When I was growing up, my dad insisted on some sort of MEAT 3 times a day, 7 days a week--steak, hamburger, sausage, beef stew--it got tiresome. So when we moved to Las Vegas in my early adolescence, and he started taking the family out to eat every Sunday afternoon, he expected everyone to order steak! Around the age of 11, I saw some guy next to us eating what I found out from the waitress was a Chef's Salad, I said I wanted THAT! Rather than be embarrassed about insisting that I order a steak, dad gave in. And then mom promptly ordered a Halibut! Thereafter, I would always order either a Chef's Salad, or Halibut, mostly at first just to tick him off, but I also found them to be REALLY GOOD (especially compared to the alternative!!!).

You could try ordering a salad with the happy meal toy thrown in...or buy one "to-go" and take it home and have him try it...or order both, but ask him to gobble a bite or two of salad for every X-number of french fries, etc.

Oh, there's nothing wrong with having a salad with their meal, kid or NOT. I just worry a lot about making a big issue about food. It IS important that they learn that some choices are better than others, and WHY... but my big saying is "all things in moderation". I think Janenne is right on about not turning it into a battle... My ex-SIL is a food Nazi, and what do you suppose the kids, and ever her HUSBAND do? Sneak candy and sugar every chance they GET behind her back! I'm always under attack for having junk food available to my kids, but it makes me laugh to have to throw OUT 3/4 of the Halloween loot the kids lose interest in, while HER kids have theirs gone the next DAY..(and they hit about 10 times the houses mine do...lol)

I have to admit, I've "covered" for my ex-BIL when his wife tells him he's had enough pie on Thanksgiving, and he tries to sneak an extra piece while she's not in the room. I've actually gone and gotten it, pretending it's for me, sice she WATCHES him! The kids actually came up with a plan, where ONE kid asks for something and gets her to turn her back, while the OTHER moves in on the cookies...<shrug> Hey, they're learning cooperation, I guess!

lol barb that is sooo funny what your in-laws do.... ROFL.... sounds like 2 kids i baby sat for a while.. they werent allowed to have anything that wasnt "organic" so the mom about freaked when she found out that I gave her babies "real" cheese !! but from then on the lil girl and boy would both ask "ms. misty" what kind of goodies she was going to bring them the next time she came over LOL and the funny thing is I always took them something LOL man.... some people take things to the major extremes

Thanks for the validation Barb. My kids will be fine, I want them to lose the weight slowly-they are still in active growth phases. I never want to be a dreaded food Nazi! The holidays will be fun, I'm not sure what I'll do with the Halloween candy. Maybe a piece for dessert at dinners (since I'm less LC then)-and a bit more on weekends till Thanksgiving and toss the rest.

My son was underweight almost his whole life.. He was a preemie, has had (counting on fingers) about eight or so operations, each when he was FINALLY gaining, so they knocked him back! <grrr>

Now, he's on the "chunky" side, due to his seizure meds, but I'm just adding more salads and veggies to BOTH our diets, while still letting him have the "carby" things, just less often and smaller quantities. He gets sugarfree ice cream treats and doesn't even LOOK at the label... He hasn't complained yet!

I just try to not pick fights over food. I figure it all balances out if he's choosing from healthy alternatives. He may want mostly meat at one meal, veggies the next...sometimes just mac-n-cheese. If you average out the intake over a week, for instance, it almost always comes out pretty balanced. (But don't get me STARTED on school lunches!)

I gave up on school lunches this year. Zach gained a lot of weight last year eating breakfast and lunch there-my guess is about 15 pounds. Not to say he wasn't also eating plenty at home-so I'm not blameless either-but I've seen the light!

Can I join the rant on schoo lunches? The "Healthy USDA approved" kind. :P

I remember my HS school lunches. If we were lucky w emight have one thing, usually a carb with soem protien. We had the option of grabbing a slice of bread and occasionaly a fruit. Basicaly it couldn't keep a mouse full, much less growing kids. I've heard they improved it somewhat since I left.

What gets me is my son's lunches and breakafsts at preschool They will have the same thing for breakfast and snack most days. Almost all meals are served with juice, which isn't to bad. What gets me mad is those healthy balanced meals are often: muffins, pop tarts, fruit loops, cookies, cinnimon roll, grahm cracker/teddy grams, banana bread, cake, brownie, and so on. (that is just reading from the September menus)

The only good points is that they seem to offer a fruit with every meal, and with most lunches a veggie is offered. Now I can understand the difficulty in getting 20 3-5 year olds to eat veggies, but I can't imagine the chaos in that room once the sugar high kicks in.

School breakfast and lunches were pretty nutritious in my day-at least for what they knew then. We had a protein, starch, veggie, fruit, desert and milk for lunch and hot cereal, waffles, pancakes, frenchtoast, breakfast meats and milk for breakfast. The school cooks made our food at the school-mostly from scratch. My kids get processed convience foods, full of breads, sugars, sodium and nitrates/nitrites. They serve more cheese and frankenfoods than meat. I know the menu is largely based on cost and staffing, but sheesh! No wonder the kids gain weight.
To top it off, the teachers use recess as a punishment too. I went to the principal and told them I don't want my sons to miss recess for any reason-if they misbehave make them run laps rather than skip exercise. James, then 10, had come to me after missing three days of recess for not finishing his classwork saying "I know I have to exercise my mind, but I'm fat and need to exercise my body too." I couldn't exactly disagree, could I?

When he's right, he's right. With my son, he gets left out of ENOUGH without using that as a weapon...

Our cooks do a really good job with what they have, but ever since the government decided ketchup can be counted as a vegetable, it was all downhill from there!

Our school lunches are very starchy, but at least they get salad bar most days as well. I LOVE it when they say "fruit" when they mean syrup-canned beige fruit cocktail...,
<snarl>

At least his school still has recess. They are building some schools with no playgrounds at all in Atlanta and a few other places. They decided that since we were falling so far behind japanese students, the answer was to cut out recess and use that time for studying. Suposedly kids get enough physical exercise in PE (I remember that being what, twice a week in elementary).

They didn't even bother to notice that in most countries, including Japan, the kids actually have longer breaks then we do and know the kids need movement and to give the mind a rest :P

Don't Japanese kids go to school nearly year round? I know teachers are very much against it here, but we are hardly an agricultural society anymore-especially city kids.
They also have a huge cultural difference from us. There, it is the child's job to succeed in school-to benefit the family honor. Kids are not allowed to act up in class-or at home for that matter.

Well, Janenne, we ARE an agricultural society here, and the kids ARE needed on the farms. In fact, kids can get excused absences for helping with farm work on a case-by-case basis! Of course the cities aren't that way, but pretty much the whole middle of the country is....

Kids DO need recess and such, but there again, we're making the school responsible for WAY more than they should be. IMHO, there's nothing wrong with turning off the tube and going for a walk together, playing games in the backyard, or some other physical activity. I realize not many get the luxury of being an at-home parent, but I think too many parents abdicate their responsibilities when they ARE home!

I worked in a special-needs preschool class in the publuc school. Probably a third of these kids were in there because Mom and/or Dad didn't spend time with them and give them ANY kind of discipline and learning.... and these were the kids of not just the poor and uneducated. A LOT of well-dressed career-oriented go-getters who just happened to think it was the SCHOOL'S job to do everything. There was a Dad who called and yelled at the teacher for sending a home activity for the kid to do with the parents.... he SCREAMED about wanting HER paycheck if he had to do HER job. I was shocked! Also, we did a lot of work on manners and nutrition in the lunchroom. I can understand why school lunches are the way they are, really. If a kid hasn't seen a piece of fruit before, it's hard at that age to convince them to eat it! The battle is to get them to EAT something, not just feed the wastebasket.....

Not to mention sex ed, anti-bullying, drug education..and, oh, yes....actual reading, writing, and 'rithmetic.......somewhere in there! It makes me sad that the school is having to parent so many children.

<sigh> and to think, this all came from a question about limiting milk???? lol!

The school lunch program at Dixie High School (middle, intermediate, and elementary, being clustered somewhat, get the same thing) in St.George, UT is . . . . Domino's Pizza!! The school district was losing too much money on staffing a kitchen so they put lunch feeding up for bid. Domino's must, however, insure that it is a "healthy" pizza by ensuring that every slice has at least three (count them--3!) slices of pepperoni!!

RE: Teachers being against lengthening the school year. Of course they are against it--if YOU had 3 months paid vacation every year and your employer suddenly threatened to reduce it to a mere 6 weeks in order to increase productivity, you'd be irritated too!! Never mind that the REST of the workforce has to survive on a month or (usually) less of paid vacation per year . . . The teachers of course would argue, usually outside of earshot of the general public that "that was the reason I got into the profession! You couldn't seriously believe that I actually wanted to TEACH??" (Both my parents, as well as one of my brothers were teachers, so the cynicism isn't completely ungrounded)

Of course the idea of it being three months of paid vacation assumes that they get paid enough to LIVE on. Unfortunately, the teachers I know and am related to all have at LEAST one other job to make ends meet. That's sad. ND ranks toward the bottom in teacher pay, yet near the TOP in graduation rate and national test scores.

If each parent paid the teacher a dollar an hour to babysit the kid, think of what THAT would earn them!

TEachers in most places are drasticaly underpaid. You add in the burn out, 0 support from the community and parents, and then wonder why they aren't as enthusiastic after a few years.

Schools anymore are being used as daycare facilities. It isn't uncommon for a High Schooler to have 3 study halls and a free period, but still have to be there all day. Standards have been progressivly lowered as kids fail to meet the current ones, while days have been extended. I support homeschooling and would love to try it, but I need the babysitting of the public school to work. My children also need the socialization as I don't have a large network of support that includes children thier ages.

I think the idea of year round school with longer or more frequent breaks within the year is a much better idea. That or the schools that only go 4 days a week. I've even heard of some charter schools that go half days, then the second half of the day is spent on classes the child can choose for enrichment, intermural sports and activities, and a wide variety of other programs.

I come from a state that is still agracultural. We even still have a few one room schools and schools that feature corrals for the horses kids ride in on. Some kids get up earlier then 4 am to get the chores done, then sit on a 2 hr bus ride to reach the nearest school by 8.

Some schools here have moved to the 4 day a week plan though, reserving Friday for sports and other activities so absenteeism is way down.

I would like a year round school for mychildren that would feature alot more physical activity. In the warmer months they can do hands on science outside. Gymnastics and other physicaly intense classes would be offered.

Unfortunetly there are only a few schools like this in the country. I do plan on getting them into the one charter school Wyoming has. While it isn't year round or anything, it does start phonics in the kindigarten and integrates Spanish through out the cirriculum. By the time kids leave kindigarten they can read to varying degrees.