To not understand how it's cheaper to send dc to school with a cold happy meal than a packed lunch?

[bobstersmum]

In the news this week, an article about children in deprived areas being sent to school with a cold happy meal. Then parents in another article defending the reasons for it, saying that sometimes it's all they can afford. I just can't understand it? A happy meal is 2.99 I think? But a cheap loaf of bread is 50p, a cheap pack of sandwich meat or cheese is less than a pound, bag of bananas a pound multipack of crisps a pound, that's lunches for the week for around the same cost?

It’s not that unlikely. Lots of places have a little retail park with McDonald’s etc. but no supermarket without a long walk. And that’s not always feasible with children*

Sometimes I genuinely think that people come on MN just to cause a bit of trouble and drama by disagreeing with something obvious. There is categorically no excuse for sending a child to school with a cold happy meal. It's lazy, sloppy, thick parenting.

What knowledge and basic skill is happy meal parent deprived of then?

And there are 11 pages of people discussing how affordable a happy meal is so plenty of people seem To think it’s about cost

There is categorically no excuse for sending a child to school with a cold happy meal

The posts about access to supermarkets were in response to PPs here who obviously haven't a scooby what the reality of living in poverty can be like, not a defence of a Happy Meal as a packed lunch!

Also children up to Y2 get free meals

Not everywhere in the UK they don't!

Unless there is SEN issues involved with the parents then your just a crap parent and shouldn’t be having kids

Given that 16% of adults in the U.K. are illiterate, I have no idea why you don’t think there could possibly be SEN issues involved. Even if there are no SEN issues, it could easily just be a parent who grew up in a neglectful environment themselves and doesn’t know any better.

There are lots of deprived kids in our borough whose parents basically do nothing for them. They live on school dinners and cheap fried chicken meals. If they are also illiterate, and drop out of school at 14 (as many do), then move into insecure housing when they get pregnant, how likely do you think it is that they will be sending their kids to school with a nice egg and cress sandwich and an apple? Zero chance, no matter how well-intentioned they are.

And yes it is crap parenting, but not necessarily intentionally so. It is lack of knowledge. Many, many people have the maths and literacy skills of an eight year old, and I wouldn't trust an eight year old to meal plan or budget appropriately. My SIL works in adult literacy, and it is common for her students to not even understand the concept of a train timetable, let alone be able to use one. Some can’t even tell the time because they can’t read numbers, despite supposedly getting through primary school. Actually it is often the fact that their own children are starting school that prompts them to seek help. They were failed as children, and need support now.

My little girls lunch for the week is £9.00 that includes fresh veg for snacks and fruit. I earn £800 pm with rent at £500, council tax at £130 pm with gas electric and water. Ok we get some child benefit and some tax credits but all in all we really struggle yet manage to eat healthy home cooked meals. I get that being a parent is tough financially but it's your child so you manage.

At least all of the judging on this thread is going some way to helping the poor children who are the subject of the article.

Well done everybody.

What's for dinner?

There is categorically no excuse for sending a child to school with a cold happy meal

What about if that’s all the child will eat? I’d rather my children ate something rather than nothing. We stopped hot lunches because my 2 were having no food at all. If that’s all they’d eat I’d buy one every day if I had to. As per the paediatric nutritionists advice. It’s not always straightforward laziness.

The lack of critical thinking in most of these responses is amazing. People really do just read an inflammatory headline nowadays and REACT exactly as the editor wanted them to, don’t they?

If you read the article carefully and take more than 0.2 seconds to understand it before reacting then you’ll see it says SOME parents send in cold McDonalds. And also that SOME parents send only half a sandwich because it’s all they can afford. The SANDWICH parents say that, not the McDonalds ones.

But by all means don’t let me get in the way of your smug outrage about dirty poor people daring to spend their money on fast food.

In my parents village there is an extortionate local shop where a lot of the mums do the shopping. The buses are expensive and the nearest town is 5 miles away along country national speed limit roads with no pavement/walkway.

Great posts everybodypuuuullllll and BitOfFun.

I think I was fortunate in that my parents passed on to me the skills and knowledge to raise my own family. I know how to shop and cook cheaply. I am now in a good position where both me and DH are working so we don’t have to worry about money any more, but I am still careful and would rather do without than get into debt.

So I just don’t agree that just because you are poor you don’t know how to care for a family. It must be down to lack of knowledge? My parents’ generation were war babies, there was still rationing, a lot of poverty, and you had to learn to manage on very little. What happened to those skills?

Do you see the contradictions in what you posted, Squidsister? There is a massive amount of luck involved in having capable, thrifty parents who had decent mental health and the determination to prepare their children for a better life. You could also call that privilege.

There are lots of parents out there who never experienced adequate parenting themselves. And lots who are just worn out by the constant grind of it all. Not everyone has the resilience needed to face the hard slog year in, year out. 'There but for the grace of God...'

The war generation who cheerfully made do and mended did not grow up with a TV reminding them daily how miserable their circumstances are compared to the rest of society. People know that social mobility is not a thing.

On the topic of online grocery shopping - you need money in the bank to do that. Also in many cases a smartphone, and decent broadband.
www.theguardian.com/money/2019/jul/27/thousands-without-mobiles-could-be-frozen-out-of-online-payments

Quite honestly, many of the suggestions and comments here could be filed in the category "Let them eat cake".

The lack of critical thinking in most of these responses is amazing. People really do just read an inflammatory headline nowadays and REACT exactly as the editor wanted them to, don’t they?

In addition, this post has demonstrated that quite a few people appear to be lacking in reading comprehension skills!

In saying that, I do agree with the previous poster who made the point that it is a poorly written article.

I think the fact that MPs claim about £4m for food & drink expenses should be questioned, they have a salary of about £75k, should we pay for them to eat when kids are going hungry?

JK, that’s irrelevant. You may not like it but it’s a perk of their job just like millions of people get perks from their employers in different forms.

They aren’t responsible for feeding children, the parents are. That’s who needs to ensure it’s done.

The cost of my dcs school meals per day is cheaper than the cost of a happy meal.

I'm struggling to imagine a place in the UK that's close enough to a McDonald's but so far away from civilization that you can't put together a packed lunch for less than a tenner a week.

You don’t need to formerbabe because no one is claiming the happy meals are being bought due to lack of supermarket or money

Apparently, a cold congealed happy meal is better than nothing:

www.thesun.co.uk/news/10354969/parents-lunch-mcdonalds-happy-meal/?utm_campaign=sunmainfacebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1573840195

I live in london and someone I am related to works in a school where the child was bringing cold mcdonalds for lunch. It transpired that the child and their family were refugees fleeing conflict and a parent of this child had a job at mcdonalds, would save the food from their shift to give to the child for lunch. The child probably qualified for free school meals but had been here a relatively short amount of time and that hadn’t been sorted for them yet.

Oh god that article Eliza. They’ve totally fucked over those parents, who haven’t sent their children to school with McDonald’s but have been naive enough to tell the sun why they think others might

Ilnome, that doesn't add up. If they were refugees they wouldn't be able to work. To have been here too short a time to sort fsm but long enough to get a job doesn't make sense.

i used to work in down town los Angeles. One day I got the idea to do my shopping at the supermarket in the city and then drive home, avoiding the worst of the traffic. It was an eye opening experience. The food was much more expensive than at the same companies market near my home. The quality of the food was atrocious. Fatty meat, limp vegetables, fruit with mold. And this was a neighborhood that was lucky to have a supermarket. There were plenty of housing areas that all you could access without a car or an infrequent bus ride was fast food or a convenience store at a gas station.

One of my coworkers bought a gorgeous penthouse apartment near the office. Every time he needed to buy groceries, he had to make the long drive to near where I lived so he could get to a decent store.

@OlaEliza

Refugees are people who have been granted leave to remain in the uk. They are entitled to work. It’s people seeking asylum who are not entitled to work as they have not yet been leave to remain.

It’s not a stretch to believe that people new to the country are not fully aware of their children’s entitlements such as free school meals.

If they were refugees they wouldn't be able to work

Refugees are able to work. You're thinking of asylum seekers!

It’s neglect. I despair of people who have kids when they really, really shouldn’t.

Neglect? It’s inappropriate, and against school rules. But how is it neglect? Neglect would be not feeding them at all