Mothers buy chips to get around schools healthy eating

[Blandmum]

I have just heard in the radio that some mothesr have been boycoting a schools healthy food initiative.

They have been taking orders from the kids, going to the local chippy, and taking food trollys of junk food round to the children at lunch time.

Oh FFS!

Taking out of the equation those small numbers of children who have special needs issues with food, what the fuck do these women think that they are doing?

How do they think this will help the children or the school?

hang on, schools are still giving kids choice.

What they are not allowing them to do is chose from 5 different types of jumk food.

Where I wirk the choice on this Friday were

Fish and chips -it just isn't served every day

I think veggie lasagne

Prawns and avocado and salad

Fresh salad bar

Fresh fruit salad bar

Pizza slices

Chicken and salad wraps

Ham salad bagettes

No-one is force feeding anyone.

If these women relly worry about their kids food intake, why not give them a pack up?

No, they are simply pandering to the fact that some kids want to eat chips every day.

Georgeana....agree with you 100%

Why do so many parents seem to be incapable of treating their children as children?

Children do need to learn about choices, but there are times when parents need to be parents and tell their children what they can and can't do.

I have posted recently about a problem where my DS2 keeps getting hurt by the son of one of my friends, because she does not sanction him when he behaves this way.

I thought I would be a really laid-back parent, and I'm not a terrifying authoritarian by any means, but parenting is hard, and sometimes we have to make choices that our children don't like.

Our job is not to make our children happy at any cost (either emotionally or financially), but to show them that there are consequences to their actions, and to guide them into making the right choices when they are old enough to do so.

You attack someone - they won't want to play with you.

You choose to eat a poor diet - it will make you ill.

DS2 has food allergies - he cannot eat gluten, diary or sweeteners etc. It would be so easy to give in now and again and let him have a McDonald's 'Happy Meal', but although he would see it as a treat, it would make him feel ill and affect his behaviour. It is my job as his mother to ensure this doesn't happen - even if he does nag for England about it.

DS1 would love to eat chocolate cereal for breakfast everyday. I don't buy it; he moans; tough!

Parenting is not a popularity contest. It is about protecting our children from harm, and bringing them up to be responsible.

My children may think I'm wicked and evil at times, but I also think they respect me.

Being told you are the most precious creature in the world, and can have whatever you want, when you want it, no matter if there are rules against it, is a dangerous and stupid thing to teach any child.

I sound like my grandmother here, but there really doesn't seem to be much respect in society anymore.

(It's taken about 20 minutes to write this, inbetween making the lunch, so it's probably completely irrelevant now!)

good post, hc

Introdude good healthy foods at a young age then children don't know any differnt so therefore not an issue.

If you feed a kid chips burgers everyday then try and introdceue 'healthy' food then of course you will get a backlash and eating problems.

Or is that too simplistic.

By the way my youngest had severe reflux as a baby and toddler and di use to eat quavers etc to help him get use to the idea of food in his mouth and give him the confidence to chew. BUt on the whole a resonable diet now with the odd MacDonald thrown in, everything in moderation.

I decide what they have for tea each night , I do the shopping everyweek , if thats force feeding my children then I am guilty of it but at least they will not be obsese and have heart disease down the line as a result of what I feed them.

They do have choices redbull - choices between decent food as MB has listed.

Godd post HC.

My ds is a damn picky eater (NT). I did try my hardest to make sure that he wasn't, but he was.

So I do sympathise with parents of picky eaters.

But he would never have changed his eating habits if I had pandered to him.

If you have an NT kid, they can change. Eating school meals has helped my son no end!

Giving you average 15 year old a choice of 4-5 healthy options isn#t force feeding them. Wh knows they may try something new and like it

and we are talking about things like shepherds pie and pasta. Not quinola pate with a soufle of yak butter on the side.

These kids can change, and lots of the need to change.

SN....different game

I think it's too simplistic. My ds ate all healthy stuff up until starting school then went off practically everything. We tried lots of ways to vary his diet and couldn't get anything to work. We weren't hysterical about it. We didn't force him to eat something he didn't like. But we did try to encourage him and did explain why it would be better for him to choose one thing over another. At around 13/14 he started to try things again. Now at 19 he has a very varied diet and will eat most things. Another ds has always eaten well and enjoys lots of veg. He's 16 and we've never had a problem with him eating a varied diet.

juule - you obviuosly perserved and got through it, but you didn't give him burger and chips everyday did you , which no doubt when a child is not eating would may be the easy option.

We have a responsibilty to our children which means they have no choice at times.

redbull - exactly how is providing decent fresh food force-feeding? It's all they know if it's all they get and much better that than providing them with any old crap full of e-numbers, straight from the freezer because they won't eat anything else. I think that's feeble, tbh, as someone else said, parenting isn't a popularity contest, our job is to bring them up safe & well - you make them look both ways before crossing a road, don't you? Well, in my book providing good food is just as important to do anyhting else is negligent.

You've hit the nail on the head though juuule - you encouraged him the make the right choices and didn't just pander to his whims and feed him chips through the school fence.

am pmsl at fillyjonks post.....

I am so shallow...

LOL at the force-feeding remark.

Both my children are currently whingeing that they are starving. To which I've replied "that's because you didn't eat your lunch."

They didn't eat their lunch because they didn't like it. I didn't force-feed them. I've allowed them to make their own choices. They're living with the consequences of their choice - temporary hunger. How is that force-feeding?

I hope that the back lash that those predators get is enough to make them think twice about doing it again. Dont get me wrong I am now advocating violence, but I think peaceful demonstration of how ignorant and dangerous what they are doing is should hopefully leave them too ashamed to leave the house let alone get to the chippy. It would also put off other predators who will be thinking wow what a good ideat to make a bit of money.

What on earth do people think children ate before KFC, macdonalds and chip shops? All these people who say, 'oh my kid will only eat processed meat preformed into the shape of dinosaurs' would they have starved to death before their invention?
As for a child's choice, bloody hell, it might be a child's choice to go to bed at midnight, eat nothing but chocolate, cross the road without looking and never go to school. Doesn't make it ok. As parents we guide our kids. We don't let them make choices that will kill them or make their adult lives miserable.

Well I think the majority (if not all) the people on here saying "my child will only eat...." have children on the autistic spectrum. this is an excellent article and includes this:
"A frequently suggested strategy for many children with eating and feeding disorders involves withholding food until the child is hungry enough to eat. This approach has been shown to be dangerous and not appropriate for a child on the autism spectrum."

And yes I know that some people do understand the difference, but I suspect many on threads like this think "ooh well if it was me I just wouldn't feed him". Well you would, or you could end up with a dead child. As the article also says " They may not have the ability to feel or interpret the feeling of hunger. This inability to feel or interpret hunger is confusing and usually means more effort on the part of families to feed their child because s/he will have little or no interest on their own."

Today ds1 was at respite for lunch- he was offered home made bolognaise and baked potato. He refused to eat it, so had a chocolate biscuit I'd sent in (which is frustrating as he'll eat bolognaise at home at the moment providing he can be forced to take the first mouthful, previously he has happily tucked into everything at respite whilst refusing everything at home. So anyway I picked him u, haviing had his chocoloate biscuit and had to give him something for tea. I had a choice of something I knew he would almost certainly eat (baked beans on toast) or something he was unlikely to eat (meat with grated veg hidden in the sauce). Haviing been up with him from 3am this morning for some unknown reason I did not fancy sending him to bed on one chocolate biscuit. So he got beans on toast.

Now whilst I wouldn't tie myself to any railings in protest at jamie oliver's stuff I would quite happily sign something exempting my son from having to eat healthy food at school, as I am more interested in him eating any food. When ds1 was in mainstream part of the reason his behaviour was soo bad was because they didn''t have asingle reinforcer that would keep him on track to do his work? Why not? Because he wasn't allowed to have choc buttons as reinforcers. never mind that they were the only reliable one at the time- a 1/4 choc button would have done the trick- wave that at him say "do x" and he'll do it. Instead they had him all over the place and asked for restraint training.

And yes yes its SN so its different, but I'm not sure that that many people know how different. And since everyone on here admitting to feeding their children crap seem to have some sort of special need involved............. well what's the point of the thread going off course in a general "just don;t give them the food" type way.

Well I think the majority (if not all) the people on here saying "my child will only eat...." have children on the autistic spectrum. this is an excellent article and includes this:
"A frequently suggested strategy for many children with eating and feeding disorders involves withholding food until the child is hungry enough to eat. This approach has been shown to be dangerous and not appropriate for a child on the autism spectrum."

And yes I know that some people do understand the difference, but I suspect many on threads like this think "ooh well if it was me I just wouldn't feed him". Well you would, or you could end up with a dead child. As the article also says " They may not have the ability to feel or interpret the feeling of hunger. This inability to feel or interpret hunger is confusing and usually means more effort on the part of families to feed their child because s/he will have little or no interest on their own."

Today ds1 was at respite for lunch- he was offered home made bolognaise and baked potato. He refused to eat it, so had a chocolate biscuit I'd sent in (which is frustrating as he'll eat bolognaise at home at the moment providing he can be forced to take the first mouthful, previously he has happily tucked into everything at respite whilst refusing everything at home. So anyway I picked him u, haviing had his chocoloate biscuit and had to give him something for tea. I had a choice of something I knew he would almost certainly eat (baked beans on toast) or something he was unlikely to eat (meat with grated veg hidden in the sauce). Haviing been up with him from 3am this morning for some unknown reason I did not fancy sending him to bed on one chocolate biscuit. So he got beans on toast.

Now whilst I wouldn't tie myself to any railings in protest at jamie oliver's stuff I would quite happily sign something exempting my son from having to eat healthy food at school, as I am more interested in him eating any food. When ds1 was in mainstream part of the reason his behaviour was soo bad was because they didn''t have asingle reinforcer that would keep him on track to do his work? Why not? Because he wasn't allowed to have choc buttons as reinforcers. never mind that they were the only reliable one at the time- a 1/4 choc button would have done the trick- wave that at him say "do x" and he'll do it. Instead they had him all over the place and asked for restraint training.

And yes yes its SN so its different, but I'm not sure that that many people know how different. And since everyone on here admitting to feeding their children crap seem to have some sort of special need involved............. well what's the point of the thread going off course in a general "just don;t give them the food" type way.

But baked beans on toast is perfectly healthy food anyway.
And people really are falling over themselves to say that children with autism-related food phobias are exempted. The women the thread title refers to are not concerned with children with special needs in the slightest. They are just interested in subverting their child's school and filling up children without special needs on crap food, thus storing up horrible health problems for the future.

While I will agree that the people posting (about this issue)on mn have children with sn, I don't think that the women in this case have children with sn though, do they? If they do this has not been mentioned.

And I bet next months salery that the vast majority of kids getting chips from these women are NT.

Just like the vast majority of the kids who whinge about the food in the school where I work are NT. The kids with the eating problems usualy have pack ups.

Food is a big factor in affect the behaviour of kids, often most in children with ADHD, but also in NT kids.

Preventing the NT kids from going hyper in class will eventualy help the kids with asd.....since classrooms will be calmer, quieter, more predictable, teachers will spend less time faffing over behaviour driven by e-numbers and fizzy pop.

It shouldn't be beyond the wit of any school to have a system which exempts kids who have real issues.

But NT kids really do start to change their diets if they are not given an easy out.

Misscheif NO I DONT GET DS TO LOOK BOTH WAYS AS DS IS ASD AND HAS NO SENSE OF DANGER SO WE HAVE TO USE A SN PUSHCHAIR FOR HIS OWN SAFETY AND MAYBE IF YOU READ ALL MY THREADS YOU WOULD GET THE IDEA THAT DS HAS SENSORY ISSUES WITH FOOD SO WONT EAT ALL THIS SO CALLED HEALTHY STUFF, BEFORE YOU JUDGE ME ID LOOK AT MY POSTS FIRST THANKYOU VERY MUCH

And as MB says, it is positively cruel to feed many fragile children with special needs with additives, hydrogenated fats and food without the vitamins and minerals and protein that they really need. Hydrogenated fats, such as those in the chips from the chippy actually interfere very badly with the absorption of essentially fatty acids that can be HUGELY helpful to children with special needs in helping them regulate their mood and behaviour. Not to mention increasing their risk of obesity and heart disease.

Baked beans on toast are a perfectly heallthy food, but eating no fruit (for 5 years now and no vegetables for 4 years is not. On a good week I can get about 1/2 carrot and 1/2 courgette into him (by spoonfeeding it hidden in something else and rewarding every mouthful with a chocolate button). Baked beans took 4 years to get back onto the menu, and chips are always welcomed when they will be tolerated as they make it easier to stop for food when out and about.

These women sound a bit daft, but do demonstrate the problem with silly initiative likes this- the govt should provide money for breakfast clubs, encourage juice bars whatever, work with the children, don';t try and bully parents, put practical eatiing into the national curriculum rather than fill up with stupid SATS.

I don't think the parents are being bullied though. How is it bullying parents to provide a range of healthy options (plus chips!) to children in school? I think MB's posts from a teachers' perspective are particularly illuminating. I'm no food fanatic. My children eat chips when out sometimes, crisps and cakes too. But I try to give them fruit, vegetables and good protein and truly appreciate Jamie Oliver's attempts to encourage the government to pay just a little bit more on decent food for our children. Actually, I think he's a hero.

The thing is though, if you left the junk food options in place, the rest of the things would never work. Because if you give the kids a choice, they choose badly (or at least lots of the do, and if they have a bad diet at home it makes it even more likely)

I saw this where i work. THe kitchen staff are good and have always provided a stew and two veg type of option. But the kids would eat this, they would always go for the junk that the school initialy did cook for them.

When you look at the choices on offer, unless a child has a sigbnificant food issue there really isn't a problem with them still getting food in school. The things on offer are 'normal' and palitable. These women are pandering to their NT kids picky behaviour. Treating them as if their every wish and desire must, at all costs, be met. Why? there is simply no need. They are also doing it because they don't want to be told that they are in the wrong.

Oh, and one of my kids has special needs, that thankfully does't involve food, so I'm not unsympathetic. But I still think good food is a hugely important issue for us all.