US mum Caroline, who goes by @pezzi.shop on TikTok, shared details of the row alongside the strongly-worded note she slipped into the girl’s lunchbox for the teacher.
She said her daughter Evelyn came home one day telling her that her teacher had instructed her to eat her “good” food before she ate her “bad” food.
“She couldn’t have her cookie before eating her sandwich and cucumbers,” Caroline wrote.
The mum explained that the teacher’s instruction went against what she taught her daughter at home.
“We talk about this all the time at home,” she wrote.
“If you only eat carrots or broccoli your body won’t have protein it needs to grow strong muscles. If you only eat chicken, your body won’t have enough energy to do things like run and play all day long. We need little bits of everything.”
Caroline said she “felt a little frustrated by the antiquated instruction from the teacher” and told Evelyn the response was “silly”.
She then decided to leave a handwritten note for her daughter’s teacher instead of dealing with it directly.
“Evelyn has our permission to eat lunch in any order she chooses,” the note read.
“None of her foods are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ - they are just food!”
Followers were split over the mum’s response, with one saying: “I’m sure the teacher wasn’t trying to be cruel … maybe you could have talked to the teacher instead of a passive-aggressive note on your 3-year-old’s lunch.”
Others disagreed, saying that Caroline was “100 per cent right” for responding.
“That’s way too controlling. No one should tell anyone in what order to eat their food. That’s their meal to enjoy,” one person wrote.
Chch choc-chip stoush
A stoush over a home-baked banana choc-chip muffin landed a Christchurch primary school with a formal complaint in 2019.
New Brighton resident Tammy Campbell said her 6-year-old daughter wasn’t allowed to eat the banana muffins she packed in her lunch for Waitakiri School.
She said the teacher made her daughter put away a muffin at lunchtime one Monday, so she sent a note with another muffin on Tuesday, asking the teacher to call her with any problems.
Instead, she said the teacher took her lunchbox to the deputy principal to sift through the rest of its contents.
