A problem too close to home

A teacher friend shared the story a few years ago. Since then, it’s alternated between the back and middle of the mind.

She said that one day she noticed one of her second-graders nearly dozing off in class. As the children made their way to their first recess, the teacher held back this little girl. She asked her why she was sleepy. Was she up too late the night before?

No. Well, yeah. She and her little brother were waiting for Mommy to come home.

Mommy didn’t come home. At all.

The only thing in the ‘home’ to eat was a can of corn, and so that’s what she and her little brother ate the night before.

The girl had gotten herself and her brother ready for school. Still no Mommy. No breakfast.

The child’s matter-of-fact recital of the heart-wrenching tale belied that this wasn’t the first time the children had fended for themselves. It wasn’t the first time they had been hungry. Likely, it wouldn’t be the last.

The teacher took the child to the faculty lounge and found enough to compose a passable breakfast. With the child taken care of, the teacher allowed herself, behind a closed door, a few moments and more than a few tears.

Leave drugged-up, abusive or otherwise worthless parents for another day.

Child hunger is an issue that absolutely, positively can’t have partisan, geographical or philosophical degrees. Can’t rational human beings all simply agree that no child should go hungry? Ever?

Yet, depending on the organization compiling the stats, at least one in five and probably closer to one in four children in these United States faces hunger on a regular basis. Arkansas ranks among the top five for hunger issues.

Undernourished children, especially young children, can fall behind their peers cognitively and academically. They can’t learn if they can only focus on where their next meal is coming from. We’re setting them up to fail from the start.

It’s not a child’s fault that his/her parents aren’t the Cleavers. The child had no say in the circumstances in which he/she lives. This is not a debate over social policy; it’s a matter of life, of the quality of life and of death. Children find themselves between a rock and an empty cupboard and refrigerator. It’s not their choice, but it is their lot in life, at least for the time being. Why don’t they say something to someone who can help?

Shame and fear, their constant companions, along with a lack of energy and focus that makes each day one of mere existence, rather than of learning and growing.

These children aren’t in ballet class or on the traveling baseball team, but they’re not all poster material, either. They can be the boy next door who takes two cookies from the offered batch, hoping no one notices, and the girl the cafeteria workers give a bit of extra potatoes because they know a hungry girl when they see one.

What are we doing to solve this awful truth?

To be sure, many charitable organizations offer meals to thousands and thousands, and food banks across the country serve local communities night and day.

Are federal leaders on the case?

They’re busy trying to slice and dice their way to cutting funds that help combat child hunger by debating how much tomato paste turns a pizza slice into a vegetable-laden nutricious lunch.

School lunches and breakfasts are the only meals millions of children receive each year. Targeting such programs for cuts while allowing tax breaks for nearly anyone is an unconscionable failure of adults to protect children. It can’t stand.

Maybe solving this societal horror story is something as simple as individual effort. Volunteer at a soup kitchen one night. Take a box of food to school with instructions that a teacher give it to a child in need.

Leftovers? They might make a world of difference to the family down the street.

The young teacher’s visceral response to child hunger two feet away is the response all of us should have before it gets any closer.

It’s already too close.

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Rick Fahr is publisher of the Log Cabin Democrat in Conway. His e-mail is rick.fahr@thecabin.net.