What Happened When I Went to Eat Lunch With My Kid At School

Regular readers will know that my 4-year-old started school last September. The school have a tradition of inviting the parents of Reception year kids in to have lunch with their little guys.

Now, as well as being extraordinarily cute, this is also a bit of a flex on the school's part. They pride themselves on their food culture and are part of various different initiatives and programmes to promote healthy eating in schools. Like, they're kinda braggy about it.

When A was at nursery (at the same school), I had been to a talk by the school's chef (yes, an actual chef), who as well as being really passionate about getting kids to eat well – a goal I think I can safely say we share – also proclaimed that fussy eating was not a real thing. Uhh OK then. We also got to sample some of the dishes on the school's menu, which although delicious, did seem to appeal more to the sensibilities of the affluent middle-class parents the school served rather than being attuned to young kids, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

For the past 18 months or so, it has been a complete mystery to me what my child eats every day for lunch. I had gone through the menu asking him if he'd tried the various things on offer that day. I was guessing it wasn't the squash gratin, or the radiccio salad. Definitely not the fennel with molasses. Probably not the tofu curry with seeds. Most of the time he told me he was eating cucumber and bread. Every day, cucumber and bread. And I also know that he typically cleared out the snack box that I pack for after school club at 3.30pm and then would still demolish dinner at 5.30/6pm.

But, surely if he was only eating a bit of bread and cucumber for lunch every day, someone would have said something 18 months in. Right?

RIGHT??

Let's find out what happened when I ate lunch at school with my 4-year-old.