A Development in the Lunchbox Art Topic!

My friends, there has been a significant development in the lunchbox art situation. Apparently, there is an actual parent out there, one who has his own logo, who has a real kid and actually did the lunchbox art that I posted about earlier this week:



You can tell from the fact that he has a logo attached to his emails that he is just a regular dad, and is not professionally benefitting from making insanely complicated lunches for his child.

Anyway, this is what he wanted to say to me:

"If you are going to call my lunches fake and participate in the tearing down of other parents on your blog, the least you can do is not cut the watermarks off my pic since you don't have the common decency to link to my blog. Yes I'm talking about the My Little Pony one. And by the way, yes my daughter takes them to school and yes they make it intact. Thanks."


To begin, I did not alter these images in any way. I copied them from Pinterest. So, just so that he gets full credit, his logo apparently should have been included on the Pinkie Pie image. Please take note of that. The fact that 2 of the 3 images that I randomly selected from Pinterest came from one man, who has his own logo, might at first suggest to you that, in fact, I was correct in arguing that nobody (with the exception of those who are actively self-promoting on the internet) makes these kind of lunches.

He, however, is apparently very offended that I suggested that the rest of us do not need to start websites with our own logos making elaborate lunches for our children. It is, as you all know from reading this blog, my regular goal to "tear down other parents." I would like every one of the parents on earth just torn to shreds, mostly because I insulted your lunch art.


So I have now rectified the situation, by not only providing his very nice logo here, but also, at the same time, providing his website, because it is in his logo, which again shows that he is just a regular parent, just getting through the day. You can all now go see all the elaborate lunches he really made, that his child really eats, and that really get all the way to school, and that he really wrote on with a sharpie to make bread look like a baby.

You can also watch a video of him doing situps.

Also he wrote a book called "Adventures in Lunchboxing," which you should all go out and buy, because it is a realistic depiction of how we all make lunches in the morning, and is not at all intended to aggrandize this one parent, at the expense of all other normal parents out there, just trying to get out the door.

The Legend of Whimsical Lunchbox Art

Normally, as I am (or my husband is) scouring the fridge for something remotely edible to throw haphazardly into my daughter's lunchbox, while also trying to drink cold coffee and get breakfast on the table, we do not think about art. It just doesn't come up at that time of day.

But according to a mythical legend that persists in the world of internet parenting, there are a number of parents out there - parents who are better at parenting than everybody else - who not only think about art while they are packing their child's lunchbox, but they carefully (SO CAREFULLY) make art out of their child's lunch.

Don't even go look at Pinterest, you'll want to kill yourself. I've collected some examples here.

"Oh look, I've just whipped these up for you, while you're crying because you refuse to wear pants to school and your sister just peed on the floor. This is a normal thing for me to do, because my parenting style is so whimsical and loving and free-spirited and joyful that I just can't help but express my love for you with carefully sculpted fruits, vegetables, rice, and bread. It means that I love you more than anybody else loves their children"

Every time I come across pictures like these, they are embedded in actual articles that somebody wrote, with titles like: 

“'Lunchbox Dad'” Creates Impressive Edible Art For His Little Daughter"

or 

"Massachusetts Dad Has Been Drawing Awesome Pictures On His Kids' Sandwich Bags Since 2008"

or 

"Creative Mom of Two Packs Up Magical Bento Box Lunches For Her Boys"

or 

"These Super-Cool Dads Turn School Lunch Into Works of Art"

or

"Mom Creates Amazing Lunch Art For Her Kids"

or

"'Lunchbox Dad' Turns Plain Sandwiches And Snacks Into Edible Masterpieces."

I'm not linking to these articles because they are awful.

First, they tell you that if you do these things "for your kids," then you are "impressive," "awesome," "creative," "super-cool," "amazing,"and "magical." 

They do not admit - ever - that these things were clearly not made for actual children's lunches. And if they were, they were made many hours/days ago and are probably now stale and soggy to eat, and also they were made because the person who made them is a self-promoting artist, just trying to get some internet attention, and the blogger is a self-promoting blogger, looking for clicks, and NONE OF THIS IS REAL. 

But you are a failure. Because you did not turn your daughter's sandwich into Pinkie Pie (wtf kind of sandwich is that anyway?), and you also did not fill up an entire compartment of a tupperware bento box with frosting and m&m's. Also, you tell me how to get a lid on that cat lunch. You tell me.

These articles keep popping up, and I hate them. They are the perfect embodiment of the internet parenting industry making parents feel inadequate because they can't do impossible things. 

So please just remember. The whimsical lunches are not real. Professional artists (or overly-guilted parents who are going insane) made them. You are not expected to make them. Just throw whatever you have into the lunchbox. Your kid probably won't eat anything you make anyway, no matter how whimsical it is. 

The Golden Moments

I just figured out a new key to parenting happiness. Like all of them, it doesn't last forever, but man when it works, it works.

Yesterday, 10 blocks from home, Mae melted down, as 2 year olds do. Penny did not melt down, but she also didn't vacate the stroller, so that I could cram Mae into it and get home asap. I tried to coax Mae home, and she RAN the other direction, straight toward NYC traffic. I had to chase her down. That made me pretty mad. By the time we got home, I was carrying Mae under one arm, trying to push an umbrella stroller containing a 40 lb kid, one-handedly (which is almost impossible even when it contains nothing but a stuffed animal), and Mae was screaming "PUT ME DOWN" and strangers were looking at me like I was a kidnapper. So, on the scale of parenting happiness, I was pretty much at a negative 100.

We got home, the girls decided to go potty together (Mae has a little practice potty in the bathroom). I was honestly relieved just to get a moment to compose myself alone. I was still really mad. After a few minutes, I heard Mae yell, "Mommy I made poopies!" So I got up with a grumpy moan to go clean the poop out of her potty.

I walked into the bathroom and Penny was up to her elbows in a soapy sink, CLEANING MABEL'S POOPY POTTY. I stood there stunned for a minute. Penny said, "It's ok mommy, I flushed Mae's poop and now I'm cleaning her potty." I said "why?" She said, "Because it makes less work for you." And then my heart basically exploded with love.

Penny has often been a difficult child. She's sensitive and stubborn, has been since birth. Until Mae turned 2, Penny was always the one I expected trouble from. But this last incident. Man, it changed me. It changed my view of her. It changed our entire relationship. And it's lasting. I am living off that one moment, her with soap up to her elbows, cleaning up her sister's poop, making an effort to help out. I don't know when this one will wear off, but it's pretty powerful.

And that's how you make parenting work. You save those little moments that make your heart explode. They don't happen every day, but they don't need to. You save them in your visceral memory and bring them back and live them again. Over and over. They're so powerful, so simple, and the next time you feel like snapping, you can dip back into one of them and buy yourself a little bit of generosity, understanding, and patience. It so easy to forget (and so hard to teach) that we, as a family, are all in this together. When a 5-year old reminds you of it, and shows you that she learned it, that's like gold.

Use Your Phone to Better Ignore Your Kids!

This pair of articles pretty much sums up what annoys me the most about parenting advice. First, this article: Parents on Smartphones Ignore Their Kids, Study Finds. It's all full of pearl-clutching concern about the downfall of the modern family because parents pay attention to their phones instead of their kids. Then this one, far away on another website, but posted only 9 DAYS LATER: The Overprotected Kid, with a url including the phrase "hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone."Because according to this article, citing a whole different group of doctors, we're suffocating our kids and need to ignore them more often.

So here's my solution - let's all stare at our phones more in order to allow our kids to go get dirty!! Whadayasay parenting advice industry??

In fact, I've never been all that upset about parents looking at their phones around their kids. I'm sure that automatically disqualifies me from the parenting advice club forevermore, but what did parents do before smartphones? Or take it even further, before televisions, telephones, before any kind of electronic distraction? I'll tell you what a lot of moms did - they did needlepoint. And they darned socks. And they knitted things. They sat in a chair and distracted themselves from the care of their children, by staring at something in their lap.

And oh, how we long for those bygone days, when mothers would sit in their rocking chairs, sewing away, while their children roamed free. But heaven forbid that mother in the rocking chair is reading a New York Times article on her phone. Or keeping up with work emails. Or just reading someone's blog post in order to feel a little less isolated from the world of grownups. Those things are BAD PARENTING.

Read stuff on your phones if you want to. Or read a book you love. Your kids will play imaginative games by themselves once they realize you're not an eternally-available playmate.

But here's the thing that I keep noticing. Whenever women ignore their children in order to do something appropriately domestic, it's a heartwarming reminder of the good old days. If you ignore your kids to wash the dishes, everybody's cool with it. When you ignore your children to, for instance, answer a work email from your phone, or READ something, that's destroying the family. It's selfish and wrong. But the kid is getting the same amount of attention either way.

Somebody might argue that washing the dishes is modeling good grownup behavior and is therefore instructive. But since when is washing dishes (or floors, or cooking things) the best model of adult life? When a kid asks to play when we're cooking, we say "Mommy is cooking right now, I'll play with you later." That's modeling a good adult activity. Why can't we say "Mommy has to do a little work right now, and then I'll play." Or, "Mommy needs just a few minutes of quiet time to read, and then I'll play." What's the difference? It's all modeling appropriate adult behavior. Doing work electronically from home. Taking a few minutes for a mental health break. These are things that will serve our kids well some day. We're the only ones who can teach that. If we only prioritize domestic activities over kid-time, we tell our kids that domestic activities are the most important thing we can do. If we prioritize work, or self-care, well, maybe they will too. And they'll realize that being a domestic goddess is not the pinnacle of womanhood.

Modern motherhood is full of all kinds of double standards. The phone guilt is one of them. Next time you feel like a bad mom for checking your phone, imagine it's a pretty little needlepoint project, and then decide whether it's really all that bad.