Fancy filled lunchboxes? Didn’t see me!
Image: Kyra, HashtagK
Lilian Finn (31) is an author, speaker and designer. She is married to Charles and mother of son Nox (4).
Before your child goes to school, you need to have a few things arranged. You have found out which school you think suits your child, which backpack is useful and that your child can go to the toilet by himself. What I had not taken into account is that there also seems to be etiquette in the area of lunchboxes.
Lunch box etiquette
All of Instagram and Pinterest are full of them: beautifully filled drums, in which everything fits exactly into the boxes. The Bento Box from Japan has come over here, is filled by mothers and given to school children. Wonderful videos to watch, I’m definitely going to enjoy it. Transfer to home? Nope, I don’t see that happening again. The lunch boxes that are filled here do not contain a sandwich expressed in a hip shape.
Of course everyone has to draw their own plan; I just don’t see the added value in a fantastically prepared lunch. Because I don’t have the idea that my child will eat better or that he will really notice the extra effort I would put into it. The fact alone that I have to get myself and a child ready before seven in the morning to be on time with all my bags at the VSO and at work doesn’t help either. A ‘nice’ lunch, I simply don’t want to waste my energy on that.
Swift Minion
Nox himself has selected his lunch box and drinking bottle in the store and he has to make do with that. I do, however, fill a fruit bowl with sliced apple with love – because it is better eaten in segments – or do I draw a quick word next to his name on the banana minion. Furthermore, it is a simple double sandwich with the toppings we have in house that day, some cucumber or a handful of raisins. Great variety and wonderfully simple.
“I’ve never heard him complain about not having a cucumber heart or ghost bread.”
Nox has been at school for over half a year now and luckily he doesn’t complain about his lunchboxes. Stupidly enough, that’s another one of those things I do mom guilt can have about; that I don’t like participating in the ‘Instagram moms’. Well, never complain… He regularly disagrees with the toppings on his bread. It is, of course, still an ordinary toddler. But I’ve never heard him complain about not having a heart cucumber or ghost bread. So for now I’ll just keep doing my own thing in filling the drum. Should he develop that wish anyway? Then I hope he is old enough to press his bread into such a mold himself.
So if there’s one thing I’m not going to miss next holiday, it’s filling those lunchboxes. Although Nox just goes to the BSO; there he just gets bread. Who knows, even in a nice shape.
