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Primary education

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

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Original poster

So embarrassed, I was told off for ds1's lunchbox

47 replies

MadameMorticiaMills · 25/10/2006 08:19

DS1, aged 6 needed a packed luch as they were off to the theatre yesterday and would be eating out. He normally eats school dinners.

This is exactly what I gave him -

Ryebread with cucumber and roast chicken (leftover from previous nights dinner)
4 baby plum tomatoes
2 fingers of cheddar cheese
small banana and a plum
bottle of water
6 pringle crisps.

When I went to pick him up I was taken aside and told that he was not to bring crips in again (even just 6), as they aren't allowed. Apparently there was almost a fight as his classmates saw what he had and they all wanted one.

Is it really so wrong to include these in his lunchbox? Btw, all chldren at the school eat school diners, this was just a one off because of the trip.

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Orlando · 25/10/2006 08:20

The world has gone mad.

CastsSpellsWitchySpells · 25/10/2006 08:21

Oh good grief - think it's the school that should be embarrassed and not you!

lulumama · 25/10/2006 08:23

6 crisps!!! so although he had a nutritionally balanced and healthy lunch ...they picked up on 6 crisps...unbelievable....did they complement you in giving 3 portions of fruit /veg, water rather than juice & rye rather than white bread??

unrealistic to presume children won't / shouldn;t have some 'treat' as part of a healthy diet....
denying children food perceived as 'bad' makes it all the more

alluring as the fight over the crisps proves!!

Orlando · 25/10/2006 08:26

My fave phrase:

There's no such thing as a bad food, only a bad diet.

This silly overreacting to food turns something that should give us all pleasure into something that's fraught with issues. Taken to that extreme it's storing up loooaaads of trouble for the future, you mark my words. (Orlando waves finger in the manner of mad old lady on the bus)

Original poster

MadameMorticiaMills · 25/10/2006 08:27

No, no mention of anything but the crisps. And they made me feel really bad, I was so embarrassed I jsut

I also happen to know that the teaching assistant who looks after ds1 in the afternoons sometimes buys them bars of chocolate when they go to the park or the beach. But the children were sworn to secrecy. Forntunately ds1 has been told not to keep secrets from his mother!

OP posts:

roisin · 25/10/2006 08:28

How come all the other children's parents knew crisps were not allowed?

We live in an area of high deprivation, and I am very aware what a huge positive impact these sort of rules are having on children's diet; so I do actually approve of this kind of nanny state stuff.

I can also envisage the resulting scene when one person breaks the rules, and have no sympathy for you, only for the staff who had to sort it out.

Original poster

MadameMorticiaMills · 25/10/2006 08:28

as I was saying, I was so embarrassed i just asked if the cheese was o.k.

OP posts:

KTeepee · 25/10/2006 08:28

Well next time I would leave out the crisps and put in a large packet of Haribo instead!

alligator · 25/10/2006 08:29

I think that they should have stated VERY clearly on the form explaining about hte trip and packed lunch that crisps etc were not allowed. If they did then I suppose they have every right to moan. I have to say that I would have assumed that for a school trip a small treat in a lunchbox would have been fine.

Bozza · 25/10/2006 08:43

If it was just a regular school day and he was on packed lunches I would agree with you Roisin. But this was a one off theatre trip where it doesn't sound as though the rules were made clear and he is usually on dinners. Although then again if the other children were fighting over 6 pringles it sounds like all the other parents knew they weren't allowed crisps. And it does drive me mad when parents send juice etc in the water bottles and DS comes home asking for it and I have to explain that he can't have it.

Bozza · 25/10/2006 08:44

This fence I am sitting on is getting a bit painful.

Orlando · 25/10/2006 08:44

I take your point roisin, but think when its done in a sort of sweeping, across the board way it's very counter-productive.

In my childrens' school of just over 100 pupils there are 2 who are noticably overweight. And yet all chocolate (in any form so biscuits not allowed) has been banned from lunchboxes. This annoyed me on 2 levels Firstly that the children who have school dinners still get cakes and biscuits as their pudding, so bit of a double standard, and secondly because it seems so unneccessary. dd1 is very sporty and did (she's left now, hence past tense) some sort of sport thing most lunchtimes, but she's also very, very skinny (age 11, still wearing 8-9 clothes) and has low blood sugar issues. To me, a chocolate biscuit in her lunch box-- along with filled granary roll, banana and yogurt was perfectly acceptable.

Original poster

MadameMorticiaMills · 25/10/2006 08:47

Here, the norm is that children don't eat sweets during the week, but have them on a Saturday. So what do you see on Saturdays? Children throwing handfuls of sweets down their necks because they are given free range. It's horrible to watch and I will not conform.

Yours
CitizenMills

OP posts:

Blu · 25/10/2006 08:50

Poor you, MMM, I would have been...mortified.

I do understand and support a blanket 'no crisps, no fizz, no sweets' policy for packed lunches, and know that chaos does ensue unless it is rigourously applied. Of course teachers can't be expected to do a nutritional audit of each individual lunchbox and make an 'in context' decision - the point of the rule is to create a broad 'lowest common denomintaor' benchmark.

BUT if you didn't know, you did it by accident, and it must have been embarrasing. It might be useful to ask the teacher how everyone else knew so that you can make a point of lookng next time. Was it on the consent letter?

Don't take it too much to heart - I'm sure the teacher just thought she was 'mentioning' it for next time, rather than marking your card as 'slack parent' for ever

Jimjams2 · 25/10/2006 08:55

I think the fact the kids were practically having a fight over 6 crisps says something really (that perhaps everything in moderation is a better message).

Would be more worried about the teaching assistant feeding chocolate on the sly- not because of what she's doing (trying to give the kids a treat) but because of children with allergies etc. If it's plain choc its probably fine, but certain brands may not be for some.

Orlando · 25/10/2006 08:59

Yes, I meant to add in my post that two of my dds' teachers have a 'treat box' containing mini chocolate bars etc that they give out when a certain number of merits/crystals/whatever have been earned, so dds frequently come out of school with chocolate. Also, the families that take their kids on holiday during termtime often return with sweets to give out to all the class. DOUBLE STANDARD I tell you!

The irony of dd2 winning a mini mars bar for designing a poster about tooth decay was one that caused much bitter laughter in our house.

moljam · 25/10/2006 09:01

thats awful!you should see some lunches at our local school!they complained the lunch boxes werent always healthy and theyre new healthy canteen option is pizza,fishfingers,chips and chips.

nutcracker · 25/10/2006 09:03

Sorry but I would have told them that my child eats what ever I see fit to put in their lunch box.

I think it is disgusting how they are banning foods all over the place.

I think any food in moderation is fine.

Blandmum · 25/10/2006 09:03

The difficulty that the school has is that they are not deling with one child, they are dealing with many. The 'sensible' rules that we use with our own, small numbers, of child often don't work when you look at larger numbers of children.

In addition you cannot rely on all parents to be as sensible as you are MMM. If they don't 'ban' crisps, some children will pich up with a lacked lunch of crisps and chocolates. And Like Roisin I have seen his myself, and see the effect that it has on their behaviour.

Schools seem anal because there is a world of a dofference between dealing with 2-3-4 kids and daeling with hundrads or thousands of kids.

Another good example is school uniform. We make simple rules, because they generate less argument from the kids. I think your crisps come under the same catagory

I would be very upset at the actions of the TA

Plibble · 25/10/2006 09:26

Any food is fine in moderation and, in a school where all of the children eat school dinners (which I trust are nutritionally balanced) there is no harm in allowing children to have crisps/sweets etc on the odd day when they are on a school trip.

Yes, the school, if it has a policy, needs to enforce it uniformly, but I don't understand why they have a policy on the contents of packed lunches which the children only bring occasionally in any event. IMO they should be focussing on making sure the school lunches are good quality instead of wasting the teachers' time on this.

Incidentally, MMM, when I was a child we (my siblings and I) only got sweets once a week (on a Wednesday after school) and we gobbled them at such breakneck speed they barely touched the sides. The result? No cavities until we were in our 20s, so there is an upside!

TwigTwoolett · 25/10/2006 09:30

its not about the crisps

its about the fighting amongst the other kids because one 6 year old has what the others want

I think if this was there rule they should have made it bloody clear in writing before the trip what was unacceptable and then you wouldn't have been confused

If you knew they didn't allow and still included them then yes you are wrong

If you didn't know they didn't allow crisps then the school is wrong

its not about the crisps

TwigTwoolett · 25/10/2006 09:32

have now skimmed thread .. I would complain in writing about policy of giving out chocolates as treats .. why can't they do what ds's school does .. they give out pencils, calculators, weird collection of stuff when sticker charts are completed

I say this as someone who feeds my kids crap on a regular and well-controlled basis (ie when I want to)

Blandmum · 25/10/2006 09:33

Fully agree that if it is a rule, then the school needs to make the rule 100% clear to all.

TwigTwoolett · 25/10/2006 09:33

MB ... did you see my Meissner thread??

TwigTwoolett · 25/10/2006 09:33

will go bump

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