It’s a bit of a culture shock when you first become a
LunchMummy, I think. By LunchMummy, I mean a mother whose child(ren) attend a
kindergarten or school that require the sending of a packed lunch for every day
of attendance. It’s a new concept to me,
despite occasionally being responsible for L’s lunches, and I’m learning as I
go how important it is.
Since she was very small, O has attended a private daycare
centre who supplied a lunch and two snacks a day, plus breakfast if your child
was in the centre before 8am. This meant that, on most days, I could roll out
of bed, take her straight to care and know that she was pretty much fed until
dinnertime. Sometimes, I would do breakfast for her at home, but it depended on
what time she’d arrive in the morning. I never, ever understood how lucky I
was!
When O progressed to Kindergarten 3 weeks ago, I suffered a
bit of a shock the first morning. I’m not used to preparing lunchboxes at all,
and I really wasn’t inclined to. Add to that my exhaustion and you’ll deduce
that poor O’s lunches for the first few weeks were pretty boring. Her kinder
were very adamant at our orientation in November that foods had to be healthy,
Healthy, HEALTHY. No sweet biscuits, no cakes, no chips, no crap. The lunch
talk began to feel like a lecture, and I may have shed a tear or two as in my
mind I realised that the expectations of these ladies were almost SETTING ME UP
to fail as a Kinder Mum.
Don’t get me wrong, I love O. I love preparing food, and
making sure she gets the best possible start in life. However, no matter how
hard I try, I truly, truly suck at organisation and preparation. Shopping lists
and I go together like eggs and dynamite, and I’ve been known to visit the
supermarket 8 times in a 7-day week to get ingredients together for various
meals. When I do decide to be a domestic goddess and do a big grocery shop,
exhaustion or disinclination hit, and I end up wasting a weeks’ worth of fruit,
vegges and money. For me, it’s easier to fly by the seat of my pants.
‘But Tara,’ You’re
thinking, ‘I remember you mentioning some
pretty crippling OCD’. Why yes, gorgeous and elephant-minded reader, yes
you do. However, people seem to have this habit of confusing
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder with organisational skills. They don’t go
hand-in-hand as neatly as one might think. The need to have all my DVD’s
alphabetised and my comedy, TV series and movie sections separated does not
necessarily lend itself to a kitchen full of fresh groceries, an excellent meal
plan (though I try) and home-baked snacks on hand for my kiddies at all times.
O always eats well. Her lunches have always consisted of the
vital components (fruit or veg, dairy, a sandwich and a special snack) but the
dairy has often been a cheese stick, which I refuse to give up sending as she
thinks they’re the business, the sandwich is mostly vegemite on white bread and
the snack, more often than not, is one of those bars with a baked outside and
fruity-jammy-puree-y filling. She LOVES them. The kinder, however, have made it
very clear to me that they’re not so keen. In fact, they’re not so keen on a
LOT of things, and most of their arrows seem to be pointing at everything I
place in my little girl’s lunchbox.
Yesterday, I decided I’d had enough. One no-so-subtle hint
too far pushed me over the edge, and I came home after kinder and cried for an
hour and a half, convinced I was a shitty mother who was stunting my child’s
intelligence and social growth with my lack of lovingly home-baked snackage.
This clearly isn’t true, but I’m a less than rational thinker, so I steeled my
resolve and put together a shopping list. Meals I could viably stick to making,
their degree of difficulty almost nil but their nutritional value and
likelihood to get eaten in my house quite high. I added to this a list of
snacks that, again, were minimal effort for high reward. When B dragged himself
home, spent, from another day dealing with douchebag co-worker, I dragged him
straight out again to wander the aisles of the local Woolies for an hour,
determined to get what I needed to become the epitome of Kinder Mumishness that
I so want to be, just to prove to the thirty-somethings, the educators, everyone
who is determined to shove me into the ‘shithouse young mother’ box totally
wrong. I shan’t be staying there, thanks very much. One good habit at a time, I’m
gonna kick my way out.
I know I’m doing nothing wrong. O eats and adores everything
in her lunchbox, and she is the brightest, bubbliest, smartest kid I know. She’s
had her finger on the pulse since the day she was born, despite breastfeeding
failings, occasional treat lapses and the day I got to dinnertime and realised
all she’d eaten was peanut butter from the jar and grated carrot. But it truly
is time I got my ass into gear and worked harder at the motherhood thing. It’s
time I stopped being a victim of Chronic Fatigue and pushed through to ensure
she has everything she could possibly desire. And if, in the process, some
people get the hell off my back, that’s not so bad either, is it?
So now I want to hear from you guys: What do you send your
kiddies to school with? Has anyone, subtly or not so, made you feel like a
shithouse parent, despite all the evidence to the contrary? And did you tell
them to screw themselves, or work harder to prove them wrong?
