School giving me no notice

tw1nklestar

Just another suggestion - would it not be possible to allow the child to cook the food and not eat it? If the other children have the op to taste the food then perhaps the OPs child could be offered and alternative 'treat/taste' we have done this in class when children have had allergies to consuming certain ingredients. The child gets to experience and enjoy the lesson and work towards the learing objective and takes the food home to share with their family but also has a treat supplied either by class teacher or from home thus does not feel singled out.

dawnybabes

My LO has documented allergies, he is 6. When they cook in his class the teacher asks what alernatives are there and could I bring them in. Its stuff I have in the house anyway to cook with at home so just take it in.

He is currently waiting tests for coeliac/crohns and the dinner ladies have been fab at one point we thought it was tomatoes/onions so they catered for his diet, making him special pizzas with purreed carrot "tom" topping etc.

Does your ds not have dinners if on benefits ? If so surely they have the alternative ingredients in there ?

Without knowing his allergies its hard to try and help ....

Nicki

I am glad that others have come back since KellyWelly posted her comment about parents being "meanspirited and selfish" last night as I read it just before I went to bed, and wondered whether I had a completely different moral compass to the rest of the world!

To clarify, I do not personally have a child with food allergies so have no personal axe to grind in this debate, but I think it is appalling that any teacher would regularly schedule a baking class to teach core elements of the curriculum, and make a 5-6 year old child take part in this, and then regularly be the only child out of 30 who was not able to taste the outcome. That to me is selfish and meanspirited on the part of the teacher, who has a range of other options if this is how she wants to teach the curriculum:

1. to ask all parents for a token contribution to ingredients at the beginning of each term, then buy the ingredients for the whole class;
2. to choose to cook foods which the child is not allergic to. You don't just measure and weigh to make baked goods;
3. to ask the head for an allowance for the child with special needs ingredients from central funds on a case by case basis, and continue to buy the rest for the children;
4. to build up a store cupboard of a limited range of substitute products from school funds, then not cook anything which needs anything else;
5. to choose to teach the curriculum in a completely different way. As others have said it is not common for KS1 children to cook weekly so this is obviously a speciality interest of hers.

Finally, not once have I suggested OP goes in and shouts the odds at the teacher, nor has OP herself indicated this would cross her mind. I suggested a pre-arranged meeting with the teacher to discuss the problem (albeit armed with a working knowledge of what the school should be doing for a SEN child) or a quiet word with the head to explain the problems.

I really feel sorry for this poor little mite who is only small and who will effectively be singled out for miserable treatment in school on a weekly basis by his teacher if mum can't keep funding this expensive class treat for him. A bit like being the only child in the class not invited to a birthday party, every single week of term!

jellyhead

If OP's child is allergic to artificial food colours then that's not something school would have in their kitchen. the school dinners are contracted out to a company anyway, so school couldn't use their ingredients.

I wondered if the teacher was using sweets, colourings etc. in the baking and that's what was causing the problem? I found when my eldest was in primary that hardly anyone thinks tartrazine really affects children - a lot of people thought I was neurotic or just kidding myself.

peachyprice

jellyhead wrote: »

If OP's child is allergic to artificial food colours then that's not something school would have in their kitchen. the school dinners are contracted out to a company anyway, so school couldn't use their ingredients.

Not all schools are, my DD's school cooks everything from scratch, it is apparently yummy, according to all the teachers

I wondered if the teacher was using sweets, colourings etc. in the baking and that's what was causing the problem? I found when my eldest was in primary that hardly anyone thinks tartrazine really affects children - a lot of people thought I was neurotic or just kidding myself.

I have asked, several times, what OP's son is allergic to, but she hasn't said. Everyone is assuming it's wheat, gluten, some other major ingredient, but who knows, it could be something like colouring or sweeteners.

Nicki

peachyprice wrote: »

Everyone is assuming it's wheat, gluten, some other major ingredient, but who knows, it could be something like colouring or sweeteners.

I'm not assuming anything, other than its to ingredients routinely used in baking otherwise there wouldn't be a problem on such a regular basis. The exact substance to which the child is allergic doesn't make a difference to the principle of whether mum should have to pay for him to be allowed to participate when its free for the rest of the class though.

jellyhead

I know, just wondering about reasons why she might not have those particular ingredients in the cupboard at home, is all ...

In sainsburys today I noticed some natural food colourings - I didn't know you could buy them. It made me think of this thread.

Nicki

jellyhead wrote: »

I know, just wondering about reasons why she might not have those particular ingredients in the cupboard at home, is all ...

When I was at school my mum wouldn't have been able to rustle up a cup of sugar or plain flour if asked for it the night before, much less a specialised ingredient

I don't know what kind of allergy the OP's child has, but I once had to put my child on an exclusion diet of gluten and dairy for 6 months (when she was a baby not a school age child, and she turned out not to have any allergies), and you'd be amazed at the long list of ingredients with weird names needed to make dishes which normally only have 3 or 4. And most of these ingredients were never needed again for any other recipe known to man! It is possible to make things with only a few ingredients which are similar to mainstream dishes, but you do need to pick your recipes carefully. So, you could make chocolate rice crispie cakes on a gluten/casein free diet simply by buying carob rather than chocolate for the allergic child for pennies, but if you decide to make chocolate brownies with the class, then look up the gluten free version, there will probably be about 6 special ingredients to be bought which could be hard to come by if you can't drive and have limited funds.

The bottom line is that the teacher does need to think about this child when planning the lesson, and at the moment it doesn't seem as though she is much.

peachyprice

Nicki wrote: »

I'm not assuming anything, other than its to ingredients routinely used in baking otherwise there wouldn't be a problem on such a regular basis. The exact substance to which the child is allergic doesn't make a difference to the principle of whether mum should have to pay for him to be allowed to participate when its free for the rest of the class though.

It does make a difference actually. If it's food colouring, sweets, flavourings etc., you make the recipe without those things and the end result will be just as nice, in which case both mother and teacher are making a mountain out of a mole hill.