Aibu to not know why you wouldn't be able to feed your DC's breakfast?

[Bearlover16]

Daughters school has recently extended the 'paid' breakfast club to 'free' breakfast club due to an increase in the number of children going to school not having had any breakfast.

Are people really that much on the bread line that they cannot buy a loaf of bread or some cheap porridge oats for less than a quid?

I'm not well off by any means and I do donate to food banks when I can. I also ensure my dcs have had breakfast before leaving the house as I was always led to believe it's the most important meal of the day.

As I keep saying, there are a genuine minority yes 🙄

I should imagine that cases of such genuine hardship that parents really cannot afford to feed their children is quite rare and short term

I agree Userplusmanynumbers

If they were as hungry as they claimed, they could always eat the fairies at the bottom of the garden for a few days. I'm sure the BBCGoodFood website has many economical and nourishing fairy recipes that can be enjoyed without even too much fuel costs.

May I recommend "Whole roast fairy on a spit".

Ingredients: 1 fairy per person

Method: catch fairy, impale on a matchstick, roast over candle flame

Delicious, cheap and nourishing (NB - anything with more than two legs is NOT a fairy. It is a housefly. They are nasty (but can make a nourishing, if revolting, broth).

You live in a dreamworld User if you think that poverty is either rare or short-term.

If you are not feeding a baby then social services remove them from your care, why should it not be the same if the child is 4 or 5 or 6

Brilliant idea Daisy - cur benefits by £X per week, starve families into submission and then take their children into care at a cost of £XXX per week.

One of the reasons that many people do nit seek help is because they are terrified that precisely this will happen. Poor people love their children, too, believe it or not.

I agree with you that the gap between rich and poor is ridiculously high in this country - read "The Spirit Level". Where there is less of a differential (and of course there must be - training a surgeon costs a lot more money that a shop assistant, and they have much greater responsibility) people at ALL levels of society report being happier and more content.

Sadly, there are many people who think that it is always the fault of the poor that they are poor. Take a look at this cartoon.

digitalsynopsis.com/inspiration/privileged-kids-on-a-plate-pencilsword-toby-morris/

It explains how both advantage and disadvantage have a tendency to snowball.

And as for smoking/drinking etc when there is no money for necessities - when YOU have lived for years on a knife-edge of desperation, when there is no change in your condition no matter how hard you try, when the cards are stacked against you, people blame you for your own poverty, you can't see anything better ahead for your children but love them so much that you can't bear to be parted from the, when you see MPs fiddling their expenses to the then of thousands and getting away with it, while the girl down the street was sent to prison for 6 months because she entered a fraudulent benefit claim that netted her another £2 a fortnight so she could buy her child shoes for school, when every day brings a further crushing blow to your esteem, when you see your lovely children becoming pinched with hunger and cold and hardened by life, when you feel that your family will be better off without you but you are too depressed to take our own life * . . . THEN come to me and show me how well you are managing to get yourself out and about and face every day with a smile on your face without the help of a smoke or a drink to blot out reality.

*Yes - you really can be so depressed that you can't even summon the energy to kill yourself. How do you think that feels?

@EvilDoctorBallerinaVampireDuck my comment was tongue in cheek hence the ‘standard response’ bit. If your dp is only working 20 hours a week though there must be some flexibility with you working- they don’t penalise you for working more. The idea is you come off them (wtc) at some stage.

You can’t complain about lack of food and then say your state help is not enough... don’t be passive. What can you do?

I am saddened to think that there are people that poor. I should think the breakfast clubs will be more of a convenience for most. But I'm sure there are some people that cannot afford breakfast. Or at least if they don't have to pay for breakfast, that leaves more money for another meal. I don't know how common breakfast clubs are. They don't have one at our primary school. My older boys have to get the bus at 8am for secondary school. It would be nice if they could buy some breakfast at school as mornings are always manic for the 13 year old who cannot get out of bed. But there isn't that option at secondary either.

The literature on WTC stated that as a couple we could only work 30 hours a week. I'm also restricted by school hours and travel times. I think they only give 20% costs in childcare vouchers now. I've looked for local jobs, but we don't have much round here, Sainsbury's and Curry's, and they never seem to have jobs with suitable hours. I do keep looking.

The majority (yes, the majority. Not all, but the majority) of people have got themselves in to such a financial situation that they can’t give their child a slice of toast and glass of milk in the morning is going to be:-

Shit with money
Low level half finished education
Not good a parenting generally ie unwilling to prioritise their child. For example they will buy a packet of fags / a lottery ticket etc rather than a 40pm loaf of bread and 60p pint of milk.

That is the reality.

Also, if we lost WTC we wouldn't be able to pay the rent, so we'd be homeless, and I've lived in hostels before, not with children and not because of poverty.

This morning. My children had:-

One slice of wholemeal toast (3p each)
A bit of butter (0.5p??)
One egg each (18p each)
A banana (5p each)
Water (0)

Total cost of one egg with soldiers and a banana for breakfast for two children - 53p

I agree with you @YellowMakesMeSmile

Also we live in a country with readily available contraception, though many choose to keep reproducing children into ‘poverty’.

Whether people like hearing it or not, a large proportion of parents who are not providing breakfast and other basics for their kids is down to poor choices and lack of responsibility.

It’s easier to blame the brew, blame the housing, blame whatever. You know what, no one forced you to have children you can’t afford.

Why don’t they sacrifice their mobile phones, tattoos, fags, booze? No? Didn’t think so.

On the other hand there is sometimes genuine need in families who have fallen on hard times after disability, illness or job loss and that is entirely different.

Regardless of what families these children come from it is good that there are always clubs and groups to offer help to feed their children as without them it’s the kids who suffer.

I posted on this last night but I'm seeing comments about not being able to work no jobs blah blah I'm 21 years old I have a 2 year old I work 5 nights a week to support my son and my partner works 50 0pdd hours a week we are a young family that want to support outsells and our son.

So the aww I can't get a job blah blah a load of ballocks you just can't be arsed.

People would rather sit on benefits forever and moan about being skint rather than get off there lazy arses and work to support there family.

evildoctor having done the sums, are you saying you'd be worse off if you and your partner both worked full time than you are currently with you both carefully working just few enough hours to keep your WTC? It seems crazy you won't get full time work because you'll lose WTC, only reason I can think of is that you get more money working less and claiming?

everyone

There are more people capable of work than there are jobs. Even crap jobs. Even seasonal jobs.

You may live in an area of the country where the number of jobs is greater than the number of applicants. A lot of us live in areas where there is NOTHING.

(Thank you for that Mrs Thatcher)

Hm would hardly say that it's just laziness make excuses all you like that's what it is.

Trying to say you can't travel an hour on the bus or work something out like that? Yes yous probably could but yet again to lazy.

Benefit cheats.

Kity DH can't find a full time job, and probably couldn't manage to do one now anyway, he's in his 60's and has always done manual jobs, he doesn't have any qualifications. I'm qualified in web design, but I'd need to earn a fantastic amount to afford rent, council tax, prescriptions, dental treatment, glasses, childcare...

Read my above post. If only work was so freely available.

That was to Yellow.

Also, if we ditched the WTC we wouldn't be able to afford to live.

That's exactly it Kity. Also, DH's job was the first one he got, and I really don't think he could work longer hours now anyway.

Dippingmytoesin

People are really struggling to grasp that if you have NO money you cannot afford 'cheap' things either.

No they’re not. What we are doing is calling bullshit on the notion that those with children in the country do not have “no money”.

We have a generous benefit system here for those with children.

So if there is a scenario where parents have “no money” to afford a load of bread and pint of milk it is because of poor priorities and shit financial mismanagement.

It's not just poverty, but poor parenting as well. My parents had more than enough money to buy bread and cereal but I never had breakfast before school as I would literally be up and out of the house in 10 minutes (and still late for school). I never took charge once I was older as I didn't know any different. I'm horrified now I am a parent looking back.

I said people who CANNOT feed their children should be helped financially and those who WILL NOT should be dealt with by social services for neglect. But please take what I’ve said out of context.

Doesn’t Matter how many times people disagree with me, the MAJORITY of parents can afford to feed their kids breakfast.

But whether there's no money for food because of actual poverty or bad choices, those choices are not made by the children who are going hungry. It's not their fault. And if they can't learn properly at school because they're too hungry to concentrate, you are just perpetuating the cycle.

I find the ignorance on this thread astonishing. It's pretty stupid to pick one small expenditure (breakfast) and claim not to understand why it can't be afforded because it's small, while failing to see it as one more thing on top of all the other necessary expenses.

It's also pretty inhuman to try and distinguish between the 'deserving' poor and the 'undeserving, vice-ridden poor', as many have on this thread. Because either way, it is not the child's fault they are not fed.