Frances Whiting: The two words I don’t want to hear when school is back

There are two words I can’t stand when the kids go back to school — they bring anxiety and fear to millions of parents every time the holidays come to an end. And it’s not head lice, Frances Whiting writes.

It’s back to school this week, and with the return of millions of schoolchildren to their classrooms across Australia, there are two words striking the heart of a nation’s parents with pure, unadulterated fear.

Head lice.

No, wait that’s not it, although can I say that in the many, many baby books about what to expect when you’re expecting, this particularly confronting aspect of parenting is rarely mentioned.

It’s the return of school lunches. Picture: Jonathan Bentley

Reflux? Yes. Sleepless nights? Certainly. First day of school nerves? Often? Fussy eaters? Always? Small creatures infesting your children's hair follicles with alarming regularity depending on whether or not you are in a contagion year? Not often.

The fact that you secretly blame a particular family every time there’s an outbreak? Never. But these are not the two words I’m talking about.

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No, I’m talking about something far more alarming — school lunches. Well, perhaps not more alarming, but certainly more tedious. And while I am very aware that this is a particularly trivial and pedestrian problem to have, I am also looking down the barrel of months of coming up with interesting sandwich combinations every day.

Because my lunches are, my children tell me “boring”. And do you know what I say to that?

I say “Boring? I’ll give you boring!”, and then bore them to death with tales of my own lunch boxes back in the day.

Now that’s just showing off. Picture: Zak Simmonds/News Corp Australia

Actually that’s one of the positive sides of parenting they don’t tell you about in the baby books; the fact that once you are a parent you are automatically given a license to bore your children to tears just as your parents bored you …“Call this music?” you are allowed to shout over their indie rap, “when I was a teenager we had real music, with real musicians playing real instruments!” and “I wasn’t’ allowed to get my ears pierced until I was 27!”

In the lunch box diatribe I say “When I was a child I got a Vegemite sandwich on white bread, a bit of old fruit and a cheese stick if it was my birthday!”

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That’s not entirely true, by the way, sometimes we also got tomato sandwiches which by the time lunchtime came were actually wet, or Vita-wheat biscuits with butter and Vegemite which we pushed together so that little Vegemite worms came out of the holes. Oh yes, we were quite the gourmands.

Now wonder my own lunch box offerings aren’t very imaginative, I’m coming from a time where meat in a can was considered acceptable.

And so as I stare down the cling wrap barrel of another term passing in a whirl of celery sticks and Chicken Crimpy’s, I would like to send a word of encouragement to all the other parents out there facing the same, Groundhog day-esque future.

Actually three words. There’s always tuckshop.

@franceswhiting