kids going to school hungry and tired

[dearyme]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13081777

is this poor parenting or real poverty - or a mixture of both?

More than three-quarters of 627 primary, secondary and college teachers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland who responded to the survey believed they taught pupils living in poverty.

Of those, 80% said students came to school tired, 73% said they arrived hungry and 67% said they wore worn-out clothes or lacked the proper uniform.

Coming to school tired is poor parenting. Coming to school regularly hungry is poor parenting - but not on an occasional basis. Coming to school with worn out clothes/ lack of proper school uniform is probably poverty but very occasionally a sign of neglect.

doesnt really surprise me,the amount of kids i know and see them online of facebook etc late at night and then moaning the next day they are tired!

mine dont look after their clothes....the teens that is.....its uniform and they hate it

the younger one,well,white board pens anyone???

tired.......end of term my lot all start to feel it,and i'm a stickler for early nights....the teens are growing and no amount of sleep seems to be enough

and this is a knock on effect,they have little time for breakfast when they spend what time they have in front of the mirror rather than eating something.

Some children basically raise themselves - go to bed when they want, get themselves up and dressed usually putting on dirty clothes from the day before. That's bad parenting.

Very sad. I'm a teacher and see a huge ammount of neglect as well as poverty. Tiredness is usually a sign of neglect/poor parenting. Hunger can be both/either. I think lack of correct uniform is a sign of poverty, yes, but those whose clothes are constantly dirty show neglect.

I wonder about the boy who had no underpants in the story...if he had none at all, then of course that is poverty....but if there were just none clean, then he is living in poverty caused by parental neglect. If my child had only one pair, I'd wash them every night...as many have done in years gone by.

amount oops

From my experience (teaching on a fairly notorious estate) I'd say that this seems fairly accurate. I'd say it's a mixture of both poverty and poor parenting. Of course each of these 'poor parents' have reasons why they struggle - drugs/alcohol/crime/bad childhoods themselves. Combined with being cash poor (estimating now but it's unusual for more than 5 children to have one or more parents who work in any class) it's a real struggle.

I've purchased clothes (for PE etc), hairbrushes, toothbrushes etc and 'found' school uniforms/shoes etc for children I teach and run a breakfast club type thing for hungry children in school. You cannot teach a child who is hungry or cold. We try to meet their basic needs, then really push the education.

very very sad when the benefits are so plentiful :(

If you surveyed people in an office you'd probably get the same response. Except they'd blame it on stupidity of the office worker rather thanthe office worker's parents for not insisting on them going to bed at a decent hour and eating breakfast.

Tired and hungry can be the result of many things, inadequate parenting and neglect being a key factor. But overcrowded living conditions, and living in a difficult neighbourhood can make getting a proper night's sleep hard.
Worn out clothing or lacking uniform can be helped by schools having donations of second hand uniform in reasonable condition, are clothing vouchers still going?
Children in filthy clothing is a different issue, I've taught infants that stank through neglect. That's avoidable with better care.
One of the images that brought the reality of the area that I worked in home to me was when I went to the local market and saw a huge pile of crappy used trainers and shoes, and dozens of people scrabbling through them to find a fit.

If you surveyed people in an office you'd probably get the same response. Except they'd blame it on stupidity of the office worker rather thanthe office worker's parents for not insisting on them going to bed at a decent hour and eating breakfast.

are the office workers children? do the office workers not eat for three days on the trot? do they turn up dirty in wrongly fitted clothes?

My Mum taught a little boy who threw up on his school sweatshirt and wore it to school the next day covered in vomit :( the mother was a drunk, she always had booze. BUt couldn't be arsed to look after the children. The dog in That family tried to eat the baby.

She was teaching in a school in a particularly bad area of town, she was amazed at the amount of money that non working families had to bring up their families yet the money was used for parental comforts while the children were sorely neglected.

Surely any caring parent goes without in order to provide their children with basic necessities. I wish these children were afforded the same level of human rights that are bestowed on their parents.

Ds1 frequently goes to school tired. This is despite him having a regular, structured bedtime at 7.30pm he doesn't actually manage to settle and get to sleep until much later. He has ASD and finds it difficult to calm, get tired and process what has happened in the day, so he is often quite unsettled duringt the evening and night.

Oh and one of the girls she taught as an 8 year old is now pregnant at 12. :( :( :(

My son is often tired at school. That's because he struggles to get to sleep before 8pm and he has to be up by 7am to be dropped off at childcare.
He's hungry by the time he arrives at school because he won't eat breakfast.
His school jumpers are currently too small, but that's because we work full-time and can't get to the school office when it is open to buy new ones.

It's nothing to do with neglect.

Bullet I bet you feed him though and you are putting him to bed at 7.30, I'm fairly certain that children with additional needs have different rhythms for sleeping and waking anyway.

tbh I think there is a difference between children who have went without breakfast occasionally to children who always seem to be hungry. I have worked with children who regularly steal food from other children throughout the day and it is a sign of massive neglect.

If teenagers are hungry because they haven't had a breakfast I don't necessarily see that as a sign of poverty or poor parenting. Can happen for lots of reasons. But it is different with young children. And agree there is no need for children to be dirty or wearing dirty clothes.

Just to say I have seen neglect in children whose parents are well off e.g. dirty clothing.

Eeyore, can you not send him in with a cheque and a note for the office, explaining the situation and what size jumpers you want? Then they can give the jumpers to him to take home? That's what has often been done at the schools I teach at.

Not meaning to judge, I'm a working parent too.

There's a mum at my school who regularly sends her children in without lunch or dinner money.

I often see her at the local shop buying cider, fags and scratchcards - £20 worth at a time.

That's not poverty, it's neglect.

Ds2 won't eat breakfast before school but he has a substantial snack to eat either on the way to school or at break time. Ds1 loves breakfast but generally spends too long in the shower and straightening his hair before school so he goes off with a bacon sandwich or toast and honey.

I think the article is referring to children who won't get dinner when they get home from school, let alone breakfast. I just hope that they get a school lunch.

Diabolo - does no-one intervene to speak to the parents about this or to ensure that the child gets food?

Long-term hunger looks very different in a child to short-term not eating breakfast. Too small clothing is often a case of squeezing as much use as possible out of an item before buying the next size, rather than those children wearing grimy and foul items that are no longer fit for purpose.

the thing is if you gave the neglectful parents 20 times the amount of money they get now, none of that would filter down to the kids

its not about money, its about care and love

sausages - we have to lend the kids dinner money from the school pot most weeks and it gets paid back - eventually.

If we ring her and ask her to bring in a packed lunch (because she has got dinner money outstanding, so we won't lend more), more often than not it's a bag of crisps and/or a bar of chocolate.

Sadly we're not allowed to ring her and say "Oi - start spending your money on your kids".

They're not on FSM sadly.