Mum pulls son from school after staff brutally ‘snack shame’ her for giving him Pringles

A mum has spoken out about being “snack-shamed” by staff at her son’s nursery and how it led to her pulling him out of the school for good.

In the first of a series of TikToks, Megan Peavey showed a note that had been written on the cup of Pringles she’d packed in her child’s lunchbox. It read: “Please help us make healthy choices.”

Fuming at the move, Megan told viewers: “They snack-shamed my three-year-old, they snack-shamed me, by writing that passive-aggressively.”

She said she then contacted the school to complain about the message, adding: “We at our house do not label things as healthy and unhealthy because that starts eating disorders.”

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In a follow-up, the mother-of-two said she had visited the preschool's director to tell her how “disappointed” she was with how the situation had been handled.

And yet, rather than apologise to Megan, the director responded that it was passive-aggressive of her to “keep sending him Pringles” after parents were specifically instructed to provide their kids with healthy snacks.

“But I didn't consider Pringles to be [an] unhealthy snack,” Megan argued. “I considered things like Cheetos, Doritos, Milky Way bars – things like that – to be an unhealthy snack.”

She added: “I would of course pack like Pringles with a granola bar, yoghurt, fruit, all that kind of stuff, so I didn't really think it was applicable to me.”

She continued: “Do I think it was appropriate to write it on my son's empty packet of Pringles? No. I wish that a phone call had taken place, I wish that a message had been sent directly to me.”

But, she went on: “There was just no apology. There was no taking responsibility for that behaviour.”

She then pointed out that her son had been at the nursery for “quite some time” and that she and her husband had registered him for a summer programme there. However, at the end of their conversation, the director told her: “We no longer have a spot for your son this summer.”

“It just felt so uncalled for and disrespectful, and it was very, very unsettling,” Megan said. “I'm very upset over it, but I walked downstairs and I just checked my son out and that's it. We're done there.”

Wrapping up her monologue, she insisted: “I'm not posting this for attention, I'm posting this because this is the truth to parenting – these battles you have to fight for your children.”

In a third update, Megan defended her choice to feed her son crisps, stressing: “I'm a working mum, my husband is in law enforcement, so he has crazy hours and a very demanding schedule, sometimes it's easier for me to just throw in a frigging thing of Pringles, OK?

She continued: “If we're sending food that we think is good for our children, then why can't they just let them have that?”She went on to point out that she had looked up licensure requirements in her state, which clarified: “If the school does not like what the parents are providing for a healthy snack, that the school must provide the healthy snack.”

But, she said: “That was never an option. So that bothers me.”

She went on: “The whole situation is just sad, and I just didn't want my son to be negatively affected [...] It hurts because I feel bad for him. He had these little friends there, and he's not going to be able to see them again.”

However, in a final follow-up, she posted a video of her son watching an iPad video in his pyjamas and snacking on some… you guessed it.

“Pringles kid living his best life,” she said in the caption, adding: “I’m more concerned about his hand wiping habits than the Pringles on his plate.”

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