Mom Shamed by Teachers For Packing Chocolate Milk in Her 5-Year-Old's Lunch
Constance Hall has never been the type of mom to care what others think of her, but a recent conversation with her son's teachers over his school lunches may have gotten to her a bit more than usual. When her 5-year-old son, Arlo, groaned over the fact that his mom had bought him a chocolate milk for his school snack, it was because he was being shamed for having it by his teachers, and he finally hit a breaking point.
"I had an awkward moment this week . . . I had to order Arlo's lunch . . . I didn't have enough food at home," Hall said on the Sept. 3 episode of her podcast, The Queen Sesh, explaining that when she orders her kids' lunches from the school, she has to grab something from a refrigerator for their morning "recess" snack, as the lunch she buys isn't delivered to the classroom until later in the afternoon. She said:
"So I was like, 'What can I get him?' and they're like, 'You can give him a yogurt, you can give him a chocolate milk, or a juice.' So I thought chocolate milk would be good so it could line his tummy if he's only having yogurt for recess. So for the last three months I've been giving him a yogurt and a chocolate milk for recess. On this day I went there and he looks at the lunch and goes: 'I wish that you didn't get me the chocolate milk . . . the teachers don't let me have it. They make me have it at lunch time because it's not healthy enough for recess.'"
This isn't the first time kids or their parents have been shamed for the food choices they've made when packing lunches. However, this one is a head-scratcher as it's the school that gave Hall these options for her child.
"So I said to the teacher, the options are [chocolate milk] or juice, and because he can't have any bread or anything substantial I give him that to line his tummy a little bit because he's probably hungry," Hall said, adding that the teachers mentioned they do let Arlo have the milk, just not at recess, because it's "not healthy enough" at that time. "I felt embarrassed . . . but then I thought, you know what, maybe [they] should have informed me if my kid hasn't been able to have his chocolate milk at recess for the last two months."
She continued, explaining why this encounter rubbed her the wrong way even though she's usually a take-no-sh*t type of mama:
"I'm a pretty confident chick and I'm in a really good position in my life. For me to feel like that from this conversation that I had, could you imagine if I had this conversation back when I was at my lowest and I couldn't afford to even do lunch orders because I had twin babies — newborn babies — and I was living on my own and couldn't get to the supermarket? . . . I would have burst into tears."