‘I pack my daughter’s friend a lunch because he never has any food’

“My daughter was coming home starving every day, and I realised she was giving all her lunch to this boy,” the mum reveals.  

Navigating boundaries with other people’s kids are hard.

The other day I was in the Reject Shop and a mum was buying her daughter a soft toy. At the register, they discovered the toy was $10, rather than the $5 the mum had budgeted for.

She told her daughter she couldn’t have the toy, and the little girl was heartbroken.

I thought about handing the mum a $5 note to cover the difference, but in the end I decided not to interfere. Maybe this was a teaching moment for the kid, or maybe the mum would have taken offence at my offer.

But what about situations where a child has a genuine need that you can help them with. Should you still stay out of it?

Danielle* encountered this problem when her daughter, Elsie, started coming home starving from school.

“I asked why she was so hungry… turns out she’s been giving her lunch to her friend who doesn’t have lunch money or lunch packed,” Danielle explained on Reddit.  

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The boy was so hungry every day at school, Elsie gave him her lunch. Photo: iStock

Should mum make kid’s friend lunch

Danielle didn’t want to overstep, but if she didn’t do something, either Elsie would be hungry, or the boy would.

“It wouldn’t hurt us at all to just pack an extra lunch for him everyday,” she said before asking the Reddit community if she was going too far.

Most commenters were supportive.

“I think that’s an extremely kind thing to do,” one person said.

“It may be worth mentioning this to the teacher so they can make some quiet enquiries as to what is going on at home,” said another. “But if you can afford to discreetly send extra for this child, do it.”

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“I was the kid without a lunch,” said a third person. “My parents divorced and when I was staying with my mum, I never had a lunch packed. My best friend noticed that I never had food, so she started bringing me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We are still friends 30 years later.”

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One person shared a similar experience.

“I started packing extra and the school allowed me to put money on the other kid’s lunch account,” she said. “When the parent asked about the money, they were told it was a P&C donation.”

*Names have been changed. 

This article was published in February 2024 and was updated in June 2024. 

Originally published as ‘I pack my daughter’s friend a lunch because he never has any food’