The teacher suggested that the child’s stomach problems would improve by reducing processed foods and insisted on more fruit, despite the parent noting that uneaten fruit often returns home wasted. The situation worsened when the teacher mentioned the child claimed to eat lettuce, which the parent disputes, and then instructed the daughter directly to include fruit and reduce packaged items the next day. The parent now feels judged and questions if their efforts and small treats given to the child are inappropriate.
I always pack a yogurt, sandwich, a packet of chips, a cheese stick and some fruit for my 7-year-old daughter’s lunch. Sometimes she will take a cookie/brownie or chocolate. She’s always been a picky eater and has had stomach problems since she was a baby so getting her to eat anything is a win; most of the time half the stuff is still in her lunch box.
Nearly every time I pack fruit it comes home soggy and yuck, and I feel like I’m just wasting money. So the last couple of times I haven’t worried about the fruit.
Well, the teacher decides to tell me today that her stomach problems would get better if she wasn’t eating so much processed foods and that I give her too much money for canteen, and I need to start packing more fruit even though she doesn’t eat it.
She even told her teacher she eats lettuce when I barely can even get her to eat a strand of it on a taco. I feel like I looked like the worst mum today. Then she proceeded to tell my daughter that she better see fruit in her lunch tomorrow and not so much packaged foods???
I feel like it’s a bit of an attack; some mornings I take her to the corner store to buy a little lolly because it’s something special we do after I drop my youngest two off, I even got told off for that!
Am I the asshole?
Conclusion
The parent is experiencing distress and defensiveness because the teacher’s comments felt like a personal attack on their parenting skills, especially concerning their efforts to manage a picky eater with health sensitivities. The central conflict is between the parent’s practical approach to ensuring their child eats something versus the teacher’s prescriptive, potentially idealized view of nutrition.
The core question is whether the teacher overstepped professional boundaries by criticizing the parent’s food choices and directly addressing the 7-year-old about future lunch contents, or if the parent should prioritize the school’s nutritional advice despite past difficulties in getting the child to eat certain foods. The reader must weigh parental autonomy against professional educational guidance.
Here’s how people reacted:
Now, about your daughter’s nutrition – having a picky eater child is difficult, and eating unhealthy is better than not eating at all. That being said, I think you created an environment for her that eating unhealthy is the norm and perhaps enabled if not encouraged.
My mom is a clinical nutritionist. I didn’t grow up having a lot of snacks and deserts in my house – and so I was used to eating healthy. When I did want a snack – my mom always had a healthy alternative to offer. Instead of processed food, I was snacking on veggies and fruits. She didn’t force me though, as we did always have some chocolate at ours house lol so I could choose and sometimes I did choose the chocolate. But not always! And I think that’s kinda the point. It’s ok to eat those things once in a while, but having them daily as part of your meal is unhealthy.
When you have more access to healthy food in your house rather than processed food, allow but limit the amount and access of the processed foods they can eat – your children will learn to seek the healthy food too.
Ok and now about your daughter’s stomach problems: as a stanger on the internet I don’t know your child’s medical history. But I do have stomach problems myself too. I’ve only been given an ibs diagnosis at 18 and that was only because they ruled out everything else.
There are other causes to stomach problems rather than food – it can be from stress and anxiety too for example, and from a variety of different reasons. In my case, my stomach problems started after a move. I didn’t adjust well to the social changes, had some really bad friends, I was laughed at behind my back and I was alone like 90% of the time. So after nearly two years of this new life, my stomach started cramping like crazy. I couldn’t leave my house or get out of bed for weeks at a time.
So if I was in your case I would ask myself – is my daughter having any issues in school? How’s her social life? Does she have any other anxieties?
Now as an adult I keep my stomach problems under control. How do I do it? Well, about the mental health part – I am getting both medical and psychological treatments. But it was not the only factor to stopping my stomach cramps almost completely – have you ever heard about a low fodmap diet?
It’s not a diet meant to lose weight. It only limits the variety of food you can eat, not the amount. And the point of it is to check what food your stomach is sensitive to.
At the start the variety of foods you can eat is very limited – some fruits and veggies are forbidden in it too. But then after a while you can start adding stuff back, and see which one of them your daughter reacts well to. A part of this diet though is also limiting processed foods. Now, years after I started this diet – I can eat almost everything. But processed food and very oily food aren’t things I can really eat, especially not often. I can’t eat garlic or onion or wheat too sadly, but processed foods are the absolute worst for me. I will always remember that time when I tried to drink coke after a few weeks on the low fodmap diet – it barely managed to go down my system before my body immediately rejected it.
I can eat processed foods occasionally, but not at all often. And I need to limit the amount while eating them too. This morning for example I had a lot of snacks and I did not limit the amount I was eating of them, and now at 4:34 in the morning I’m typing this comment instead of sleeping because it feels like my stomach is mad at me lol. But eating healthy and eating what’s good for my body isn’t as difficult as it sounds. I don’t really have to give up on the majority of things – there are always alternatives. Even if you decide not to put your daughter on a low fodmap diet. Your daughter likes chips – have you ever thought about trying to make them yourself with an air fryer? My mom makes french fries in an air fryer as part of healthy lunches, and it’s surprisingly not time consuming at all, and it’s crunchy and delicious. I’m not telling you to make bread from scratch – but maybe try to choose a different type of bread that is healthier and see if your child likes it. Put something filling in her sandwiches – things with protein in them, like omelets and cheese and you can put some veggie slices with it too like tomatoes and or cucumbers. I personally think that adding some veggies to the sandwiches really improves them lol.
There are some veggies that most kids likes to snack from my experience – like cherry tomatoes and soy beans for example. They’re small so they’re like a cute little snack. I honestly didn’t like fruits for many years until my parents started buying them from farmers and not from the supermarket – but even if that option is unavailable for you then veggies from the supermarket are nearly always great lol.
As far as brownies are concerned though – it’s really not something your daughter should eat on a daily basis. But perhaps change it to a cube or two of dark chocolate if she insists on eating something chocolaty as a part of her lunch? Having a bit of dark chocolate daily is miles healthier than eating brownies for lunch.
Anyways, I wish you and your daughter good luck! It’s tough raising a kid with stomach problems, and having that kid be a picky eater is probably difficult too.
It’s probably difficult for your daughter too.
I hope you manage to get over these problems together.
Feel free to text me if you want to ask more about a low fodmap diet or even ask about other food related things. I can ask my mom whatever you’d like to know. (She’s a nutritionist)
1. You’re not the bad guy, you just made de grave mistake of being her mum when asking her to eat fruit 😆 Kids listen to other adults telling them to do things. If this teacher is so adamant about fruit, chances are she will follow up with it and do the heavy lifting of encouraging your daughter to eat it at school, and she might. So send fruit and enjoy! 😆 I’m a teacher myself and my kids always eat their fruit, drink more water, finish their snack… things they do NOT do at home. Parents send celery and vegetables even, because they know they will eat it at school with the teachers, and peer pressure. I even had parents asking me to convince them to take medicine and do nasal rinses at home, using the reward system at school – and it works. The school is here to help you mamma, not the other way around!
2. There’s smoothie pouches, fruit jelly, fruit candy (like the hawthorne lollies, literally just berries and sugar)… these are still better options than corner shop lollies and chocolates, and a good way to shoehorn raw fruit in on a bad day
3. Cheese sticks are good protein, crisps are okay as a savoury snack sometimes, but maybe not every day as a lunch. try to figure out alternatives to vary her diet – seaweed (crispy, salty and can also be spicy/vinagrey), perhaps baked/roasted potatos?
4. It’s important that you keep your communication open with your daughter to understand exactly what doesn’t she like about something, or what is causing her tummyaches. So far it just sounds like it’s you and the teacher guessing why she is a picky eater and why she has stomach problems.
She will say ‘dunno’ if you just ask open questions, so try to teach her the needed vocabulary with yes/no or two-option questions. ‘What don’t you like about the orange? is it too sweet? too sour? is it that you have to peel it yourself and your hands get sticky? is it the white stuff around it?’. Then you brainstorm solutions for each problem – drink more water/get other types of oranges, drink more water+add a bit of sugar, maybe mum can peel it/you can take wet wipes for your hands, just eat the orange part and spit the white one out.
Kids often give up on a food because they are only offered two options – eat it as it is, or don’t eat it. but even us adults will spit out a sour/overripe blueberry, add salt and pepper to our food, use a drink to flush down something we don’t like… why don’t we provide the same options and problem-solving opportunities to our wee ones?
She is not a doctor, dietician or nutritionist. She does not know your daughter’s medical history. She has zero qualifications or information with which to make any decisions about your daughter or even to judge her.
I have stomache issues and the medical decision for me is that I have to be very careful not to eat too much fruit per day and not to eat certain fruit.
I have IBS and it is very common for IBS-sufferers to have limit the amount and type of fruit we eat because we’re sensitive to both too much and too little fibre and what type of fibre we’re consuming.
Telling someone their stomache issues will go away can be potentially dangerous, depending on the medical condition involved.
She needs to be reported for dictating medical instructions to you about your daughter’s health when she has neither the knowledge nor qualifications to do so.
I’ll say NTA teacher definitely overstepped. But there are ways you can be working to improve this situation.
When my daughter was at preschool they issued a ‘non single use’ packaging rule in the kids lunches. My girlie is a picky eater and would only eat yoghurt out of a pouch. The teacher shamed her for bringing single use packing. She cried her eyes out for doing the wrong thing.
She wouldn’t let us put a pouch yoghurt in her lunch again, from that bloody day. Then decided she no longer liked yoghurt. She’s now 11 and will not touch any yoghurt at all no matter how often we get her to try it.
I’m still super pissed about the whole situation.
You do what’s right for your kid. If you believe this is the best diet she can tolerate then you’re doing your job and everyone else can mind their own business. NTA.
It’s not like your child is overeating which even if they were, so what? It’s not their business and you shouldn’t have to explain yourself or your child’s health unless they were somehow in immediate danger. When the teacher starts paying for your groceries and the medical bills for a future Eating Disorder because they couldn’t mind their own business, then maybe they can say something.
Just keep doing what you are doing. Only you and your child know themselves and their body’s needs best. NTA.
“Well the teacher decides to tell me today that her stomach problems would get better if she wasn’t eating so much processed foods and that I give her too much money for canteen”
The ‘too much’ part suggests she might be getting a lot of junk food from the canteen and eating that instead of the lunch you are packing. These kids can go so crazy for snacks, and they don’t really get moderation yet. You should ask your kid about the snacks she is buying.
I understand why the teacher that see one of her student suffering from health issues at such a young age and being fed crap would speak up and try to make thing better for this child. Children that age should eat fruits and veggies, not sugary and fried foods.
If you have fear for her health and think she has stomach issues, you need to take her to the doctor asap. Not feed her process crap and enable her to pick awful eating habits.
$4/month is well worth not having to deal with a pissy teacher, plus your kid still will have access to fruit (and you can just keep the fresh fruit at home available for her).
No offense but is your daughter overweight? It could be they are worried about her health wise if she’s eating junk food and buying snacks
And junk food in the canteen.
It kind of sounds like there might be more to this story because a school to become involved in a child’s lunch seems unusual.
It’s probably a hard truth to hear, but that’s not a suitable lunch for a young person and the likelihood is that she’ll have a difficult relationship with healthy foods for a long time unless it’s addressed when she’s young.
Dealing with picky eaters is difficult and if your daughter is healthy there is no problem with what you pack her.
Teacher is way over the line and honestly should have to answer for her opinion Infront of other people, because it’s wrong – objectively wrong.
My kids if they come home with lunch in their lunchbox, it becomes their after-school snack.
Im so tired of teachers that stick their nose where it doesn’t belong!!!
The teacher has massively overstepped here. I would raise it with the headteacher.
Best wishes, from a mom with a picky kid.
Or what exactly? She’s a teacher not the police.
The teacher is though. I’d complain.