Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Am i overreacting about this ??

Oddly enough, the biggest problem I see here is the 5 min. silent time at the end of lunch. The purpose is so kids can finish their lunch? Kids can't eat if others are talking? That has no logic. I'm viewing this more likely as a control issue on the part of the school or those teachers / supervising staff just wanting a few minutes of silence themselves. I guess I'd be inquiring what the real purpose of 5 min. of silence is for and what it accomplishes.

At a guess, kids can't eat if they are using their mouth for talking. And hypoglycemia can get ugly with some.

Chronic issue with my oldest. In elementary school he has 20 minutes for lunch (including walking to and from the lunchroom) and his food regularly comes back home untouched. I kind of wish he had a 5 minutes supervised silence rule. Although to be fair in preschool he had 40 minutes sitting down time for lunch and even with frequent reminders from teachers to stop talking and start eating he still didn't eat much.

You are not overreacting at all. I have an 8 year old son without any behavior problems or special needs and I would complain about this policy for him, too! I am also a child and family therapist and can tell you for sure that many school policies run absolutely counter to normal, healthy child development...this one included.

Please note, I'm not standing up for the school having this rule.. but fwiw... we actually do this at our house sometimes! My dd11 talks literally *all the time* and she is extremely social. She is a kid who would talk her way through lunch and totally forget to eat. I'm not saying that's a reason for the school to put the policy in place, but from what I've seen, she's not the only kid who talks rather than eating during lunch at school - every time I visited the lunchrooms in elementary schools that my kids attended, the kids were all so happy just to be together and have the chance to talk that they weren't eating as much as they were talking, and I saw a lot of food get thrown away at the end of lunch. I don't have any mindset that my kids need to eat everything in their lunch, but I would pick them up after school and they would be *starving* and 9 times out of 10, still have quite a bit of their lunch left.

Soooo... not saying the school should have a rule in place like that, but I do see the logic in it!

polarbear

In my sons school (but common practice here) the first 20 minutes of the hour lunch is sitting down and eating. After that the child is free to go IF the teacher thinks enough has been eaten. Obviously they only do this for a few years but I think they would continue it if there was a need.

Why can't the kids who have finished leave and the others stay longer?

As I described early, my DD's school segregates the children by grade level, and while one is in the lunch room, another is on the playground. All the kids scheduled for the lunch room stay in the lunch room until time to go to recess.

I don't know what this is supposed to accomplish other than making the kids miserable.

Why can't the kids who have finished leave and the others stay longer?
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Here in my state there are from 900 to 1100 elementary school students trying to get through the line and sit and eat. At my son's school the entire school gets free breakfast and free lunch so just about everyone (other than a random few who bring food from home because they want to) goes through the line. There is no time nor room in the cafeteria for shenanigans like letting someone stay a few minutes longer to eat or talk instead of eating. In fact, my son's elementary school is so worried about test scores they have instruction during lunch for some of the grades (on TV's around the cafeteria they have vocabulary on some days and on other days the kids have to read, my son likes to read but he would rather talk). INSANE.

I do remember as a kid though at my Catholic school that lunch and recess were one big thing. The teacher or nun walked us over and then left. So we managed to sit, eat, clean up, and then wander the fairly large grounds (there was a huge play ground, fields, and then a huge parking lot that had basketball, four square, Frisbee, jump ropes and kickball games). We were allowed to go where ever and do whatever we wanted to as long as when we saw our teacher (maybe she blew a whistle and you looked to see if it was your teacher?) we ran in.

I know there were parent volunteers and a few paid lunch aides in the lunch room and I know the PE coach was always on duty outside at lunch. But I will say that we had a lot more freedom than kids do today. I don't remember once anyone telling us to stop talking or that we were too loud. I assume if we were too loud they would have kicked the group of us being too loud out to go play rather than wait for us to go on our own. The food was good too! (I only bought once or twice a week). But good food, freedom to sit with your friends, manage your own time, get some fresh air/exercise...I do think we had it good.

Although i don't see a 5 minute silent lunch is a problem , i do see it as a problem because the punishment doesn't suit the crime . The punishment as i mentioned , was losing recess the next day .


My DS has been working on improving his behavior , and it is hard for me to accept that he will lose whole recess the next day because the day before he talked during that 5 minute silent lunch .

We're supposed to meet the school either tomorrow or the next day , they called this morning ( finally after 1 week waiting for their response !!

But anyway , please tell me what would you do if you were me , i really need some opinons .

I will bring up the lunch rule , since i don't really see the punishment fits the crime . Esp. for DS who's trying really hard to improve his behavior .

And another thing , he had a leftover bread yesterday after eating his lunch and he threw the small piece into the garbage can , and missed . Then he picked it up , and threw it in the garage , but yet one of the teacher 'moved his clip' saying he has no self discipline . Ds also said he's throwing his lunch box in the air but he catches it .. and that was also resulting clip moved and no self discipline .

Please correct me if i'm wrong , what is the big deal of throwing garbage into the trash can ? Is it wrong ? He did pick it up when he saw he missed the can . Am i being too soft or the school being ridiculous ? I really don't understand this .

And then DS told me yesterday that during PE he had to sit out because him and another student were pushing each other . The other student pushed him first , so he pushed back , they both were called by the coach and coach made DS sat out the whole time , while the other boy didn't get any consequences . DS was really not happy about this and felt that the coach just chose to believe the other student and being unfair .

I was also wondering if i should bring up about DS being told he's not using his time and material wisely because he was flicking money ( during math ) , or spinning his rules and taking out his pencils . Noted : he did all of these after he's done with his assignments . And that the teacher yelled in daily basis , when DS reported another boy because the boy was signaling him that he's stupid .. the teacher said to DS " does it hurt you ? "
and DS said quietly " No ... " Then teacher yelled " THEN STOP TATTLE TALE .. "

He doesn't know what to do anymore .. because if he's telling then he's afraid he might be in trouble .. i am afraid because if there is something that really is bad and needs to be reported , he probably won't do it because he's confuse ! should i or shouldn't i ..

I would definitely bring up the fact that it's very confusing and counterproductive to have him lose the next day's entire recess for one thing at lunch, when he's working so hard at everything else. He's just going to give up trying.

And the teacher(s) seem to be completely against him in everything. It's a perfect example of what I figured out in high school -- if you make a good impression on a teacher at the start, you can pretty much do no wrong in their eyes after that, but if you start with a bad impression, nothing you do is ever going to be good enough and you're going to be in trouble for everything. Fortunately for me, I was on the good side of that equation when I figured it out, but the poor boy who was on the other side had a heck of a year. Your son's teachers are convinced that he's nothing but trouble, and they will not see anything good in him. I'm not sure I would even bother staying for the rest of the year, if you had the means to keep him home and just start over next year. They're doing more harm than good.