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coming from a family that never had enough food, I only stole bread when I was hungry. You dont eat 8 cinnabons in one sitting if you aren't. You arent feeding them enough, and if they arent fat why are you regulating how much they eat. Snacks shelves are necessary, especially if you have more than one child. Sugary things like hohos, cookies are empty and kids get hungry faster.
cheap ideas:
wrap lettuce around bolonga as a snack and leave in the fridge for them
toasted wheat bread, with cinnamon and honey
left over chicken pieces wrap in rice paper with lettuce and cheese
lots of things u can do with a bag of potatoes: chips, french fries, baked potato with cheese, mashed potatoes in a muffin pan and bake for a few mins, potato soup
If you dont put things out for them, they will tear your pantry apart and make their own food.
Ours were the same too. Free had a different color punch card than paid, so I'd get the lunch if I was in line with kids I didn't know - and could be very quick about showing the card and putting it back in it's holder... If I got "stuck" in line with kids I knew, I'd say I forgot something and get out of line...
In the schools around here, each kid has a special pin number associated with their lunch account. Parents can put money in the account, and at the register the kids just enter the 4 numbers, and it takes money straight from that account. I'm not sure how it works, but I would think the kids with free/reduced lunches would just enter their pin like everyone else, and no one would know who is really paying for lunches and who is getting some extra help.
I had come to the conclusion that the free lunches were shameful - and my fellow classmates reinforced this idea to be sure. So I often pretended to not be hungry or busy working on homework during lunch hour.
When I was a kid, the kids with free lunches would offer to buy our lunches with their cards in exchange for our money. They got money, and we didn't care because we still got our food. But you're right about it being possible they're not eating at school for whatever reason.
Quote:
Originally Posted by somebodynew
At our kids' school, the free lunches are the same lunches as what the families can buy. No one knows who gets free or reduced fee lunches.
Free lunches have always been the same lunches. How they're purchased is what's different. Now that many schools have automated purchasing without money, it's harder to tell who has free lunches, but that system has it's drawbacks too. For example, in my niece's school district, all of the kids want to pack lunches so nobody thinks they're getting free lunches. There was a time when packing meant you were too poor to buy lunch. Now the rich kids pack. No matter what schools do, kids will find a way to clarify the economic pecking order.
If you read the OP, you'll see that the biggest problem is with the 3 yo, who is really too young to prepare his/her own snacks yet. The parents are stressed out, and the kids are minimally supervised. I'm with the people who say someone needs to cut back their hours, either at work or at school, and provide a little more supervision for the kids. Either that, or put the two youngest in day care for more hours, so they can supervise and feed them.
I must have missed that. How sad. Sorry to say I remember from my teacher days some sorely neglected children who had to forage in the fridge and pantry for food before they were really old enough. Then the parents would complain about the mess. Usually in those cases CPS would be in and out of the home all the time for one reason or another. That's not just a hungry kid, that's neglect. Again, it's so sad.
I feel like this guy is being attacked and many assumptions being made. He said in his first post that the kids have plenty of food. There are plenty of kids who will over-eat even though not hungry, just as there are adults who do. My 4-year old great nephew once snuck a box of crackers into his room and ate the whole thing, and I know this kid is fed well. I feel like the man came here and made himself vulnerable in asking for help, and instead he got jumped on and chased off.
I feel like this guy is being attacked and many assumptions being made. He said in his first post that the kids have plenty of food. There are plenty of kids who will over-eat even though not hungry, just as there are adults who do. My 4-year old great nephew once snuck a box of crackers into his room and ate the whole thing, and I know this kid is fed well. I feel like the man came here and made himself vulnerable in asking for help, and instead he got jumped on and chased off.
If you had read all of his posts, you would note that he and his wife do not spend hardly any time in the home, so who knows how often the kids eat? He describes the 3yo getting up on a chair to get bread from on top of the fridge. With any kind of supervision, this would not happen. The baby got crackers with nobody knowing it. No supervision.
You would also have read that he is being proactive in taking advice here and hopefully making strides in changing things for his family.
First: A family of five in North Carolina qualifies for Medicaid as long as the income is under $4,596 a month if the children are all ages 0-5). If the children are ages 6-18, the income cutoff is $2,298. (I have no idea how that chart works if your kids are mixed 'tween 0-5 and 6-18. The chart only goes up to a family of five; that's why I didn't put limits for a family of six.)
"Have a family income less than 185% of the U.S. Poverty Income Guidelines. A person receiving Medicaid, Work First Families Assistance (TANF), or assistance from the NC Food and Nutrition Services automatically meets the income eligibility requirement. "
OP, one of you needs to take a day and start the application process for these programs. You DO qualify, based on the income you shared with us.
Second: GET WITH A CHURCH. I am not religious in the least, but a central priority for any worthwhile church is to help those less fortunate.
First: A family of five in North Carolina qualifies for Medicaid as long as the income is under $4,596 a month if the children are all ages 0-5). If the children are ages 6-18, the income cutoff is $2,298. (I have no idea how that chart works if your kids are mixed 'tween 0-5 and 6-18. The chart only goes up to a family of five; that's why I didn't put limits for a family of six.)
"Have a family income less than 185% of the U.S. Poverty Income Guidelines. A person receiving Medicaid, Work First Families Assistance (TANF), or assistance from the NC Food and Nutrition Services automatically meets the income eligibility requirement. "
OP, one of you needs to take a day and start the application process for these programs. You DO qualify, based on the income you shared with us.
Second: GET WITH A CHURCH. I am not religious in the least, but a central priority for any worthwhile church is to help those less fortunate.
That is so sad about the qualifying for Medicaid cutoff being half the income for a child over 5 than for a child under 5. This is what's really pitiful about many of the southern, southwestern, and midwestern states. They do everything they can to make it difficult or impossible to get an abortion, but then they're stingy on the help to raise those kids. Doesn't a 6-18 yr old kid need access to medical care, too? Or is it his own fault for having chosen those lazy, poor parents who made the foolish decision to have children they couldn't afford to raise? Maybe it's the 6 year old's fault for not having had the foresight to get a good job with full benefits before he was born.
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