MOTHER OF GOD

Our unholier-than-thou columnist Tasha Kosviner has gone a bit 'fuck it' when it comes to packed lunches

A few weeks ago, my four-year-old son’s teacher, who doesn’t mind telling you what she thinks, pulled me aside.

“I’ve got some ideas for Lenny’s school lunch,” she told me. I bristle immediately. Some ideas you say?

I pride myself on my kids’ packed lunches. I make hummus and crudites; there's home-made soup with cute little pots of croutons on the side. I grate carrot and beetroot into boxes shaped like ladybirds and while my rustic brown loaf sarnies are nigh impossible to chew, they’re stuffed with a rainbow spectrum of salad.

That’s what good parents do, right? They make food that is balanced, healthy, filling, interesting and varied for little people to eat. Food that broadens their minds and nourishes both their little bodies and their palates.

Well, according to my son’s teacher, apparently not.

“Lunch for a reception child should be a comfort,” she told me. And she went on to gently explain that school can be tough for four-year-olds and that lunchtime is a great opportunity to offer them a hug, gastronomically speaking. It seems that while the rest of his class had been happily smearing Mars Bars all over their faces, my poor son was sat, friendless and alone, dolefully masticating on a carrot stick and storing up stories to tell his therapist in 30 years time.

And so, despite initial bristling, she got me thinking. What am I trying to prove with these lunches? Who am I trying to impress? Where did I get the idea that a little boy who wants the same Thomas the Tank Engine story every night (and I mean every night) would value daily variety – and lettuce! – in his lunchbox?

Plus, even with the help of Mumsnet, Netmums and the aren’t-you-a-shit-parent-coz-you-never-get-your-kid’s lunch-milk-straight-from-the-udder-of-a-freshly-massaged-organic-cow magazine, and the other myriad of well-meaning advice on kids’ food from the NHS to Anabel sodding Karmel, keeping up this endless stream of varied and interesting food is bloody hard work.

And the crazy thing about it, about this miniaturisation of food that adults like, into cutesy child-sized portions that we can smugly claim they love to eat (even when we’re scraping half of it into the bin every night), is that nowhere are we prioritising what most children actually, truthfully like. We’re told your kid will love this fish pie, especially if you ‘hide’ the veg. But noone is admitting the blatant truth: that the kid would be immeasurably happier chowing down on a Peperami and a pop tart.

So here’s the thing: I’m giving myself – and Lenny – a break. Last week, he had peanut butter sandwiches every day. The week before that I shoved a bit of salami in a bap and grabbed a bag of Monster Munch as we tumbled out the door.

Don’t get me wrong: I am still periodically force-feeding him broccoli and I’m far too uptight to ever feed my child something that looks and tastes more like string than cheese. But I have, thanks to a particularly wise teacher, gone a bit ‘fuck it’ when it comes to making ‘proper’ lunches. And it feels good.

On Friday, when I was poking through the fridge wondering how many sprouting eyes a potato had to have before you’re forced to admit it’s inedible, Lenny said, “Mum, can’t we just have packed lunch for dinner?”

Peanut butter or salami, kid?

“Peanut butter.”

You bet you can.