Source: Reddit
This situation began a year ago and blew up in our faces last week.
My son Gregory is 13 years old. He just began the 8th grade. His friend, Peter, is also 13 and began the 8th grade too.
Gregory and Peter have been friends since elementary school. Last year, I noticed that Gregory would be ravenously hungry after school every day. He would come home and eat a frozen dinner or something, and then help himself to seconds at dinner time. I chalked this up to him being a 12-year-old boy and let it be.
Something about the situation was nagging at me though, and while Gregory wasn’t clear about why at first, he eventually came clean. Peter was being sent to school every day with no lunch. It looks to me like a typical case of neglectful and unfit parents. The one time that Gregory went to their house he came home with comments about it smelling really bad and his Peter’s parents locking themselves in the garage for hours.
Feeling bad for Peter, I decided to discretely begin giving Gregory more food every day, just about doubling all his food. Over time I became less discrete and began packing a separate lunch for Peter. I was never thanked for this by anyone, but I knew Peter was eating the food I sent.
This year, things are different. Money is tighter for personal reasons and frankly with how expensive things are, I have decided not to spend exorbitant amounts of money supporting someone else’s child. I sat Gregory down and told him that I would be packing him one lunch which is for him and him alone. I made it extremely clear: do not share with anyone, and this includes Peter.
Gregory followed my instructions until one day last week I got a phone call from Peter’s mother. She was livid that I had cut Peter off without a single word. I asked her when it became my responsibility to feed her son, and she responded that if she had known I wasn’t sending Gregory to school with “too much food,” she would have handled it herself. I asked if she remembered why I began sending him to school with two lunches in the first place and she hung up on me.
I feel conflicted. I know I’m having my kindness thrown back in my face, but did I approach this situation incorrectly?
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