A father in San Diego, California, is angry that his daughter, age 11, spent $120 on junk food at her school over the course of 4 weeks. The girl says she was buying chips, cinnamon rolls, and ice cream sandwiches for a dollar each. The father says that the school never informed him that this type of food was available during lunch.
Hold up. Wait a minute.
Call me old-fashioned (or don’t, because I already have issues with feeling old these days), but when I was in junior high, I never had that kind of money. My parents paid for my school lunches by check at the beginning of each month. I was never given any money to purchase my own food. My question for the father is: what is your 11-year-old doing with that much money?
And, as someone who makes a living working with adolescents, I feel it is my duty to warn the father that there’s this crazy new thing the kids are doing called growing up. While growing up, kids are known to do such things as: hang out with friends, go out to eat, and attend parties. They may, in fact, be exposed to such abominations as soda, candy, cookies and, eventually, alcohol. And don’t even get me started on the exposure to junk food found at those evil things we call stores.
Father beware!
But there are things you, as a parent, can do to combat the perils your child will face while growing up. Talk to them, have honest conversations about health and budgets and, I don’t know, maybe don’t give your 11-year-old that much money? Teach your daughter how to make wise choices, monitor those choices, and be ready to reinforce the right decisions and give consequences for those that are undesirable.
Now, don’t get me wrong. As an educator, I feel our schools absolutely have a responsibility to teach our youth to be responsible, well-rounded members of society, and certainly there is a need to teach and promote healthy eating. Which is why the USDA recently put new requirements in place that require students to choose a 1/2 cup of fruits and 1/2 of cup of vegetables for their meals. Dark greens must also be available.
This particular school is meeting (exceeding, they say) these requirements. They even have a system in place where the parents can go online and see what their children are eating as well as limit their spending.
So, while I agree that the school bears some responsibility in this matter, I would argue that they have supports and programs in place to help parents monitor and regulate what their children are choosing to eat. And the operative word here is choose.
As kids grow older, they have more freedom. With that freedom comes many opportunities, and it is a collective effort between the school and parents (but mostly parents, because the school’s job is to teach academics, not core values) to ensure our youth are making the right choices. In this case, I feel the father is not justified in shifting the blame to the school. At some point, we all need to accept personal responsibility for the choices in our lives, and as parents, we need to accept personal responsibility for teaching our children to be accountable for their choices.
Personally, I think the father is being ridiculous. His daughter will be exposed to junk food (and worse) as she grows older. Instead of placing blame elsewhere, my hope is that he begins to guide his daughter on healthy eating and spending, and realize that you cannot control every environment to which your child is exposed, but you can certainly guide them to make healthy choices.
While I definitely agree that the parents could have and should have done more, the amount she spent isn’t shocking if the school runs on a pre-loaded program. A few of the schools I attended had parents deposit money at the beginning of the quarter and that was your “lunch fund” – my parents always figured out the cost of school lunch and put enough money in for one meal a week (I normally brown bagged it), but I distinctly remember running out early one year (3rd grade?) because on my lunch days I was skipping the standard lunch and buying more expensive and less healthy ala carte options. My parents definitely had a big “sit down” with me about that and it didn’t happen again, but I’m not shocked she was able to do that- she probably spent half the quarter’s lunch money in four weeks, but it isn’t totally insane that it was possible.
And, I think our school does it another way – as far as I know, kids punch in their lunch code and then (at some unspecified future time) we get a bill for the amount they’ve spent. Given that Dad referenced a transaction history, my guess is that he didn’t in fact know that she spent $120 that quickly. I also agree with his overall point that there is no need to have so many pricey, less healthy options available.
When I was in school, we got a lunch money from our dad before school (my mom worked at night). there was no pre-deposited money. Even in elementary school, I can remember carrying around money for lunch and snacks.
The lunch ladies cared not what you bought with the money. As long as you had enough. I drank sweet tea every day at lunch the whole time I was in school.
I don’t think I ever told my parents what I ate for lunch once I was out of elementary school.
I had major problems at the beginning of the year with the fact my kid’s school doesn’t give change for cash if they ask for it. I learned a lot of my money management skills by being given a $10 bill at the beginning of the week and told to make it last all week or I would have to pack my lunch or go hungry. We had a lot of trouble with my son taking advantage of the fact that there isn’t anybody monitoring what he buys and spending his whole week’s money in one or two days. I think there needs to be an option where the parents can select the option to not allow ala carte purchases, either by checking a box on a form or when depositing money through their payment website and then have a notice pop up when the child punches in their number in the line, whether the parent makes that choice based on finances or health concerns.
I think he’s overreacting by blaming the school district. If anything, they are bending over backwards by having a system where you can look up what your kid ate. It seems pretty helicopter-y for an 11 year old, which means I also don’t think it’s self-evident that he was negligent in his parenting. But if the kid is going to overspend and consistently make poor dietary choices, those are both parenting issues that aren’t the school’s responsibility to keep track of.
Given the fact that the guy will raise a stink at the school about this, I wonder if there is a lot of judgment over food in the household and that’s why the kid wants to eat a bunch of rewarding junk when they feel unsupervised.
Last week my 3rd grader was telling me how one of her friends at lunch eats her snack before her sandwich. And how the mom must not know much about being healthy because she packs her daughter ‘chips AND another snack’.
My kid was aghast. She really was. Not because the kid ate the junk first, but because the mom didn’t put any fruit or nuts or yogurt or veggies in the girl’s lunch.
Because in my kids’ heads, food is fuel. Food is to be enjoyed, but also used for health. They seriously enjoy some ice cream or tortilla chips, but they’ll also seriously demolish a bowl of broccoli or peas. Just as readily as the ice cream.
Since when did raising our children become the responsibility of the schools? It irritates me. As a former teacher, it rubs me wrong when parents blame schools for their child’s lack.
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