Regulations for daycare meals

by Cynthia Coplin
(Balch Springs, Texas USA)

My daughter attends this daycare, where every morning they serve them the same cold cereal everyday with milk...for lunch I am told by my daughter that they ate bread and peanut butter for lunch and has never been served a hot meal at this daycare.

I would like to know if this is legal first of all. Now that she is school age I have to provide her with her own lunch meal if school is out for the day.....

OBR's Response

Cynthia, thanks for writing. I'd be upset too if this were my daughter's daily meal regimen. I find it hard to understand, from a practical sense, how a daycare could serve peanut butter at all, with the increasing amount of peanut allergies in young children.

I think your first step if you haven't done it already is to confirm your child's menu by asking the teacher or director questions about it. Not in an accusatory tone, but just to confirm facts first without jumping to conclusions. You didn't say exactly how old your daughter is, but you do want to confirm that she's not oversimplifying the menu because she doesn't feel like sharing details about her school day. (My school-aged niece and nephew do this a lot:)

If you confirm that this is the menu, then you should tell them that it falls beneath your expectations and ask them what they can do to change it and how long it would take to implement the changes. If the answer is along the lines of "nothing" then you can start bringing your child's meals everyday and/or look for a new source of child care.

As far as legal advice goes, I don't have any. However, I see you're in the state of Texas, so you may want to visit the Department of Family and Protective Services website as they handle regulations regarding childcare in Texas. They also have a hotline for information about childcare in Texas. This might help you find out what the dietary guidelines are before you even approach the daycare.

Also the United States Department of Agriculture has a nice set of resources for healthy meal planning for childcare providers. One of them is a downloadable menu with healthy meals laid out for them. If you're dealing with a reasonable group of people you may be able to print it out or point them to the website as a resource for improvement. Ultimately, I'd go in assuming they are competent and capable of providing good care until they prove otherwise.

Good Luck. I hope this helps. Please come back and let us know how you resolved it.

Sincerely,

Erika