Back to school pictures are flooding proud parents social media pages.  I love the pictures!  There is always so much energy and positivity at the beginning of a school year.  Back to school for many households means the beginning of packing school lunches.

I decided to join a facebook group for some ideas for my daughter’s lunches.  I scrolled through parents’ posts for a few weeks.  WOW – I started to question my parenting skills.  These lunches are works of art!  They are cutting sandwiches into fun shapes, using edible paint to turn a sandwich into a notebook or minion, cutting cheese and meat into shapes, dying pasta noodles, drawing on cheese stick wrappers, writing messages on frosted cookies, and creating caterpillar shaped sandwiches.  You can see the love in those lunches.

I began to feel like I was not putting enough time or effort into my daughter’s lunches.  The poor kid was going to school with a regular shaped sandwich and fruit in its natural form.  I started to think what I could order off Amazon to make her lunches better and when I could work in the extra prep time.  Then I got REAL.  I realized, thankfully before I hit the submit order button, that those incredible lunches were NOT happening in my house.

I am never going to paint on my kiddo’s sandwich.  One, I do not feel like I have the time.  Two, I am not passionate about packing lunches.  Three, my daughter loves lunchables and I am happy to pack lunchables.  The parents packing those incredible lunches are passionate about those lunches, those lunches are their love language.  One mom commented that the lunches help her relieve stress and others had similar comments – that is great.  It is a relief when you can find that Zen inducing activity, even better if it accomplishes a task on the daily to-do list.  It is equally important to not place stress on ourselves in an effort to mimic others.

We need to use social media to our advantage.  I find good ideas in the facebook group and admiringly scroll past the posts that are incredible but not realistic for my house.  We cannot let potential resources become stress inducing or guilt generating.  We also need to remember to show ourselves grace – be kind to ourselves.   

I do usually include a note to my daughter and just the other day she said how she likes my notes.  Perfect, I can do notes!

Cassie

Oops! We could not locate your form.