5 Back To School Items Your Kids Can Do Without

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WITH one in four parents forced to deny their children basic school items this September due to soaring costs, a staggering one fifth intends to cut items from the back-to-school list.

But exactly what items should parents cut from the list to ensure their child smooth sailing throughout the school year? Please find our five below:

1) Shoes

Remember when your parents used to say they had to walk to school in their bare feet? Well, just think of this as Irish history repeating itself, and how lucky you are that things sometimes skip a generation; poor eyesight, baldness, poverty. It’s the circle of life and who are we or the government to meddle with it? Shoes have been in fashion a long time now so it’s no harm they take a break for a few years while you struggle to make ends meet. Children are great at adapting and you’ll be surprised how quickly calluses develop on the feet. Give it 2-3 years and those lumps will be as tough as an old leather boot – excuse the pun.

2) Lunchbox

There’s nothing wrong with wrapping their lunch in an old sliced pan wrapper, sure doesn’t it keep the bread fresh on the shelves? Tin foil can also be used for those of you who are a little bit more well off. Spending 10 to 20 euro on a plastic lunchbox just to have a Marvel character on the front is actually insane, especially when you can just cut out said character from the back of an old Argos catalogue and stick it to the foil/pan paper. It’s not like children eat their lunches anyway, is it? In fact, why not scrap lunch altogether and help bring the national childhood obesity level down a tad.

3) School Books

Books, shmooks, are we right? Nothing worse than seeing a poor 10-year-old struggling with a big bag of new books that they’ll eventually just dog-ear and scribble on, leaving them only fit for the bin. Leave that up to the rich kids in their class to carry around. It’s not like those toffs have far to walk anyway – with mammy dropping them right off at the school door in their big 172 Land Rover. Those rich kids can share with those less fortunate than themselves. Besides, it’s not like the government will ever support your kid through college to become a doctor or a solicitor anyway… not with that address you’re living in. College’s cost money, and no matter how bright your child is, the system will make sure to put them right back where they started.

4) Extracurricular activities

This of course means all those afterschool things you put your kids through in the hope of eventually developing their talents, such as drama, sports, dancing, arts and general things that help promote social interaction and team building; basically stuff they will never need in modern Irish life. Who needs that crap anyway when they have all the young lads in the estate to play with every evening, whatever it is they do be doing out there. NOTE: we would also suggest to include classmate birthdays under this area as they cost at least a fiver a card, and you could be looking at 10 birthdays a year, depending on how popular they are with the upper class children. Sure, in twenty years they won’t even be talking to each other.

5) Their dignity

There’s nothing that annoys a parent more than a self-confident, articulate kid strutting around the house like they know it all. Leaving out the previous four items mentioned on this list is essential if you don’t want your child becoming one of those snooty successful types that ends up contributing positively to society. Best leave that kind of thing to those who can afford it, like the Fintan’s and the Saoirse’s of the world, e.g. the Fine Gael branded middle earners who’ll eventually pay for your child’s social welfare while he/she struggles with the social stereotypes that put them there in the first place.

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