When we’re kids, we all feel the same—little courageous adventurers ready to soak in the world with open arms. Children have no prejudice about the world, and no sense of disparity that only emerges later in life.
When looking back at your childhood years, mixed emotions may come up. For some it’s nostalgia of carefree days, for others it’s things that they didn’t notice back then that struck a chord. Like, eating chili beans for days in a row or taking it as a usual thing not to expect anything fancy for Christmas.
In fact, these are among the tweets that people shared when Twitter user Trevor Donovan asked people “Tell me you grew up poor, without telling me you grew up poor.” The thread is an eye-opening read about growing up impoverished as told by the little details that often stay unnoticed from an outsider's eye.
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Didn’t have enough food because mother spent our money on church. Paid tuition to parochial school. Put cash in 2 collection plates & an envelope for The Bishops Fund special collection on Sundays. Paid coins to light candles. Her piety kept her kids hungry & cold
I hate religion
One Christmas, all three of us kids each got only a letter from my mom. Beautifully handwritten with her ink pen. I still treasure it to this day, 45 years later. I can only imagine how painful that was for her, working so hard but still always broke.
Not a Christian or even someone from the west, but I find gift giving on Christmas kind of materialistic. I don't like the idea of expecting something from someone at a particular time. The best gifts are the ones given with genuine consideration ,when you least expect it.
Making lots of friends meant you could go to other kids houses and get invited to stay for dinner. I would always sneak something to eat back home for my mom. She never asked me to do that, but I knew she was hungry.
Day 1 chili no beans Day 2 chili with beans Day 3 add macaroni to the remaining chili Day 4 add tomato juice to day 3 leftovers with paprika, it becomes goulash! Day 5 spoon remaining goulash over a baked potato How to Stretch your groceries at the end of the month
And still make it taste good. Necessity is, after all, the mother of invention.
Used to pray for clothing that my mom didn’t sew. Now that I’m older I look back and marvel at how she did all of those things for us and I just see so much love.
We had a school uniform, so that was fine. But the occasional 'non-uniform day' would be horrifically embarrassing. I often pretended to forget and turn up in uniform anyway. Now I earn a reasonable amount, I still can't believe I can buy stuff whenever, like a book or a coffee or a new shirt. Part of my 32 year old head of department brain is still a poor 8 year old waiting patiently for Christmas.
Every piece of produce I ate at home, from 8-18 was grown in our backyard (and trust me we had it all). Seeds are cheaper, and weeding is a great punishment that doesn’t involve hitting your kids…
That teachers and lunch ladies are godsends. My teachers always asked me if I was hungry, had clothes, etc. The lunch ladies always gave me my lunch and breakfast for free, with extra food, because they knew it was the best opportunity for me to eat that day.
Have you ever had a sugar sandwich? Because I have.
Nope, never. I was a "fat child"- but when I look to the old photos from that time, it wasn't that bad, as they considered it. My mother refused to give me food to school(because "nobody gets fat if they don't eat"), which meant I was too hungry when I got home, so I ate whatever I could find. So it worked the opposite way. She was so "afraid" about me getting fat that she lied about me, that I have diabetes (I don't and never did), so nobody can give me anything sweet.
How bad powdered milk tastes after you've had real milk, and how good powdered milk tastes when you're truly hungry.
Going to bed hungry. Or purposefully leaving food so your parents could eat the leftovers since that would be their only meal... That hurts to think about, even now.
When we first immigrated here back in the early 80’s, my parents of course spoke no English, they worked then went to night school, I remember my parents would have all of us 5 eat first, then whatever was left they would eat, after seeing that I only ate less to make sure they had enough
Margarine and cinnamon on bread? Cinnamon toast! Ate that all the time growing up
McDonald's can be a place for special occasions only.
39, been to McD only once to meet with a friend. Never understood the hype.
Packages of socks and underwear and other necessities wrapped up under the Christmas tree. Funny thing was, I thought those were the standard Christmas gifts until I got married and my husband was like, what’s with the socks and underwear for Christmas?
For fun, I would go to the city dump with my grandpa to peel proof of purchase labels off cereal boxes to be redeemed for refunds or prizes. I still have some of the dolls my grandpa got for me.
I am not attached to the concept of "liking" everything I eat. My son hates it, because I'm like "It's what we're having, and if you don't like it, better luck tomorrow." He's never had to learn from actual experience to be grateful he was getting anything at all.
My classmates used to make fun of me because I would wear the same shirt every day and my sneakers had holes in them. This is one of the reasons why we started our charity, Alice's Kids. Thanks for raising this issue, Trevor.
The guilt and anxiety in adulthood when you buy anything for yourself.
The need to not feel like you could lose everything at any minute.
Limiting your processions on the chance that any moment you may need to gather everything and leave never to come back.
Got a cold? Grab a roll of toilet paper. I still feel like kleenex is a luxury item for the Queen of Sheba but my partner has chipped away at that, apparently it's not actually that expensive.
I still use toiletpaper. It's convenient and contains storage space for used paper.
Feeling guilty about getting Xmas presents as a child
Never answer the phone. It was always the bill collectors looking for money. Same with the front door. Go away nobody's home.
We reused aluminum foil.
I do this. Not because I'm so poor i have to, but to be less wasteful. Everyone should reuse foil if they can
Everything around you can be a toy. My action figure collection included a stick, a mason jar, an off brand Barbie given to me by an older cousin, and a bunch of melted green army men that looked like a giant. We had the best adventures.
And you can dress a dough-roller in dress for dolls (made by my grandmother) and pretend it is a doll. I brought it to preschool. We weren't that poor, but my great-grandmother came from really poor family and told me about how she dressed a roller as a doll. In my eyes in those days- everybody had at least one doll, but nobody had a dressed roller. I thought it was something special. And my parents were called to the preschool and asked, if everything is ok at home, if we cannot afford a doll.. it is funny today, but wasn't funny for my parents that day 🙂
The only cheese we could get was the government commodities cheese ( which made delicious grilled cheese sandwiches BTW ) and the peanut butter that came with the commodities made yummy cookies
This breaks my heart. 💔 All these were kids had to worry about the money and wanted to / felt the need to help their parents financially.
Drinking a lot of water before or during a meal makes you feel much more full
And the food digests slower so you're not feeling hungry for a longer time.
The generic isle at the grocery store. White boxes with black lettering.
Oh man memories, back then our Pathmark super market had their own black and white label brand , was called no-frills
My parents dumpster diving at the mall for birthday presents for us.
When you're at the end of your pay it is possible to live off instant coffee and biscuits stolen from the office tea room just so your cat can have food.
Two colleague from Poland was in London for training for a week. Company would pay for the food if you get receipt. Course-leader only said there's only 1 vending machine. So they never had lunch they just had some free biscuts from hotel. Day 3 I found a food truck and you'll get a receipt.
being excited to watch a Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network show at a friend's house
Picked up soda bottles from along the roadside to turn in for the deposit money.
Our Christmas toy was from the S&H Green Stamp store. New PJs & underwear completed the gifts. Fridays was soup Mom made from little bits left over during the week. It was pretty random. It emptied the frig, Sat was grocery day. She knew the price of everything in the store.
My mother was a faithful S&H Green Stamp saver! I remember her stamp books, and how happy she’d be when the6 were finally full.
Good hygiene isn't always an easy thing to have.
I want to refer to a deleted comment about how personal hygiene is not a difficult thing. For someone who does not know anything about poverty, it may be difficult to understand that it can in fact easilt become a difficult thing. Dental care for example can be expensive, and the fear of needing an intervention can keep people from making an appointment, leading only to more problems and more fear of the costs. People in poverty do not always have access to the necessary information that seems so obvious to those in a better situation. This lack of access (or even knowing you can access this information) can lead to all sorts of missed opportunities. Good hygiene is not always an easy thing to have, and that's a sad truth.
Used plain bread for hotdog AND hamburger buns. Also had a big container of powdered milk in the pantry for the kids to use.
We cut open the toothpaste to get every last drop out of the tube.
Did you have lettuce and mayonnaise sandwiches? On a good day we had bologna on it, too.
Nothing was name brand. Instead of Fruit Loops we had Fruity O's
Instead of Fruit Punch we had Red Juice (gallon with a sticker on it that said Red Juice), instead of Chip Ahoy we had Captain Chipleys.
How to invent foods based on the limited amount of what you already have
I will always admire my great-grandmother (that survived 2 world wars and a long period, when there was not enough of almost everything). She was scrappy, resourceful as nobody I ever knew. She made soup from carrot, beetroot and potato peels. She made spinach from early grass and nettles. She made "schnitzels" from elderflowers...and thats how we found I am alergic to them. Almost died, if she didn't ran to the nearest house with phone (not everybody had phone at home) and called for an ambulance. She was over 90yrs old that time, but ran for my life. Still miss her.
Boiled wieners for lunch... wiener water soup for dinner
I think I threw up in my memory just now. My sister would drink the hot dog water on egg noodles. ....
Every day from age 7 to 14, Breakfast & Dinner were cooked cereal & milk. Lunch didn’t happen. I ate fruit or vegetables when the friendly produce vender tossed me a treat on my way to & from school.
(@ 14 I ran away bc of Aunts psychotic behavior- not bc of the food/poverty)
In retrospect all things considered, I was very lucky to have that supply of milk. Many people living in poverty who manage sufficient caloric intake, may still lack a steady source of protein- potentially leading to grave nutritional deficiencies.
For the milk, I am grateful.
Eating the same thing every day. My SO can't believe I can eat one meal for days and not get sick of it. It was mostly spaghetti. Thankfully I love spaghetti.
I hate wasting food and still do the same. When visiting extended family and I do that there, they look at me weird, because they must have freshly cooked food everyday and they don't even give the leftovers away, they throw it. That makes me both angry and sad
That a ramen noodle packet with the flavoring plus cut up hotdogs with canned corn, carrots, and peas or some other combination of caned vegetables was the best dinner ever. Makes me truly appreciate my parents all that I have now and I treat my parents or cook dinner for them every chance I get.
2 meals a day were beans and rice and we skipped the third all while the foster parents ate chicken and steak as did their kid.
To this day I can’t stomach the thought of beans and rice
You’re still 12 for three years after you actually turn 12.
Being on free lunch and the shame that goes along with it. It's not like the kids with money didn't know. It's basically an "I'm poor" label.
We didn't have free lunch when I was growing up, but they did have a program where students could help with setup and teardown of the lunch room and those students would get a free lunch. I signed up for this whenever I could. The down side was that it ate into recess time.
my dad skipped lunch once a week so he could save $1 and get my 3 siblings and I a $.25 vending machine drink after church on sundays
I feel guilty for buying anything more than the cheapest version of whatever thing it is I need to buy.
Sometimes the cheapest thing is actually more expensive because it's worse quality. Try to reframe it like that in your head to get rid of the guilt; you don't deserve to feel bad because you can afford to buy better quality that will last longer or support your health!
Your mom having to borrow money from you to pay for food/bills.
Also the embarrassment of people comparing Christmas gifts with you when they got expensive electronics and toys. I used to hate when teachers asked the class what they got for Christmas.
I've worked in primary schools and in a lot of them teachers weren't allowed to organize any activity that would reveal how rich or poor the parents were. I think it should be an official rule instead of a rule set by the school. We're all about inclusiveness but often the children from poor families are overlooked and excluded.
When we were super poor and getting Koolaid or pop was a rare treat. Sometimes we’d get iced tea powder from bulk at the grocery store as well. I remember asking my dad if we had anything to drink either than water and he dug through the cupboards and he found some iced tea powder - just enough for a glass. I was so excited! He mixed it up and noted that it wasn’t mixing super well but finally he gave it to me and I took a big chug. It was beef bouillon powder :(
Funny looking back now but I remember how disappointed I was.
The crushing fear of asking for anything, even when it was a necessity. My thighs have always rubbed together and I’d only have one pair of jeans that fit, so I’d wear through the thighs in a couple months and end up chafing my thighs for weeks, and try to patch them by crummily sewing socks over the holes. It was a nightmare.
Now that I’m financially secure and have like 6 different pairs of well fitting jeans, I’ve had them all for well over a year and none have worn through yet.
I'm lucky the repair shop in Russia will reinforce them. Jeans are expensive and they do rub right through. I was supposed to take a pair to be fixed today but my cat decided she would pull them down and pee on them last night, so they have been washed and now have to dry.
Finding our mum crying in the kitchen counting pennies when you can't afford a loaf of bread. As the eldest of three (at the time, now four) I was the confidant. Up until I was seven it was a constant struggle to afford food, worse between the ages of five and six.
How embarrassing it was when friends would ask for your phone number (or a teacher) and you didn't have a home phone. It felt like everyone in the world had a home phone but us.
Also, not wearing trendy clothes. I got made fun of for that. Kids are mean.
In 5th or 6th grade, we were supposed to write an essay about our family’s car. When I told my teacher we didn‘t own a car, he told me to 'just make something up'. We had never owned a car, my mother didn’t even have a driver’s license and the essay was to include things like how many kilometers a year your family was driving etc. One of the few times I skipped school by pretending to be sick...
I knew that you had to pay an extra fee on top of your bill if your electricity got turned off for non payment.
lunchables, fruit rollups and dunkaroos were the most incredibly luxurious school lunch items, fit for a saudi prince
My dad could only go to work 4 days a week because he couldn’t afford the gas to get to work. My house didn’t have heat so I slept next to a fire place to keep warm.
Never having any new clothes of your own, but only worn hand-me-downs from your older siblings.
I’ve hated the government since i was 9 bc i wasn’t allowed to get tampons, rotisserie chicken or any premade item cause food stamps didn’t want us to eat a lot of certain things. Reasoning? None, they just hate poor people. I coined the term “register anxiety”
The “check engine” light really isn’t that important.
Beans and rice are everything.
Parents can be really, really good at hiding how bad it is financially.
There are so, so many alternatives to buying brand new household items.
But by ignoring the "Check Engine" light the costs of the repairs will just go up. So poverty leads to more financial troubles.
Kraft mac and cheese and boiled hot dogs is a good quality dinner.
Me and one other kid had to stay at school and draw pictures of clowns while the rest of the class went to the circus.
I feel like the school should quietly pay for the kids who can't afford to go. Or send a letter home with all the kids, asking for extra for kids who can't afford to attend field trips
Your location isn't certain. You might be here for another month or several. You will be uprooted and dragged along soon. You will lose all the friends you have made. You will lose any sense of security. It is all about how long you can hold this place before you get evicted.
we never made it any place longer then a year... once i started to make friends- we would pack up and move... it was terrible
Going to your extended family’s houses usually resulted in leaving with bags full of tinned food.
My parents used to buy expired canned goods in bulk.
Most canned food is still good months after the official expiration date. General rule of thumb: as long as the can isn't starting to expand, the contents is safe to eat.
Any car 10 years old or newer is new
Since the quality of cars have improved there's nothing wrong with driving an old car. My last car was 20 years old when I traded it in 2 years ago because I had to pay a shedload on taxes because it was a diesel. Not because it drove or handled badly. It was bought by some Polish bloke who exported it to Poland and took it back to the Netherlands. Because it's a Polish car now he doesn't pay any taxes in the Netherlands....
Milk was mixed with powder milk
I used to think fried baloney was bacon
I love fried baloney! Makes great sandwiches as well as being a side meat with eggs for breakfast.
Staples aren’t necessary if you just fold the top left corner of the stack of papers, make two small tears on the folded part, and fold the piece in between the tears. The method starts to fall apart when the stacks get too large though, but it’s great for school papers and minor projects. Just don’t hand in your PhD thesis using the method.
There's even a gadget that does this. It's called , wait for it, the stapleless stapler. https://www.trendhunter.com/trends/japanese-stapleless-stapler
This is going to wipe the competition
It's strange, I didn't realise how poor my family was when I was growing up until reading all of these and recognising so many of them as very common things we did. Just goes to show how much your parents can hide from you or make into a fun thing to do when you're little.
I didn't know I was homeless until my friend's mother was dropping me off at the homeless shelter and said "Oh, your homeless." I told her no, that we were just waiting on our new place to get set up, this was the in-between place. She argued with a 9 year old to make sure I knew I was homeless. When we did get a place to live I had my first and last birthday party, it was my last because she convinced all the other parents that our trailer park wasn't safe and all of the parents wouldn't let my friends stay, so I ate my birthday pizza while watching my first and last ice cream cake melt for my 10th birthday. Kids don't know they are poor until someone shames them for it.
Load More Replies...A lot of people react with "I also do this" and "I enjoy eating Y". A huge difference is in the "why": Some people have the luxury of CHOOSING to do/eat certain things. It doens't compare to the situation of people who HAVE to go dumpsterdiving, or only wear secondhand clothing, or eat bread with lettuce as a meal.
Exactly. If your ONLY option is a five-year-old shirt already worn half-transparent by an older sibling... that isn't thrift. And if you want to eat like crap, fine, but kids should never have to eat poorly.
Load More Replies...My mother had me when our country was still under Russian reign. We gained independence in 1991 (in August, and January next year my sister was born) and times were really really hard for several years. Nobody knew that this was going to happen. Things were stabile until then and basically changed overnight. The whole system took time to rebuild. We actually had almost nothing to eat sometimes. I remember one birthday. My mother asked if I wanted cake or present and I said cake, because that was something we could all share. I remember how she redesigned her skirt for my first class beginning so that I had something fancier to wear. Things got gradually better with time and we could afford travelling, better life standards etc. But yeah, I remember hard times.
It's strange, I didn't realise how poor my family was when I was growing up until reading all of these and recognising so many of them as very common things we did. Just goes to show how much your parents can hide from you or make into a fun thing to do when you're little.
I didn't know I was homeless until my friend's mother was dropping me off at the homeless shelter and said "Oh, your homeless." I told her no, that we were just waiting on our new place to get set up, this was the in-between place. She argued with a 9 year old to make sure I knew I was homeless. When we did get a place to live I had my first and last birthday party, it was my last because she convinced all the other parents that our trailer park wasn't safe and all of the parents wouldn't let my friends stay, so I ate my birthday pizza while watching my first and last ice cream cake melt for my 10th birthday. Kids don't know they are poor until someone shames them for it.
Load More Replies...A lot of people react with "I also do this" and "I enjoy eating Y". A huge difference is in the "why": Some people have the luxury of CHOOSING to do/eat certain things. It doens't compare to the situation of people who HAVE to go dumpsterdiving, or only wear secondhand clothing, or eat bread with lettuce as a meal.
Exactly. If your ONLY option is a five-year-old shirt already worn half-transparent by an older sibling... that isn't thrift. And if you want to eat like crap, fine, but kids should never have to eat poorly.
Load More Replies...My mother had me when our country was still under Russian reign. We gained independence in 1991 (in August, and January next year my sister was born) and times were really really hard for several years. Nobody knew that this was going to happen. Things were stabile until then and basically changed overnight. The whole system took time to rebuild. We actually had almost nothing to eat sometimes. I remember one birthday. My mother asked if I wanted cake or present and I said cake, because that was something we could all share. I remember how she redesigned her skirt for my first class beginning so that I had something fancier to wear. Things got gradually better with time and we could afford travelling, better life standards etc. But yeah, I remember hard times.