Are thye allowed to not let my son eat some of his packed lunch?

[jellyjelly]

My son was told today at lunch that he was unable to eat his chocolate custard and two jaffa cakes. Its the first time but i think its a bit wrong.

Advice please and not about giving him things.

Mrz: can understand it given those contents, as there was nothing of any nutritional value at all, however I still think the parent should have been contacted and informed what was going to happen and why.

Totally agree that no negative comments regarding the food should be made to the child, if it is a problem it should be raised directly with the parents.

Isn't there other advice that children should NOT be given low fat products?

mrsz! i cant blame you for giving school dinner instead. poor child. was there anythimg else like a sandwhich?

dds school has a confiscation policy but so long as the lunch is balanced i think a cake is fine. she is on dinners anyway.

This is OUTRAGEOUS!!!! ANd I'm a primary teacher. How DARE they prohibit your child from his lunch. I would kick up a huge fuss about this, healthy schools policy or not. Nanny state or what?

Are you sure that he wasnt allowed to eat those things? Check the facts first but if he really wasnt allowed then thats awful.

I think that's awful!

I can totally understand encouraging healthy eating, and I would understand if they had a little chat with parents who regularly sent kids with boxes of crap for lunmch.

but not allowing him to eat stuff he has brought in??? without even telling you he isn't allowed it first???
bang out of order.

I cannot abide this nanny state where it's assumed that everyone else knows better than a child's own mother. FFS. if you are happy with him having chocolate custard as a treat once or twice a week or whatever then that's fine.

eating problems begin when a child starts thinking that foods are "bad" or "wrong". everything in moderation is my motto.

This sounds like an excellent way of instilling eating disorders in children to me - identifying foods as "bad" "good" "treat" etc is not a good or healthy attitude to have and leads to many problems later as far as I can see.

Surely it would be better to let the kids have what their parents have provided but have a word with the ones who only provide a party-size box of twiglets.

And, as usual, I'd like to hark back to my schooldays when I had a packet of crisps in my lunch every day and loads of stuff from the sweet shop but was as thin as a thin thing because of running around/climbing trees/playing with wolves/experimenting with live ammo and all the other things which children are no longer allowed to do

Aha x-posts thisisyesterday!

He has always been a bad eater and has only just got better since he started at school and now thinks that they are bad and naughty. I dont tellhim things are naughty especially food as i dont want him to starve which he used to do as he thought he was going to get ill due to allergies.

His friends are now eating jst fruit as thye seem to be going overkill with healthy eating.

I am angry about it.

-party size box of twiglets

We have a little boy who, every day, brings two packets of Monster Munch and two Fruit Shoots for his lunch. We are not allowed to take it off him, and we are not allowed to tell him that it's unhealthy. I did get him a school dinner on the day he turned up with a chocolate bar instead of the Monster Munch, and his parents complained.

Speak to the school, JJ. It may have been one person interpreting the healthy eating guidelines a little too rigorously - the head needs to be aware that this is happening.

Just to re-inforce what mrs said, I have seen children have a packed lunch consisting of 2 packets of crisps, 2 bars of chocolate and a can of coke.

One lad went off his head after drinking several cans of red bull.

Breakfast for many students is a mars bar and a can of coke.

the shite some kids eat is amazing, and parents wonder why their kids are off their heads

Different if there are specific special needs

You know what really pisses me off about this?

That school dinners still consistantly serve some sort of sponge/crumble/custard pudding at least three times a week in pretty much every LEA meal planner I have ever looked at.

How the f*ck is it ok and within a healthy eating policy to offer these kinds of puddings consistantly o the children who have school dinners but a few jaffa cakes in a lunchbox aqre not allowed?

it's so wrong, it really is.
I would actually go in and speak to them I think. tell them that you believe a treat now and then is fine. I don't believe they are actually allowed to confiscate food are they???? if so then that's awful

I totally agree that some parents will always send in crap. and I think that in those cases the school should speak to them about a healthy eating policy etc etc etc

but at the end of the day the parents get to choose what their child eats. end of story. it isn't up to the school to decide what children can and can't eat.

I hate hate hate it.

I think if I were you I would calculate the nutritional content of the lunch you gave and compare it to the governments guidelines for a 5yo boy and arrange a meeting in which you demand to know exactly what is wrong with a small active boy being given enough calories to live on. If the British Nutrition Foundation are suggesting jaffa cakes as part of a healthy lunch then the dinner staff shouldn't be banning them surely. I can understand someone telling an obese adult that they should maybe have a low fat yogurt instead of custard but not a little boy.

I have also had pupils with pitifully sad lunchboxes, and a healthy eating policy will hopefully help those children who most need it, but it's never the child's fault for what the parent has packed is it so they shouldn't be the ones to take the blame

I had a very chubby 4 yr old who always had 2 packets of crisps and 2 hot dog buns with slices of butter inside, and a carton of chocolate milk. This was just for a morning snack as well, it was only nursery so she went home at lunch time

OTOH you could simply wait until he gets home from school, save your ire for something more worthy, and feed him what you like at home.

Is it essential that he has this at lunchtime?

or do you just want to make a point?

Interestingly it can go too far the other way. There was a whole thing around here called "such and such a place syndrome" where organic lentilly parents were feeding their children very low fat low sugar wholegrain diets and the kids were malnourished.

Not of course saying that you can't have healthy nutritionally balanced organic veggie children. You just need to be careful and remember that children need fat and sugars, in a way that adults don't. Better to get it from fruit than fruit shoot, obviously, but we do need to be careful.

militant fuckers

really

i would be furious

My ds is 5 too. I don't think that he could get through a school day comfortably if he could only eat low energy foods at lunchtime. I would rather he had custard than low fat yogurt because it has more energy. In the same way that I wouldn't want to teach a child in the afternoon who had crisps and red bull, I wouldn't want one who was miserable due to a lack of energy. My ds is a bit underweight though, maybe other children can go longer before they start to flag.

low fat yoghurts for 5yos

for fucks sake

am angry about this and don't even have school-aged children

Lof fay yogs are generaly full of shite aren't they?

Would they nab something like a home-made steak pie followed by a slice of home-made jam sponge?

If not they are being snobs. And making judgements about what is "good" and "bad" totally arbitrarily.

i will be so unimpressed if anyone tries to talk to my dsses about calories when they are 5yo

does this policy apply only to state schools does anyone know?