Townhall.com
Derek Hunter
May 7, 2017

I learned a new term this week: lunch shaming. What is lunch shaming? It’s when parents don’t pay their children’s lunch bills at school so the schools make them eat food I lived a large portion of my life surviving off of.

We really are out of problems if this is an issue worthy concern for society.

The New York Times had a big story on how children were made to eat cheese sandwiches because their parents had paid off their school lunch debt.

Now, it’s been a while since I was in school, but I do remember school lunches costing a couple of bucks. And I remember I was allowed to buy a school lunch one day per week because that was all my parents could afford. Free lunch was not an option. While we might have qualified – I honestly have no idea how much my father made but I know it wasn’t a lot – the government teat was not an option. My family had pride and my parents provided for me and my siblings, undoubtedly at their own expense.

The idea of parental sacrifice for the good of their children is now dead. “The school will feed them” is the new way of life. But it shouldn’t be.

One of the students mentioned in the Times piece said, “I was so embarrassed,” about being denied the school food she wanted and given lesser “cheese sandwich” level food…for free.

According to the paper, the family qualified for free lunches but “a paperwork mix-up” caused confusion and led to the denial. No, bad and lazy parenting led to the denial.

I know we’re not supposed to say it, but if a parent won’t provide basic food for their kids they’re bad parents. With all the social programs and food stamps available, how much “help” do people need?

My mother lost her right leg above the knee when I was 9, yet she made sure to make lunch every day. She made sure I ate breakfast every single day before I left for school. I’m sure she would have rather slept in, could’ve found more enjoyable use for the time and money to make me lunch, but she did it because it was her responsibility. And she did it because she loved me.

That last part is the most important. Being a parent means loving your children, and taking care of their basic needs is how that love is expressed most frequently and effectively.

My dad drove a forklift 5 days a week and a Zamboni on the weekends to provide for me and my 4 siblings, and my mother took care of feeding us. There was never any doubt about their love, even when me and my brother and sisters did our best to inspire their anger (and we did a thorough job).

Now too many kids are being taught it’s schools and government who care for them, who feed them, not parents. And far too many parents are content to cede that basic responsibility.

Schools are providing breakfast and lunch to students of bad parents, and more and more are adding dinner to the menu. I get that some people have it rough, but we do have social safety net programs. If people on those aren’t using their benefits to feed their kids, what are we paying them for?


If you won’t provide your child with food you should lose your child. Maybe that would shock their system to the point they’d get out of bed to made some oatmeal, hard-boil an egg, or make a sandwich?

All of those options, by the way, cost literally pennies per day. But the real cost is doing something that shows your kids you care enough to do something, and that’s a bridge too far for too many people these days.

Billy Shore, the head of a charity that advocates absolving parents of basic responsibility, wrote a response to what he called the “shameful” Times piece in which he writes about how schools need to feed “their kids.” But they aren’t their kids, they are their students; those kids have parents. Those parents have responsibilities they aren’t fulfilling. And in not fulfilling those responsibilities they’re conveying to their kids that government provides for them, not parents.

That’s a horrible and damaging message to give to a kid.

As much as someone caring for a kid is something they need to know, nothing will replace the role of a parent. And a parent simply shirking responsibility because someone else will do it damages kids far more than having to eat a cheese sandwich.

It’s time to judge these people, to shame them, to shun them. The student I mentioned at the open of this piece shouldn’t be mad at the school of giving her food she didn’t choose, she should be angry with her mother for choosing not to provide her with food in the first place.

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Of course this is absolutely sensible and correct. Which is why it isn't likely to happen.

From as early as 3rd grade through my entire school experience I did not have lunch because my parents were too into themselves to bother with whether I ate or not. At first I was just too young to plan for hunger by making my own lunch. Then I didn't eat because after years of not having lunch it was just how things were.

As an adult I made sure my children had lunches paid and then extra for the younglings unfortunate enough to find themselves without. I would ask the boys every day what they had for lunch not because I wanted to know the menu but because I wanted to know that they ate. Some parents don't care enough to provide.

The worst part of this type of behavior is that what they put on social media is so far from the truth that they are spurned on by all the social nitwits telling them what perfect parents they are.

The problem is most of these idiots have no shame.

Not long before I left, there was an enormous hullabaloo in San Diego about an aspect of this.

What was happening was that parents were not paying for lunches. They would pay at first then, when that payment was exhausted, the school continued to provide lunch, and bill the parents. The parents ignored the bills. Eventually the school had to do something, and after repeated attempts to collect, was forced to either deny the deadbeats' kids lunch or break out cheese sandwiches and similar make do arrangements.

It raised a firestorm of controversy, argument, accusations, ill will and more besides.

Bah! I had a cheese sandwich yesterday while taking a break.

quote:

Originally posted by kz1000:
The problem is most of these idiots have no shame.

Yup. Roll through WallyWorld and you'll know this to be true.

Fake hair, fake nails, big car, paying for everything with EBT.

How else do you make the deadbeats step up?

And too bad if the kids are embarrassed. First, that is on the parents not the school. The school has no obligation to spare their tender feelings because their parents are no-goodniks. Second, maybe they'll learn something, too.

Our kids went to a rural Colorado HS. I don't remember the percentage, but well over 50% of the students were on the free lunch program. we lived in the community quite awhile and got to know a few teachers and school administrators pretty well. One time the Asst. Principal told me that he was pretty angry when he saw all the iPhones (and similarly expensive models) in the hands of those whose parents apparently couldn't afford to pay for their kid's lunch.

Why I don't do pediatric nursing, it's not the kids, it's the parents. While the kids may pay for their parents irresponsibility and it's doubtful that shaming would have any affect on the parents, it may teach the kids a life lesson; bad choices have consequences.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
How else do you make the deadbeats step up?

And too bad if the kids are embarrassed. First, that is on the parents not the school. The school has no obligation to spare their tender feelings because their parents are no-goodniks. Second, maybe they'll learn something, too.

This 100%!
If the kids learn their parents suck as early as possible then perhaps they can find self motivation and self reliance early too!
HK Ag

the local schools here give out free coats to the youngsters who come to school with out coats , in the winter.

they had to start cutting out the tags and writing the names of the kids, inside the coats, because the parents were taking the coats back to the stores for cash to buy booze and drugs.

they wanted to offer brand new bicycles to those that did not have them, but that went out very quickly.

the green card holders in the big city start bitching when the schools sent home food for the week end in back packs,

seems three apples, two oranges , three health bars, a couple of cookies and some juice boxes were no where near enough for their 46 pound child for lunchs for two days.

they were asking for sandwichs, soups and a crap load of other stuff.

they thought their whole family should be fed by the school district

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
One of the students mentioned in the Times piece said, “I was so embarrassed,” about being denied the school food she wanted and given lesser “cheese sandwich” level food…for free.

I wonder how this little princess would like plain peanut butter on a slab of wonder bread, a stick of celery, and a rock hard homemade oatmeal cookie?

Kept me going until dinner damned near every day. And, AND, I had to take the brown bag back home to use again the next day! THE HORROR!

I am not going to direct hate to young children.

They are either to naive to understand things, or too indoctrinated by their deadbeat "parents" and/or the system to be accountable.

Put the hurt on the people responsible, both the parents and the "village" that gets in everybody's business and marinates these kids in such crap.

Rubber hoses, wooden rails, stocks in the public square, some flogging and if all els fails, start hanging the fuckers.

I went without lunch out of embarrassment of being on any "program", just a shame thing.

Enlisted in the US of AF at 5'8" and 112 lbs. Left basic at 117, and was 135 out of tech school. My weight was 165 for most of my adult life. So, yeah, I know what it is to go hungry once in a while. But shame is a strong motivator.

And no child should be so motivated.

Create a program to help the kids, then make sure adults, adult. If not, show no mercy to them. They know better.

Cue Forrest Gumpmonkey, and "That's all I got to say 'bout that...."

There's no shaming people like that. There is no such thing in their world.

This is one of the reasons our country has trillions of dollars of debt.

There are several dozen government programs and several government agencies managing the programs to feed the "poor." I really hope feeding the "poor" is one of things the Trump administration streamlines and gets rid of all the duplication and waste. First place to start - kill off the Dept. of Ed. free breakfast, lunch, and snack programs.

At least the story had the mindless do-gooder exclaiming "it's for the chitlins."

In Hawaii, our church had a backpack filling program in which food for several meals for a weekend--NOT school lunch. It was cereal, packages that did not require cooking. When we asked why this was done or needed, we were told that the kids got lunches at school, but the parents neglected feeding the kids on weekends. Can you imagine that??
And that despite being food available free through charity food banks.
These were mostly Pacific Islanders.

Those free lunch etc programs are vital. If it weren't for those, there would be hundreds of thousands of kids raised in homes with no 72" flat screen TVs.

Not to mention that these meals are very expensive to provide when compared to the true cost of providing a meal from home. Years ago LAUSD provided breakfast for qualified students at a cost of about $2. I did the simple math and two servings of Cheerios and milk would be about $0.30. I survive to this day on cereal. Someone's family connection is making millions of the taxpayers to provide semi nutritious meals.