I’m a teacher – parents always make the same mistake with their kids’ packed lunches
A TEACHER has shamed parents for always making the same mistakes when preparing their children’s packed lunches.
A TikTok user and pre-school teacher has gone online to reveal what appears to have become common classroom errors.
Internet influencer @abbytheballerina urged parents to make sure the lunches they give their kids are easy to open so they don’t need others coming to help.
She also recommended pre-peeling any fruit they provide for their children to eat – and warned against spreading sandwiches with peanut butter.
Nut allergies have been highlighted as a major concern both in schools and on public transport including aeroplanes.
Abby insisted in her video: “Please send your child’s lunches they can open.
“I don’t want to sit here, their whole lunch break – my one chance to sit down – opening everyone’s things.
“Do a trial run first at home and teach them how to open it because I have had kids that struggle with these.”
She also urged: “Please stop sending peanut butter in your kids’ lunches.”
She recommended instead sunflower butter, insisting “It doesn’t taste that different”, as part of peanut butter and jam sandwiches – known commonly in the USA as PBJs.
And she also said: “I love it when parents pre-peel the fruit.
“I don’t want to peel your kid’s orange, especially when I’ve got ten other kids to open ziplocks and things for.
“I love it when they pre-peel them.”
Her suggestions were welcomed by people responding on TikTok.
A fellow teacher posted: “So many parents don’t do this and it makes my job so much harder.”
Another commenter said: “I used to be a pre-school teacher and I love this.”
Abby was also told: “I didn’t even think about peanut butter and packed my kid a PBJ last week – thank you for posting this.”
She also met some scepticism, however, including the response: “Just because one child is allergic doesn’t mean the whole class has to rearrange their lunches.”
Another viewer wrote: “Wait, kids can’t have peanut butter anymore?
“Is the allergy more severe or common nowadays? Genuinely asking.”
A recent study by the University of Southampton suggested babies should be fed peanut butter from the age of four months onwards to help combat allergies.
The spread was invented in 1884 by Canadian chemist and physicist Marcellus Gilmore Edson.
Concerns have been raised about insect fragments being present in peanut butter, but health experts have insisted it remains safe.