & crisps at the shop on the way to school!! (Then lying to me and the teacher... he had weetabix or ready brek for breakfast, not chocolate!!)

We put him straight on to packed lunch and have never trusted him with money again. What was worse was that assuming he'd had a proper dinner he was just getting sandwich and cake in the evening, so effectively he was having a diet of almost 100% crap.

Now all of ours have packed lunch & we know to cook at night. It's a pain but it means we know what they are having (though if they swapped or didn't eat their lunch we wouldn't know... but then it isn't a particularly "healthy" lunch so they wouldn't need to!)

Thanks Tallulah. I do cook at night,so she gets real food then, fortunately. I will just have to have them all back on sandwiches again. Personally I hate school dinners. Dd2 and ds1 have sandwiches, and dd1 did until September, so it looks like back to the old routine. Hopefully her terrible moods will calm down a bit too when she isn't living on sugar.

re "healthy" lunches - jam on wholemeal v peanut butter on white - which is healthier???

Peanut butter and banana on wholemeal!

lou33 does she have to pay at the beginning of the week for her school dinnrs or is it a cafe system where they pay in the canteen for whatever they have that day.
My childrens school has a cafe system and we comprimise they take sandwhiches most days but are allowed money on PE days which is about 3 times a fortnight.

Oh, lou, that would be wonderful but DS2 won't eat peanut butter on wholemeal - I do it by accident sometimes and he just won't have it, it comes home uneaten and if I scrape off the pb and replace it with jam he will eat it then.

Picky picky picky!

DS1's school has a priority rota for school dinners, Y7 on Mndays, Y8 on Tuesdays etc so I let him have school dinner on priority day - I give him a whole £2! - and he has packed lunch the other 4 days.

Janh, what about the Hovis Best of Both loaf? It looks white but has wholemeal in it.

Mummee, the school dinners run on a csahless system. You give a cheque whenever you need to, and it gets added onto a swipe card. They hand that in to the cashier instead. I really like the system, just not the crap she is eating!

did you see in the paper that school dinners cost on average 31p a day and prison meals cost 60p

sorry Lou33 - hijacked your thread. Does dd lie about other things as well - or just her dinners?

I was a minx at secondary school. My dad gave me dinner money at the beginning of each week which I spent immediately (on crap) and then scavved from other people or ate Monster Munch and chocolate. The only way you know she's not buying crap is to give her a packed lunch - unless the school follow through with their "healthy eating" policy. It's fine having a swipe card system like the one at your dd's school, but only if they're providing food worth eating!! The amount of times I've wanted to take my own school canteen to task about the dreadful food they serve, but it's an absolute uphill battle, esp when you see the kids walking to school at 8.30 eating crisps. (As you can see my dd, when she goes to high school, will have none of the freedom I did!!)

Helen, yes she does constantly. It's really depressing, and I don't know why she does it. I don't think even she knows , it isn't even over anything big either on the whole . I did see the report, nothing surprising in it imo was there?

Moomin, luckily the way she has to go to school means she has no shops anywhere near, so at least we can trust she isnt eating trash first thing. I am going to call the school today and ask for a list of the type of things they sell.

Anyway the upshot of this business is, I have told dd1 that she can have hot dinners this week, and on Friday I will be asking for another printout from the school. If I find she has been eating crap again she will be on sandwiches for life. Hopefully that will work. Then I will ask for a printout every so often, a bit like random drug tests, lol.