Diet-Free Back-to-School Resources! - Sunny Side Up Nutrition

It’s that time of year again, children are heading back to school. As you and your child transition back to school, we've pulled together diet-free back-to-school resources to support you and your student.

School Letters for Parents and Guardians

Have you seen our downloadable, customizable school letters that we made with the National Alliance for Eating Disorders? Unfortunately, diet culture shows up in schools, because schools are a part of our larger culture. Teachers, parents, and school administrators are not immune to diet culture messages. These letters are ready to support you when you need to send some information explaining the harm of dieting and weight focused messaging. Just download, customize one of these letters, and advocate! These are the perfect diet-free back-to-school resources to have on hand!

5 letters:

Introductory Letter to Your Child’s Teacher - Want to be proactive? At the beginning of the school year, use this letter to introduce yourself to your child’s teacher and tell them a bit about your nutrition and food philosophy.
Letter regarding School Weigh-Ins - Have this letter on hand if your school conducts student weigh-ins.
Letter regarding a Harmful School Assignment with Diet Culture - This letter will help if a school assignment includes calories, weight, or good/food bad food messaging.
Letter regarding Food Police in the School Cafeteria - We often hear about adults in the cafeteria telling a child how and what to eat their lunch. This letter will explain that you’d like your child to be in charge of the order in which they eat their lunch and how much they eat.
Letter requesting your Child Opt-Out of An Assignment - Does your child have a history of an eating disorder? And/or do you feel strongly that your child needs to opt out of an assignment? This letter is to help you request that your child opt out of an assignment that may be potentially harmful.

Diet-Free Classrooms

In addition to our letters, there are many other diet-free back-to-school resources to support diet-free classrooms.

Let’s Make Our Children’s Classrooms and Activities Free From Diet Talk This free downloadable handout is great to share with teachers, coaches, troop leaders, and school administrators -- anyone who is helping teach and care for children. The handout lays out how weight-focused comments can be harmful and the evidence for the risks associated with dieting.
Please Don't Teach My Kids to Diet: 5 Resources to Give Teachers and Schools This blog post is an oldie-but-goodie. It provides ideas on how to work with educators around these important topics and 5 resources to support you!

Nutrition Education

We believe nutrition education needs to be developmentally appropriate and free of diet culture. These podcasts and blog posts provide information on supporting your school and children's teachers towards this goal.

Sports and Activities Back-to-school also means back to activities! These podcast episodes and blog posts

are packed with information about how to support your child in their activities this fall, and important addition to your diet-free back-to-school resources.

Middle, High School, and College Students

Do you have a teenager? The teen years are full of transitions, boundary-pushing, social media, and independence. These podcast episodes provide you with many perspectives on how to support your teen as they transition back to school.

Packing School Lunches

Back-to-school means back-to-packing lunches! Neither one of us love this job, but we try to keep it simple and quick. We have tons of resources to support you in taking the dread out of lunch packing!

Kids Podcast Series by Age Level

Do you have questions about feeding your child of any age? We have you covered! Listen to our Kids Series! This series is 4 podcast episodes where we answer listener questions about feeding kids.

We hope the transition back to school is a smooth one! Do you have diet-free back-to-school resources that you love? Or questions for us about feeding kids and teens? We'd love to hear from you!