A DAD'S LIFE:Return of school leads to fraught mornings for parents
AND WE’RE back with the packed lunches. If anything proves there is a God and he is a merciless deity, it’s packed lunches. It’s a school system that thinks feeding the children is not an essential part of the education programme.
Instead, just as you’re attempting to shovel spoons of porridge down throats amid the screams for Coco Pops, just as you’re explaining that
a bowl of something that is more than
30 per cent sugar is not a healthy breakfast meal, just as you’re squeezing a tumbler of juice out of a school tie, you also have to negotiate the same arguments for the next meal.
Really, who thought this was sustainable? I’d hazard a guess that a large proportion of divorce actions are based directly on confrontations during the school lunch/breakfast continuum. You know the scene: one party is attempting to disentangle brood from table while the other is still shovelling food into them, both maintaining a humane air of graciousness. Until a pitched shriek splits the air.
“Salami? Again? You know I hate salami! Why can’t I have Nik Naks, a crisp roll and Coke like ?”
You’re not going to touch that argument – it’s a deflector shield from the task of walking towards the car. Both parents ignore and encourage herd towards the day.
But it has a drip effect, that argument. Two days later you’re in a rush, you’ve folded a couple of slices of bread around a spoonful of peanut butter for the brekkie, and you’re doing the shuffle towards the door, bags slung over shoulders.
“What? Mars bars, Doritos and a litre of MiWadi? Are you kidding me? has pine nuts, Emmental and sunblushed tomatoes on ciabatta every day. Are you trying to destroy my immune system?” Eventually you bite, and everyone turns on each other. All because of school lunches.
Then there are the tips. Save money on drinks for school by squeezing the juice of a lemon into a tumbler of water. Make all the sandwiches on a Sunday night, freeze and use during the week. Cut the bread into fun animal shapes, so the little critters can have a giggle when they open their lunch boxes at midday. Yeah, I’ve so much time on my hands that what I can’t wait for is to spend Sunday nights making batches of sarnies and putting my animal cutter into action.
As for the lemon in water, I think we tried that. Once. The look of confusion and disdain on the child’s face as she handed back her near full beaker at the end of the day was enough to ensure we stuck to plain water after that. “Why?” her look said. “Why would you do such a thing? You know I’ve tasted 7Up. You know I was born post 1950.”
In this house we are slaves to the lunch box because we are soft. One has butter on her sarnies, the other can’t stand the stuff. One likes red cheddar, the other yellow, one ham, the other salami. We have few permutations that overlap. Yet we continue to pander to their increasingly heightened demands because to challenge them on the morning is to risk meltdown. And meltdown might only encourage them to have their sandwiches toasted.
I have huge admiration for the organised ones. Once, as I dropped into a friend’s house to collect a child at dinner time, the mother was lashing together the jam sambos for the next day’s lunch.
Her son sat at the kitchen table with a face on him, complaining: “I hate it when she makes them the night before – the jam soaks through and the bread gets soggy.”
She turns and wiggles a floppy half sambo at him: “Make it yourself.” He picks up his football and exits to the back garden to pound shots at the side wall, all the time muttering at the inequities of life.
I don’t mean to give the old “I walked five miles in nowt but raggedy socks to school and was happy to have the dog’s bone to chew on” speech, but my old dear gave me two rounds of marmalade sandwiches and a flask of Nescafé every day for years. It had me buzzing like a jet fighter through early afternoon and the 3pm crash was severe. The combined caffeine and sugar habit is a tough monkey for a seven year old to carry, but it could be said to build character.