Yes, this seems too obvious to me. No account. He gets to brown-bag it.
Read the ingredients. It’s basically cake.
Good Lord.
Dominic is 15? I can hardly believe it.
Man, it’s been a long ten years.
I think you missed the point. Dominic is consciously and deliberately defying Opal’s explicit instructions. She can’t let him continue doing that, and she can’t let that be without consequences.
I’d be all for handling it at home but the school is undermining you. You pretty much have to close that account don’t you?
Does he have a job? I got a job and a drivers license when I turned 14 and this wasn’t ye olden days of uphill both ways in the snow, I graduated in '03. Might be hard in this economy but I worked my way into my first job by volunteering.
shrug I’m not a parent but a little hard work never hurt anyone, right?
Not relevant. Nothing is keeping him from sitting with his friends in the cafeteria. He can eat the apple in his lunch bag if he feels he must actually eat with them rather than just hang out.
That’s not Opal’s problem. It’s not that he’s getting two breakfasts, the problem is that the kid is making crap choices and eating stuff they don’t want him to eat. Period.
I’m not sure that we know that. Schools have a gazillon different rules that vary by school - we’ve seen it here - schools that can limit accounts, schools that can’t, schools that can take cash. The school may not allow kids in the cafeteria for breakfast unless they are actually going to eat breakfast (if I were a school principal, I sure wouldn’t. Cafeterias are places for trouble - keep the non-eaters in homeroom/study hall).
I’d call the cafeteria supervisor or the district food manager (whatever they are called). They’ve dealt with this problem a gazillion times. Don’t complain or put the burden on them - explain the issue and then ask “what can I do? How does your system work so that I can limit this?” It may be “we close the account and your kid will need to pack lunch” or it may be “well, we can put limits on it.” You’ll at least know how far your kid can get into the hole before they stop feeding him unless its a dire emergency.
Allowable driving age varies from state to state. I know Opal’s not in Calif. but here you can’t get a permit until 15 or 151/2(not sure) and full license with restrictions at 16.
That’s basically what I was thinking. My thoughts were either make him bring lunch, or give him the money in cash, then let him figure the rest out.
Well, we had this exact same problem recently with my 8-year-old, and I mean, the exact same problem. He was getting breakfast at school without permission and sending his lunch account into the negative.
He was told that from now on, when his lunch account runs out, he’s brown-bagging it, including a drink (i.e. no buying milk) until the date when he is supposed to get an account refill, AND, if the account goes negative in that time, he’s making it up out of his allowance. This seems to have done the trick. If that didn’t work, next step would have been brown-bagging it for the rest of the school year and no lunch account.
Wow, is that what it’s come down to now? That’s so pathetic. When I was in school, the cafeteria was a place with tables were you could sit. The cafeteria was not a “place for trouble”, it was an eating place, meeting room, alternate study spot all rolled up into one. Access was never restricted.
But still my point still stands. If he wants to eat with his freinds, then he can take an apple out of his lunch and eat with them.
He’s disobeying you and you need to find some, oh, what’s the word, punishment to make him realize he is doing the wrong thing. When I posted my first response I assumed he was about 8 years old. Now that I know he is a teenager, it’s different.
He is disobeying you. He is incurring a debt. It needs to be repaid. You work out how to deal with it. Stop blaming the school.
And a lot of states don’t allow teens under 16 to work in most jobs. Even at 16 and 17, kids are subject to curfews and various working hours and limits to how many hours they can work each day and each week in many states.
This doesn’t prevent him from babysitting, mowing lawns, cleaning, or general chores, but it might very well prevent him from getting a job as a clerk or waiter in many states.
My daughter had a regular allowance at that age, and was expected to pay for school lunches and whatever else she wanted to eat from it. The allowance was well above the basic school lunch, but we also expected her to save for stuff like books and movies from it. We expected her to do chores (dishwasher, clean the cat boxes, etc.) in exchange for the allowance, too.
We had a similar issue last year with my husband’s son. Turns out he was buying lunches for all his friends and having them pay him for them in cash. :mad:
He’s never going to develop any sense of responsibility if you keep putting this on the school.
Close the account if you don’t like the set up. Period.
He’s 15, if you can’t get him to do as you request, in this regard, how do you expect the school to?
If you’re that accepting of his immaturity, fine, no account. Reinstate it when you think he’s mature enough. Tell him why you closed it.
Or, is this that you want the convenience of him buying his lunch, getting his own breakfast, and the school enforcing your rules?
Close the damn account, already. Keep cereal bars in the house, and lunch cash to dispense daily.
Myself, I think it’d just be easier to teach my child some personal responsibility, for their actions.
Disobeying does not equal doing something wrong. You should ask him why, and probe the social aspect, get to the heart of the matter. This may be is a great opportunity to teach him that sometimes he is right by disobeying, or at least has a justifiable answer, and open the lines of communication between him and you so he can state his mind without fear. That lesson can help him follow his dreams even though others may discourage him.
If it is social, then perhaps help him better define his food choices, after all the cost of a school breakfast is pretty low, almost at the rate of a home breakfast.
I am also very disappointed by the number of replies to punish him, to come down hard, without even hearing his side. Is this how you want to be treated?
When a child is disobeying a parent, s/he is doing something wrong just about 99.9% of the time. If there is a problem or social aspect that isn’t immediately apparent, then the child needs to make this known to the parent. The solution is NOT to disobey and then expect forgiveness and for the parent to fix the problem/pay the debt.
The OP has had this problem before. Her son could have made his problem known. Instead, he chose to disobey her again. He does need to learn that actions have consequences. Perhaps Opalcat is trying to conserve money, perhaps she doesn’t want him eating sweet rolls on a consistent basis. And perhaps Dominick is going through a growth spurt. But he DOES need to obey her reasonable orders, and telling him that she’ll pay for his lunch, but not his breakfasts (he has food available at home for breakfasts) is completely reasonable.
What color is the sky in your world? Are four-leaf clovers the norm while three-leaved-ones are considered good omens?
That’s exactly what we did, our son’s freshman year. It worked.
But this seems to be the OP’s beef. The school is letting the kid continue to purchase stuff after the funds run out, so that he’s in the negative numbers and wracking up a debt, without permission, that they have to pay off.
Really, the only solution is to cancel the account altogether, since he has demonstrated that he’s not responsible enough to have one.