Eating in lessons

[Nicole1976]

Hello All,
I was told by a teacher at my sons school today that he has been eating during lessons. Apparently he eats mostly during his maths lessons and his teacher has seen him eating chocolate bars and sweets with friends behind her back, she hasn't told him off for it until today when she caught him with 2 bars of dairy milk. She seems very disappointed and says that he is a very clever and polite young boy and she wouldn't expect this kind of behaviour from him. Does anybody else's child do this, if so what can I do to prevent him from doing so because I don't know where he gets the food from and why he eats it in the lesson.

P.s my DS is 13

No idea on that one sorry, mine are still in primary school. Have you asked him about it?

Have you asked him where he gets the food from and why he thinks it's appropriate to be eating it in a lesson?

My kids only a baby but what time is the lesson is he actually hungry/ low blood sugar?

The lesson is 10-11am most days, sometimes 9-10am

Does he eat a good breakfast? He may well be a bit hungry by 10 if not. Fill him up before he leaves the house.

Does he have cash? Some kids at school stock up on junk at the cash and carry and then sell it to the other kids. Could he be buying it on the way to school? If you stop the cash flow this might help.

You could also give the teacher permission to bin any contraband she spots in lessons and ask her to follow it up with detentions until he gets the message.

He has plenty of cash but I drive him to school every morning so I don't know where he buys them.

There is generally a thriving black market at most secondaries. (Yes I'm looking at you Ds 2, cornering the market in chewing gum in year8). Boys at that age are dustbins.

Ohwhatfuckeryisthis- Very True, and at 9 stone my DS is becoming a very fat dustbin.

Would it be sensible to talk to my DS about this in more detail ?

Yes I should talk to him.

Have you spoken to him yet nicole?

oversized toddlers, still pushing boundaries!!

I would speak to him about how disrespectful it is
And why he feels the need for sweets at that time of morning

I think you need to talk to him and make it explicit why it is not ok. It seems an excessive amount to be eating for just normal nibbles during a lesson so it does sound as though there could be something else going on.

I would also supply him with less cash

Give him a decent breakfast eggs on toast etc. Get more protein in his diet. And give him dinner money daily but not loads of it.

Also do you need to drive him to school? If he is getting fat get him on public transport if possible so he has to walk a bit.

As a secondary school teacher and a mother of teens, ime they nearly all do this. I'm always seeing kids with family sized chocolate bars and giant bags of haribo.

We don't sell them on the school premises, but there are always some kids who bring them in and sell them on. If they start eating chocolate in my lessons, I make them share it out with the whole class. This usually sorts the problem out

Not sure that feeding them a bigger/better breakfast will make the slightest difference. It isn't anything to do with hunger, it just seems to be a teenage thing ime. 6thnformers don't do it...

I teach teens - many of them take every opportunity to stuff themselves. Whole packets of biscuits, family size bags of sweets, massive bags of dorritos for breakfast

They try to eat in class.

The bane of my life though are energy drinks. The amount they consume terrifies me but they do it despite lessons / lectures explaining how bad they are

Well we all at least tried to do this. I can't concentrate if hungry...

I think you need to address more than just the eating in class part. If he's overweight too then you need to find out why he eats so much junk food. Hiding it from you is a sign of shame, so why is he doing it?

Also I would do as someone already said and give the teachers carte blanche to remove it and chuck it in the bin. In tiny pieces.

Bob, they are banned at our school. I take no delight (ha) in pouring them down the sink, to cries of "you can't do that, you owe me for that, my mum is going to call you" whilst pointing out the rule in the contract.
You can always tell the black marketeers, their rucksacks seem inordinately heavy for the amount of work they produce in lessons.

But they all eat junk at that age, family bags of crap, huge packets of biscuits, huge bottles of coke. I've seen it all, even though I do confiscate if I see it.

I don't think you can police it, or prevent it. It's what they do

ohwhat ours are college 16+ and management won't back us in a ban so banning is hard

Obviously I don't allow it in class but tbh them necking a massive can at break is worse as it's a quicker hit. I hate them and truly believe that they are the root of a lot of our behaviour problems