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.

DD quite often can't eat breakfast at the time she'd need to to get to school, DS1 has cystic fibrosis and quite often didn't feel like breakfast.

I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall with some of the posts here. What do people not understand about the fact that if you have no pennies you still can't buy food for pennies no matter how much you try!

You're not kidding Unihorn.

If you've got 10p in your purse, then a 40p loaf of bread is out of your reach - simples!

And some people don't even have 10p.

Eumhl

So when you found out this child wasn’t being fed at home, at all. Did you do anything?

Sunshine - I had my child when I owned two companies and lived in a massive house with three cars in the garage and thousands in the bank. Then I became disabled and my husband left, leaving me in shed loads of debt and homeless while coming to terms with a wheelchair for the rest of my life.

I couldn't afford a roof over our heads, let alone food.

Things change and you never, ever know if you'll be in that situation one day. Let's hope that you stop judging others.

Sunshine people lose jobs you know, people get ill and can't work anymore.

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out why people might end up not being able to afford their kids

Breakfast clubs and FSM are another reason why deprived children fall behind their peers during the summer holidays. Because what do they have to eat when they aren't at school?

Unihorn- if I could “like” posts I’d like yours. People don’t understand. Blinkers.

It’s all well and good to say “I’m poor but my dc ALWAYS get fed!!” But all that tells me is that you haven’t been as poor as some people really are. Because they are so poor that their children can’t always get fed it’s tragic.

This reminds me of another thread where an op and all following pps were outraged that a friend had sold a gift she’d given them on Facebook selling pages- unforgivable and ruder than shitting on the doorstep! But the friend had told her she needed the money When you need money- you’ll sell everything before not feeding your dc. But then when everything is sold.............. thank god for breakfast club

Phantom, giving them food will help a little bit but we need to be doing far more. We should be investing more into health visitors, social services etc to make parents step up or face the consequences so that children have better outcomes and lives.

Surely we want an end to poor parenting and neglect for those children and future ones rather than just a sticking plaster?

Society needs to show its not acceptable to not feed your chidren (likely the tip of the iceberg) or opt out of many parts of parenting. We just keep excusing it blaming everything and everyone else bar the parents.

Yes yellow society does need to do more but you can't just blame parents who themselves were born into awful circumstances. If you were a child born into poverty then you know nothing different and just assume you too should take drugs at 12 and have children at 15. Your children may be born dependent on alcohol. Social services may not be aware of issues because you get used to hiding it well. Or services may be too stretched to really help, particularly in areas with a large caseload. Consequently you have poorly educated children having children and it continues.

No I don't know what the solution is, other than people having more empathy perhaps, but poor parenting is not necessarily a choice. It's all some people know.

It's a sticking plaster on a larger problem. ..but it's a much needed sticking plaster

What 'society' needs to do is give more money to poor people. This is why we need Universal Basic Income.
It actually makes massive sense, in social and economic terms, to give poor people more money. It boosts the local economy as well as making the individuals' lives better.
At the moment we are living with a set up which punishes poor people for being poor. Housing costs as a percentage of income are the highest they have ever been, while wages are held down and corners cut on health&safety and workers' rights.
The current system of benefits is all run on lines of punishment and control, with DWP staff being given targets to hit - they must sanction (ie take money away from) a set number of people per week. People are taking their own lives and/or starving to death. In one of the richest countries in the world.

Sunshine, we are educated. Not addicts, did everything "right" illness and a job demotion due to plant leaving.

All of you judgemental people are unspeakably cruel, naive and frankly, does your poo smell like roses and is it used as perfume?

Bad luck, hard times, divorce, death, accidents and ill health are part of life. When they touch YOU, look in the mirror and remind yourself of your privilege and superiority as you struggle to stop the hunger pangs and hide them from the dc bc you know that they will want to share their porridge.

It was only two years of low wages but the memories do not fade.

Christian charity? Humanity? I'm stunned at the blithe ignorance issued in response to poverty.

I think many people seem to live in their own bubble. Not everyone lives the same life. Many people have constant obstacles to prevent them from leading a perfect life’.

Guilty as charged.

I began reading this thread agreeing with the OP thinking "why should my taxes feed other people's kids".

I've changed my mind.

Myself and my DC always had a good nutritious breakfast as do my DGC now. I genuinely had no idea that the levels of poverty described on this thread still existed in modern Britain. I can't put into words how shocked I am, not only at the levels of deprivation but also my ignorance of how bad it can be.

Yes, I've lived in my own bubble, I shall find out where there is a food bank nearest to me and on Monday I will send a cheque. I'm sitting here warm, cosy, full, clean and so are my dogs. I look at my furbabies and am shocked they have a better life than some poor children in 2017 Britain.

OP you ABVVU but I thank you for this thread which has shocked me out of my cosy life and made me see reality. I (and I suspect many more people) need to be made to see reality.

Yellow your comment pisses me off. We're on WTC and we can't make the money stretch from Saturday to Friday. The DC suffer boring, small, nutritionally dubious meals just so I can feed them 2 meals a day and pay for school lunch for DD. DS2's on FSM as he's in y2. They don't get treats, I struggle to buy them clothes and shoes. Birthdays and Christmas would be miserable if it wasn't for family.

The entire thread is worth it for that @daisydrip

I said their a minority who are genuinely hungry. And I never said that I opposed breakfast clubs.

I do call bullshit on the majority of parents who say they can’t “afford” to feed their kids breakfast though.

It’s not anti welfare rhetoric. I do not think people who are sick/ disabled etc. Should not be provided for by the state.

While I do not oppose breakfast clubs it does concern me, however, that instead of seeing this as the child welfare concern in many cases it is, instead the state roles out a program to take even more responsibility away from parents.

As a parent it is YOUR responsibility to feed your kids. If you CANNOT due to financial issues etc. Then you should be sent to a food bank or given food/money/vouchers. Or help with debt/budgeting/finding work. Whatever applies.
If you WILL NOT feed your children then your child should be under the watch of social services as you are not performing your duty as a parent.

If I did not feed my child 3 meals a day and clothe her appropriately I would hope someone would HELP if I needed it, and keep her SAFE if I failed to.

Just as would happen if I failed to feed the baby.

This whole post has pissed me off how can someone say are people really that bad.. it really has nothing to do with anyone who has breakfast and who doesn't everyone has there reasons I doubt the parents say one morning " oh I can't be bothered making whomever breakfast this morning but I'll pay for breakfast club" if you need to pay for breakfast club your as well buying cereal but how can that be if a family is in the worse situation ever poor people need help too so I think yeah breakfast club. Should be free.

OP shame on you one word and that's judgmental. It's disgusting

i do see your point, Daisyraine90, but that woould require more money than the current governemnt is prepared to hand out.

Did you know that people on benefits can no longer get small loans out from the dwp against their benefits? these used to be a lifesaver. You could borrow up to £150 and pay back over a year, taken straight from your benefits. That's gone now. Now people use breakfast clubs and go to food banks

Daisy, in an ideal world, yes the support & benefit system would be there for those who needed it and be easily accessible when needed.
But the government were voted in on a campaign of cuts to services (2 elections ago). The cuts to disability funding has lead to deaths as people starved or suffered. Universal Credit has lead to a huge gap while being switched over, leading to people having no money for over a month. Food banks aren't easily accessed in most areas and have limits to how often or how much you can receive. The safety net system isn't working.

I have lived in utter poverty and my father was/ is mentally ill so Work wasn’t a constant. I then struggled as an adult on my own- I have a decent job now but am seriously ill. I am lucky that I get long term sick pay but I would agree that people are very rare who just can’t be bothered to feed their kids.
I can not describe the despair I felt when I didn’t know where my next penny was coming from. When I looked for things to sell. Made dinners from nothing.
Walk a mile and all that....

EvilDoctorBallerinaVampireDuck, Why?

A search shows you don't work so it's a choice your actively making. Many families work around each other, use childcare etc rather than see their children go short or having to resort to others paying for their children.

bonbonours DD often doesn't want breakfast, and we're not allowed to provide any food, they have fruit for snacks. DD's that child who would go hungry rather than eat something she doesn't like, she might have an apple. She says she doesn't start to feel hungry until about 12, lunch is at 12.30.

Yellow - many people don't work, but it isn't an active choice. They may have a disability, or they may not be able to get a job. Not everyone has a family to help them out or support them. Some have families, but they are in the same boat. Some move out of their home area to get work, are made redundant, and then have no support network.

Anyone can end up in poverty. It doesn't mean that they are lazy or feckless.

Some posters like to believe that poor people aren't really poor, they're just not trying hard enough at life.

This protects these posters from the painful and cruel truth that the system they vote for is causing children to starve, feel excluded, insecure, anxious and cold. In the 21st century in the UK.

Although the proof of this is presented daily, year in year out, by many independent and direct sources, they still do not want to believe it.

Because then they'd have to give up a slice of their lovely oversized pie in taxes to a starving child.