Dad Is Furious After Son Comes Home From School With Note Stamped On Him

More often than not, kids spend their days at school. Their guardians send them to school for all sorts of great reasons…but everyone will have their own opinion on how the school is managing its students, right? Well, maybe, but guardians aren’t always the impossible, difficult, self-centered helicopters some educators would have you believe. Guardians want the best for their kids and are responsible for their well being, both physical and emotional. This is where the policies some school boards put into place can really rub some people the wrong way….

This is a story about a policy with potentially detrimental effects on children…and it could be something your child’s school is doing.

Schools Try To Keep Things Organized To A Fault

Whether it’s a concert or a corporate event, moving and organizing large groups of people is a systematized process. Schools are not any different. Sure, it would be great to be able to treat each child like the unique little snowflake they are…but how? Well, most parents don’t expect that, but systematized processes need to be considered with sensitivity nonetheless They should never humiliate a child.

One Policy Is Going Viral

Lunch time is one of the systematized aspects of school. You may be familiar with it. At many schools, children are given accounts so they don’t have to carry cash; those accounts contain a balance. When the account gets low, schools have many ways of letting guardians know. The school in this story — and many like it — have a unique way of doing this though. They are stamping “I need lunch money” on children who cannot pay for their lunch. All of the other kids can see this stamp, leaving the stamp-barer an open target for bullies.

When Jon Bivens’ Son Came Home From School…

…Jon was thinking the afternoon would go as most do: discuss what his son had learned, make dinner, help with homework and the like. He was probably already doing one of these things when he noticed something on his son’s arm: a brand of sorts. It was a stamp with a smiley face that says, “I need lunch money.”

Jon Was Livid

A message like this is not benign. Children are already living in a socially critical, emotionally traumatizing time in their lives with all the bullying that still goes on. Whoever came up with this idea didn’t consider how it could be perceived by the rest of the kids.To some kids, this stamp could mean you don’t have money = you’re a poor kid. It could mean you forgot to get your parents to load it = you’re stupid. Mean kids can make something like this a real sore spot and the children aren’t allowed to wash it off because it’s for their parents to see.