Clean plate award

[AlwaysNeverOnTime]

DD has school lunches on Fridays only. Yesterday she came home with a sticker that said 'clean plate award'. I asked her what it was and she said you get the sticker if you eat everything on your plate. I then asked her if you got one if you eat most of it, but she says no. Only if you eat everything, which us why she's never had one before.

This really annoyed me as my DD was really pleased she had got the sticker and said she's going to try and clean her plate next week too. Now I do think kids should be encouraged to try new foods ect but I don't think children should be trying to eat more just to clean their plate.

DH thinks I'm completely over reacting but I've always had issues with food and am trying to teach my DCs to eat when they are hungry and stop when they are full.

Should I speak to the school about this or just leave it? Is this a thing they do in all schools?

It's to do with the fact that the only meal they have is school lunch which it's designed to provide appropriate nutrition for a child who is getting three balanced meals per day

Please get straight on the phone to the school & have this stopped straight away!

Regardless of whether portions are tiny or not they should not be encouraging empty plates, a child will stop when full....they should not be offered stickers to do so....it encourages competitive eating!

I grew up having a negative addiction to food, I cannot bear to leave food on a plate & whether full or not, I have to eat it all!

I make plans to teach my DS different & any school I eventually send him to certainly will not be doing this!

I used to wonder this too because I didn't want to encourage ds to think finishing a plate full of food is something he must do to count as "being good" I have the opposite problem in that he is never full

They only did it in reception though

I told my children that if they felt bad about not getting a "I cleaned my plate" sticker, they could come to me and get a very shiny "I listened to my body" sticker.

Is it really a good idea to train children to eat whatever is on their plate whether they want it or not?

If children are missing lunch because they want to play out, then let them play out before having lunch.

My class have 20-30 minutes play before they go to lunch but they still leave their lunch (both school and packed) to get back outside

I collected some Xmas lunch menus today. Choices were a full turkey dinner with 3 veg, roast ham with 3 veg or a veggie tart.

I had one marked "can she just have the sausage and potatoes" one with "no veg, extra turkey and some bread" one asking if we'd do a jacket potato with cheese and another saying that the menu "sounds horrible she'll bring packed".

Funnily enough none of them complained about the puddings - choc cake, angel cake or ice cream.

So whilst I understand the concern about the clean plate awards, I can also understand the school wanting to try to get more veg into children by any means possible!

I think if you are happy that your dc eat well and a good, varied diet then maybe just downplay the sticker idea and suggest to your DC that it's for children who "struggle at mealtimes and you don't need to worry about it darling because you do OK" - that's how I'd play it I think.

I am pretty sure that being encouraged to polish off their school
dinner is the cause of childhood obesity. But it's an easy one to focus on- it requires much less introspection........

"not the cause" that should read.....

It does seem to be the nature of this particular problem that the more other people there are to blame, the better.

I remember a scheme like this when I was at school in the 80s/90s (and portions were bigger then from what I've seen). Not only were there stickers, but the stickers went into a book and a few people who completed the book over x amount of time won a watch!

I could blame that scheme for the fact that I was an overweight teenager and that as an adult I often overeat. But isn't it funny that my siblings and friends were all on the receiving end of the scheme without developing overeating problems?

Definitely the school's fault. I'd be a size 8 if it wasn't for the blood sticker scheme

The OPs child eats one meal per week so 39 meals a year and over a thousand at home (assuming 3 meals per day) wonder how much impact the clean plate award will really have

Childhood obesity is so clearly the result of marketing snack food and sweetened drinks and fatty convenience foods.

I bet a lot of the people objecting to the clean plate stickers are also the ones whose children don't seem to be able to go more than an hour without food. I think a lot of privilege children in this country don't really know what it's like to feel hungry.

In our school it is not everyone who gets a 'prize' just random kids who have been spotted finishing up their plates. My DC is great at monitoring his food so it really doesn't bother me BUT when we have 8 prizes for eating food and no prizes for achievements of behaviour or making good choices, then I do raise my eyebrows. The teachers have to control kids on a ratio of 1 to 30 so I guess they have to do what they have to do.

Bertrand, I get that you care so much about deprived children.
But how about the impact on the children like mine? Who can't have school dinners because of illness, and never get the chance to win stickers? (I don't care really, since he doesn't care, but if he did, I wouldn't be happy.)
And also my not so privileged but ok child knows pretty well how it's like to feel hungry, he literally had to starve himself for nearly a week, because he had to get rid of pancreatitus before operation!

Well, a child who doesn't play football wouldn't get a sticker for playing football, would they?

And you know perfectly well what I mean about children knowing what feeling hungry. I am sorry your child is unwell- but it's not really relevant to this thread............

Really? But he has packed lunch with other children at lunch time, but he is excluded from award, along with other packed lunch children, even he ate everything in his lunch box. Is that fair?(TBH, I don't really care.)