Teacher dictating which parts of daughter's lunch she can eat in which order?

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08/20/2022 19:23

Subject: Teacher dictating which parts of daughter's lunch she can eat in which order?

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Anonymous wrote:At what age does spreading out a selection of foods and letting your child pick what they are going to eat stop? Because most people don't eat meals at a buffet. Most people eat meals like this: appetizer, main course, dessert. So at some point you're doing your DC a disservice to continue letting them act like a toddler learning to eat and not teaching them to eat like everyone else. What point is that? My guess is when they enter school. OP's child is no longer a toddler.

You should read up on DOR but it’s not “a buffet of food” it’s several items (like a sandwich, yogurt, berries and an oatmeal cookie for example!) all of which you are fine with your DC making their whole meal. Then how much and which items they eat is up to them. Kid wants to have just yogurt today, fine, kid wants to have second sandwich, fine. It’s a a much more adult way of eating because an adult isn’t forced to eat whatever items another adult puts in front of them, and if they dislike something they’ll just eat more of something else.

So at what age does that end?

Well, how old are you? Because that’s how you probably eat as an adult.

No, as a matter of fact I don't. If I ate dessert first I would be in terrible health.

What a weird idea. If you eat the same food in a different order it doesn’t impact your health unless you think offering nutritionally balanced meals means every meal has cake.

I eat the healthy food first, because I'm a mature adult and I realize those are the foods that my body needs to stay healthy. Then if I have room leftover, I eat the dessert. If I"m full, I only eat a few bites because dessert is good.

This is actually STANDARD PRACTICE all over the world, yet you are calling it a weird idea.

This "let them choose what to eat" idea is for children just learning how to feed themselves. It's not how most people eat past the age of 4. Let your kids grow up. They are no longer toddlers in preschool. They can learn to adapt themselves to a group setting -- and if they can't, or if mommy insists they don't have to, they're in for a world of problems in the coming years. Good luck with that.

Do you eat dessert at every meal? Because that’s where your health problems are arising. If you have carrots, chicken, cucumber and yogurt dip at a meal, it is nutritionally irrelevant whether you eat the cucumbers before the carrots. The same is true of a toddler eating oatmeal before yogurt.

Let's not pretend we don't understand the issue. Order is not the issue -- except for cookies, and yes, most people consider "baked oatmeal" to be cookies. Most people teach their children to eat the cookies last. Most do.

The issue is by making some foods special by labeling them dessert you make them more desirable and the foods that must be eaten first (aka foods considered „healthier“) less desirable. This is the opposite of what we want for kids. There is research showing this.

TBH I’d probably avoid the issue by not providing anything that could be considered a dessert but Still would alert the teacher and school that dessert last goes against what we have learned is best for childhood nutrition.

HAHA. You think that kids don't know the difference between broccoli and oreos? And that letting them choose the order in which they eat will somehow cause them not to think that oreos taste better? Common sense is dead. It's just dead, people. People read articles on the internet and forget how to think.

High fat and high sugar foods are INTRINSICALLY more palatable than healthy foods. It's not a learned association. It's just how our bodies work.

You’ve never wanted to eat „real“ food instead of junk food when you were hungry. Sometimes I want steak and broccoli and sometimes I want cake depending on how hungry I am and how much I feel I need the sustained energy of steak and broccoli vs the less filling and temporary satisfaction of cake. In general though I’d take the steak and broccoli over the cake because I actually do like those foods better. if we listen to our bodies it’s pretty easy to learn that eating tons of cake alone does not feel good and more moderate intake combined with other foods actually leaves our bodies feeling better.

I just provide my kid a variety of foods. The other day she ate the chicken heart and onion dish and didn’t eat the cinnamon ginger carrots (going by what was returned by daycare.) I’ve put blueberries and peanut puffs (her favorite snack) on her plate and she’s chosen to eat the blueberries first. All good. She hasn’t yet been subjected to the disordered attitudes toward foods that I grew up with (with the exception of some commentary by my mother when I hope she was too young to understand.)

My daycare provides enough snack foods so I just try to provide nutritionally dense foods. Issue hasn’t come up.

YOUR CHILD IS IN DAYCARE. Some day she will be in preschool -- and then elementary school etc. Some day she will go on a playdate that includes a meal, without you, and she will be expected to eat like a normal person. It's not a disordered attitude -- it's growing and becoming socialized.

Hmm nothing I wrote suggests that my child doesn’t eat like a normal person. Unless you think that preferring chicken hearts and onions to cinnamon carrots and eating blueberries before peanut puffs makes her abnormal.

As her parent it is my responsibility to follow best practices regarding feeding and nutrition.

Sending your child to school means teaching your children that there will be different rules in different places. If you want complete control, you will need to homeschool. If this is a mountain for you, then you will hate school. Everything a teacher or admin does that you disagree with will throw you over the edge. You need to decide if you want your child to learn from other adults even if you don't agree with them, or if you want complete control. Then figure out your next steps.

Fortunately there are many childhood educators familiar with healthy feeding principles so homeschooling is not needed. Just because OPs preschool teacher is uneducated in this regard doesn’t mean that’s true for all. I found a daycare that follows RIE and Magda Gerber (with and Emilio Reggio approach for older children) and I am happy. Because the administration was familiar with the principles when I had to ask that teacher stop certain activities that were not consistent with natural motor development with my infant there was no issue.

The daycare teachers do control (within the bounds of what I provide (and daycare snacks)) what to serve my kid when and I have no issues with that. Only Adjustment I’ve made is to provide a couple pouches in addition to Lunch for a more solid late afternoon meal.

I find it strange that you think kids eating the food they bring in the order they want is unusual since that was the norm in my childhood. Teachers were not micromanaging to this unnecessary extent in years past.