RE: Sweets have no place in school children have a right to choose

OH please what a society we live in! I have just heard a statistic that labels one in five of our children obese! Lack of exercise and poor diet are to blame.

Mr and Mrs Hedges (Evening Advertiser, July 8) think we should let children choose.

How completely ridiculous is that? If you asked 100 children to choose from say pizza and chips or grilled chicken and pasta, how many do you think would choose the pizza option? Come on!

We as adults are in charge of their lives until they are 18 and we have a responsibility to steer our children in a healthy direction.

It's not very easy. Parenting never is. It's hard to insist on a healthy diet much easier to just dish out the fast food option.

Here we have a school trying to help parents give their children a healthy alternative to the snack at break time and what do we do? Condemn the teacher and mollycoddle the child.

No wonder we are breeding a nation of selfish, uncaring, materialist people if we feel that children should make the choice of what they eat, even if it damages their health.

If parents are abdicating their responsibility to educate their own children in the right or wrong foods, what's next letting them choose their own behaviour?

That's happening all too often these days as it is!

I am a parent and having spent quite a few years working in playgroups and junior schools I do have some knowledge and insight.

I say well done to the school for having the courage to introduce such an idea and feel the parents should support the teachers all the way.

And if not, then the parents should address their own parenting skills!

At the end of the day going to school is a preparation for life just as much as learning to read and write!

JANE C PITCHER

Barnes Green

Brinkworth

Chippenham