is this inappropriate behaviour by a head teacher?

Flearoy

To the OP. I agree you should be able to feed your child what you like, so long as it's not broken glass and razor blades. As it happens, a nutrigrain bar seems fine by me.

Have you considered using the old 'human rights' chestnut to your advantage here?

And yes, the teacher is well out of line.

Would have taken a seriously tough teacher to get my packed lunch out of my hands

mum-of-two_2

Thanks everybody.

At least from most of the replies, it's not just me 'being funny' about this.

Re the 'confiscation', what the Head actually did was take the food from the child, toldl them that 'it's not healthy' and put it back into their lunchbox.

So, they're not really 'stealing' the food - but you can imagine the effect that the Head teacher actually doing that it has on young children, especially when they're sat with their friends.

For those that have asked. my kids lunch usually consists of sandwiches, cherry tomatoes halved (they love these, luckily), sometimes some julienne of cucumber and always a piece of fruit - their favourites are cherries, strawberries or grapes.
They usually have a small (multi-pack) bag of crisps, hula-hoops, mini cheddars etc.
It seems to be this that is an issue for the Head, I don't think they are taking the contents of the lunch-box as a whole, just seeing individual items that are (in their eyes) to be unhealthy.

mum-of-two_2

Bubby wrote: »

Its probably only to gain their "healthy schools" status rather than actual concern for the children. The apprpriate course of action if you deem a child to be bringing in an unhealthy lunch is to discuss it with the parents. If a headteacher made my child feel uncomfortable around their lunch (which can influence eating disorders) they would be eating their words!!!!

Bubby, this is what is getting to me - imagine a figure of authority taking something from you and telling you it's not healthy in front of your friends.

We've not had anything official from the school regarding packed lunches.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Because I was trying to save money, DD2 went back on school dinners last year as she was entitled to free ones, but started fainting last Spring. Since Christmas, I began finding her raiding the fridge and cramming food into her like a famine victim as soon as she got in from school. After the last faint, I decided that it was probably time to bring back the packed lunch, as she had already decided that she's never having school dinners at high school and was telling me how the food was nothing like the menus they published.


She has a ham or chicken breast (steamed the night before) and salad sandwich (no butter, just a little mayo) in small bread most days, along with cherry tomatoes or grapes, a yoghurt, apple and a bottle of water. Sometimes a pasta or rice salad, sometimes a smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwich, sometimes breadsticks/carrots and cream cheese. This is her food by choice, but she would quite easily fall into eating rubbish if it was all she had ever been fed, as it tastes completely different.

So - she eats healthily and is in the lower centiles for weight.


Other children in her class have crisps, chocolates and sugary rubbish in the lunchboxes. They are children that truly look as though they would roll down a slope if they were pushed.

If I can manage to feed her properly, why is it so hard for other parents to manage it? It's not a universal human right to make your child fat and unhealthy. You have the right to do that to yourself, not a child.

Loz01

They do this in my nieces school too (she's 6) and it really peeves my bro and SIL off. Anything not 1000000% healthy and pure isnt allowed in lunchboxes and they are constantly lectured about healthy food and exercising even tho 99% of the kids in her school are a normal weight and get plenty of exercise at break/dinner times and after school on the playground! Now when we're eating she'll ask if its "healthy" food all the time.

mum-of-two_2

Loz01 wrote: »

They do this in my nieces school too (she's 6) and it really peeves my bro and SIL off. Anything not 1000000% healthy and pure isnt allowed in lunchboxes and they are constantly lectured about healthy food and exercising even tho 99% of the kids in her school are a normal weight and get plenty of exercise at break/dinner times and after school on the playground! Now when we're eating she'll ask if its "healthy" food all the time.

Does anybody else think that it's very UNhealthy for a 6 year old to be thinking in this way?

Loz01
has your brother & sister-in-law done anything about this?

Are schools actually allowed to do this?

S1976

I agree it's good to teach children about healthy eating, but as someone else said it's better to eat a variety in moderation. Personally so long as 90% of their lunch box is healthy I see no reason why not to pop a penguin or a two finger kit-kat in. (Teachers still have their treats with a cup of tea on break times - I've seen this myself - in fact the teachers prolly nicking all the treats for this very prupose LOL (Joke btw in case someone jumps on that remark - I have seen how touchy people on here can be!)

I don't see many 'fat' children at all really so I think the figures are a little off at aged 5-9. Children grow up and out constantly even those on the most healthy diet in the world.

S1976

mum-of-two wrote: »

Does anybody else think that it's very UNhealthy for a 6 year old to be thinking in this way?

Simply yes I agree it's very unhealthy.

moromir

Churchmouse wrote: »

And if I found out the head was "manhandling" my child's food to the extent of being able to deduce all that, I'd be furious.
.

No offence but you can see from a 'distance' the difference between plastic cheese (hint: it looks like rubber and is a ridiculously unnatural colour) in white bread and real cheese in 'real' bread, no manhandling needed.

miss_independent

I am a healthy eater, to be honest I am a little obsessed with healthy eating and I don't really want my children (when I have them) to eat unhealthily, I believe in cooking from scratch and sweets,chocolates, crisps etc as once a week treats. But I have to say, I find the OP's situation pretty horrific!

I am a teacher and there are certain things that I don't think are right about children's diets, like the autistic children whose parents send them with bottles of coke and e number-ridden food and the obese child who is always late for class because "Dad was making me an extra bacon butty miss" but the majority of children I teach are not overweight and are healthy and they don't have this lunchbox !!!!! business going on. I'm in my mid-twenties and we didn't have all this policing at any of the schools I went to and in general in a class of 36 there would be perhaps 2 obese kids at the most. No matter how much you chucked out rubbish from their lunchboxes they would still be fat because they ate rubbish at home, one 5 year old girl had a Big Mac meal and milkshake for dinner EVERY NIGHT because her mum didn't cook. My mum took me for a McDonalds as a treat if I was in a show (usually once a year) or once at the end of the school term. What I'm trying to say is there will always be sensible parents and parents that are not so sensible and as OP said lunch is not all these kids eat. I think the Head in this case is behaving completely out of line and she is actually on a track to cause some children to become obsessed with diet and weight.

If it was me I would complain to the governers and if there are other parents who feel the same way, they should do the same. IMHO it is an infringement of your basic human rights. A local school does not only this but also bans children from bringing in their own stationery and bags because they believe "all children should be equal". Whatever happened to valuing individuality? Personal responsibility? Personal Choice? Is this a school or a communist regime?

The more you repress these kids, the more they will rebel. They've got to make their own choices one day and there is a difference between educating them as to what the best choices are and controlling them; research suggests by labelling something as "bad" you make it more attractive. Also, when I was referred to a dietician as a teenager, the first thing she said was I needed to have more cheese and milky puddings as I needed more calcium as a growing girl. To me a cheese sandwich (made on wholewheat bread with a small amount of real cheese and no mayo) is not unhealthy at all. At any rate, I don't think it is any of the head-teachers business.