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Originally Posted by Daseal

SGG -- the difference is a child is responsible for his own grades, and the parent is responsible for feeding that child.

You guys are pulling out tons of scenarios about the absolute poorest of the poor in this country. Schneed -- how many obese children live off the dollar menu. I'm willing to bet very few, because a double cheeseburger and fries doesn't come close to satisfying their appetite.

Yes, eating healthy can be expensive, but you can eat well for very cheap. Buy some rice, chicken, and cream of mushroom soup, you have a quick and easy dish that will feed 4-5 for roughly 10 bucks. I could pull out 20-30 recipes off the top of my head like that, because I ate them as a child. As I said in either the original or early post, exceptions will be made for those children with some sort of disorder. That's obvious.

I agree with others that education is key, but for parents that don't care, action should be taken. I'm not talking about little Timmy that has to shop in the husky section. I'm talking about 14 year olds weighing 200 lbs. It's more than just health issues, those kids are excluded from many social events, sporting events, typically have extremely low self-esteem, and it's the parents fault.

I know plenty of people that are either currently quite poor or were at one time poor with children. A man I used to work with would tell me how he would go for four days without eating to make sure his kids and wife had a meal. He told me people in his same situation would hit up McDonalds, but he saved money by going to the grocery store and keeping the price down.

Yes, fresh fruits and veggies will run high, but you can get bags of frozen vegetables which may not be quite as good but are certainly better than McDonalds for .99 cents a bag. Your argument that people are too poor to spend the money laid out above for food or too busy is a poor one. That makes me favor population control in this country. If you can't take the time to feed your children, then you don't deserve to have them.

I do agree that a child is resonsible for their grades but if the parents do not give them structure and make sure they are doing their home work most kids will not do what they are suppose to do. That is the biggest problem with the school system today is that to many parents don't care. A good example is that my oldest daughter while living with her mother (not my choice our worthless couts decision after she had lived with me for 6 years) grades dropped while living with her mother. After her mother decided that raising a child was not that much fun my daughter moved back in with my wife and I. It took about 6 months to break her of some bad habits and lack of caring and she went from just getting by to making A's & B's. She is now in college and doing very well. If she had stayed with her mother there's a very good chance she would have never gone to college and not cared about her grades.