Kids can be cruel

[confusedofengland]

DS1 is 12 & in Year 8 at a state international secondary school. He takes packed lunches to school as when I put £10 (minimum top-up amount) on his dinner money account, he spends £6-7 in one day on pizza, hot dog, flavoured water etc. We cannot sustain that level of spending & I also think it's unhealthy.

His packed lunch usually consists of: sandwiches (hm in foil), salad in a Tupperware, apple/banana, cheese in a Tupperware, Aldi crisps & Aldi choc biscuit or couple from the biscuit tin in foil if I've run out of wrapped biscuits. He always eats it all. He is slim & very active, so I'm not worried about the amount of food.

He came home from school today saying that 3 kids on his lunch table were laughing at him for having non-branded crisps & anything at all.

I feel awful for him. We could stretch to branded items but it would be a stretch & also mean going to a different shop. I tend to get everything at Aldi because it is quicker & cheaper too.

What should I do? He said he likes the food but doesn't like being laughed at. His 2 younger brothers take similar lunches, but smaller & I take packed lunch to work once a fortnight, so need to buy lots of packed lunch items.

Could you put the crisps into a container?

Kids really can be little fascists, can’t they? In my day the shaming thing was if your mum got your clothes from a catalogue. It’s the unpleasant side of wanting to be part of the same ‘tribe’.

If your lad has enough confidence, he could always laugh at the ‘sheep’ for going with the expensive branded stuff (most likely not as nice as Aldi). As long as it’s confined to joshing him and doesn’t get nasty, it sounds like something he’ll work out his own solution to. It’s rubbish and kids seem to do these things generation on generation.

The life lesson of standing his ground with kids who say stupid things.

‘It’s just crisps! Who cares what shop they’re from! laughs rolls eyes!’

Teach him to stand up for himself is more important than buying a different brand or decanting them into a tub!

Bullies/idiots pick on anyone who acts embarrassed or upset so if he shows he’s not bothered they will move on to someone else.

Put everything I. Containers and no wrappers

Also suggest your son to tell his 'friends' when they laugh at his Aldi crisps " there the ones I like otherwise I wouldn't have them"

Tupperware, but only if you have a dishwasher (and only buy the dishwasher safe ones). Then all his food goes into reusable containers (reusable is cool at the moment). Then tell him to say that all your food comes from Fortum and Mason and you would never go to Waitrose with the RiffRaff.

Those kids are horrible. He should own it and laugh at them for being entitled idiots, but i know thats not easy when your young! Theres nothing wrong with Aldi food. I think give him an easy one liner to put them down easy if they do it again, like let him know the price difference so he can say something to them like ' Its so worth it, you practically make money by using Aldi/ no one gets rich by wasting money on brands/ its same stuff different packaging/il be able to save enough to buy a ......(whatever) ' that kind of thing, give him the confidence to turn it round on them, they are the idiots in this. School is a stupid place, Imagine adults laughing at each others lunchboxes!

Don’t change his food and don’t put stuff in containers. He needs to stand his ground and say “yep cheap and tasty win win!”

My ds is year 8 and had a bit of this over his break snack , the other kids take chocolate bars, he takes fruit. He just shrugs and says “I prefer fruit”.

Yeh, dont go decanting into tupperware! Dont let him be ashamed of this, the other kids should be shamed.

Honestly kids are little shits what a stupid thing to bully someone over!

I wouldn’t buy different crisps because of a few 12yos. No way.

Shrug at them. If it’s not crisps it’s something else. The problem is with those other kids not your DS’s crisps.

They’re bullies. If it wasn’t his crisps they would find something else. I knew people like this at school and I’m sure you did too. Kids are horrible.

The difference between "label and brand" kids and those who aren't is astounding. The taunting of those who aren't slaves to brands is awful behaviour. Unfortunately they seem to grow up the be adult eejits. Encourage your DS to ignore them and be happy with not being a sheep.

Year 8 is a tough year for boys. They will find anything to laugh at. If it's not his lunch, it'll be something else. It won't just be him that's getting this. As pp have suggested, build up his confidence to laugh it off on the outside. Unwrap food. Eventually my ds came up with his own retorts back. But it took time. Be supportive. Don't let him see that they arengetting to you too but be empathetic to him. "Yeah and your biscuits come from the Palace. The Corgi's bowl"..

Why do my emoticons post randomly???

I do tend to agree with those of you saying that these kids are just nasty & would find something else to laugh at if not the crisps. However, DS has never found it easy to be part of a group of friends & he seemed to have that last year, yet one of these is the perpetrator. He said that he's not bothered about being friends with this one boy, but without him he can't be friends with his two besties (who were there but did not laugh). I have also been the kid who everyone laughs at & don't want that for my boy 💔

I am in half a mind just to buy him the branded stuff just for him (discreetly) & use Aldi stuff in the other lunches.

@Sweetchocolatecandy

They’re bullies. If it wasn’t his crisps they would find something else. I knew people like this at school and I’m sure you did too. Kids are horrible.

This 100%

I was constantly the victim of this at school they would find anything about me....

Kids can be so cruel ☹️

He needs to learn some stock phrases such as

"I didn't realise fried potatoes tasted different because the packaging says Aldi" with a shrug.

It needs to be things that don't have a question or available response to.

It's very hard to respond to that sort of statement and it often throws the bully and they hate being made to loom small so often decide it's best to shut up!

I remember stuff like this when I was a kid; it was very important where your parents shopped. If you had anything from anywhere other than Sainsbury’s you were a target. Sounds stupid to us but kids are jerks 🤷‍♀️

There are two main ways to stop this. The first is something you can do. The other is up to your son:

1. Buy 'named brand' crisps etc.

Pros - high school is hard enough. Makes things that bit easier on your son, draws less attention to him.
Cons - impact to finances (assess this yourself), bullies may find something else (note not necessarily 'will'), may feel like giving in

2. Son is considered too cool to make fun of, people want to be his friend rather than diss him. Any jibes about his lunch would be in jest.

Pros: speak for themselves
Cons: depends on your son developing certain character traits that most kids don't have. Not much you can do here. He'd need to be genuinely unconcerned about what people have to say about his lunch, and he'd need a good sense of humour, lighting wit, a mature view of the world, thick skin and general air of confidence.

These things tend to increase over time, which is why you have people in this thread saying stupid things like 'just tell him to tell them crisps are crisps!' who have entirely forgotten what it is like to be a child without the confidence life experience brings.

I'm not one for 'they learn through pain'. Give him named brand crisps. He's not going to learn self confidence through being bullied, this is an incorrect view.

B&M often have short-dated Walkers crisps cheap.

I'm not saying you/your son should have to buy them, but I was bullied all the time when I was your son's age and frankly I would have done anything for an easier life - i.e. to reduce the things that make him a target.

Give him the branded crisps. If he didn't come back at them immediately today with some fuck-you-like-i-give-a-shit-where-my-crisps-come-from smart arse comment laughing at them then he's probably not going to be able to pull it off next time and so the only protection for him is the branded crisps, as fucking stupid and ridiculous as that is.
Your poor boy. Kids are so cruel.

I do agree with those saying that if he now takes branded crisps, they'll rip the piss for something else... because people that do this operate that way. He does need to learn a poker face- they're doing it to provoke a reaction, and no reaction is boring and they move on to someone else (not good, I know, but at least sharing out the pain).

When I was at school in the 70s everyone ripped the piss out of a girl who had brought her lunch in a Dr White’s ‘bag’. I didn’t as I had no idea what Dr White’s was or why it was funny. But I didn’t let on that I didn’t know as I knew that would make me the butt of the jokes.

Kids are cruel.

Lord of the Flies.

God tbh I’d buy the branded stuff. School is tough without giving ammunition to little shits for giving him a hard time. Pound shop do branded stuff. It may be such a small amount you’d save giving him Aldi stuff, that I would just buy what he wants.
I remember this kind of thing being excruciating as a kid.

So I just did some quick maths on Aldi v Walkers and assuming one multipack bag per school day, it works out at a difference of £15.26 per year. That’s a quite a lot for multiple children and multiple snack types! I’m sure your son would much rather you spent this on things that actually mean something than on crisps!