lunch money and life lessons

buying a hot lunch at the cafeteria is, well, totally awesome. i get that. the boys get to choose two days every week to buy a hot lunch and on the other three days, i'll pack a lunch for them. it's always a huge, exciting ordeal for them to read the menu and choose which two days they will buy. dominos pizza on friday is usually a given.

i let michael buy a hot lunch on his very first day of kindergarten and he couldn't stop raving about it. then on the following days that he would buy lunch, i'd pick him up and he'd have a huge grin on his face. he'd say, "guess what i have in my hat?" and then yank his hat off of his head and a package of cookies or crackers that came with his hot lunch would fall out. then both of us would giggle about it the entire walk home. awesome.

wanna know why it's awesome? because he hasn't yet figured out that, on top of buying lunch two days per week, he has the entire spread of breakfast items and snacks and chips and anything in the cafeteria that his little tummy could wish for at his fingertips, literally. the kids access their lunch accounts with a fingertip scan, so they don't need punch cards or anything ancient like that.

isaiah, on the other hand, is a veteran hot lunch buyer and knows the ins and outs of this lunch account business. he knows that if he has time before the bell rings after i drop him off in the morning, he can go into the cafeteria and grab a muffin for breakfast. he knows that at morning recess, he can run into the cafeteria and buy a bag of chips. then, he'll go in at lunch time and buy his hot lunch.

tap. tap. tap. he goes finger tap happy. in the later part of last school year, we told him that he could buy a snack once a week with the money we deposit. if he wants snack on any other day, he'd have to use his allowance. he was totally ok with that and it worked out well.

i think we need to go over the lunch account rules with him again.

i dropped him off this morning and told him that he was buying lunch today, not by his choice but because i didn't have time to make his lunch this morning. he said, "aww, mom. i don't have enough money in my lunch account and i'm going to get labor." in third grade, the kids are expected to be responsible for their lunch accounts, know how much money they have left and replenish if they need to. if they need to "charge" a lunch, they get assigned "labor", which is wiping cafeteria tables and picking up trash.

i knew i deposited $20 just two weeks ago, which should last 8 hot lunches - four weeks if we followed our rules. it's only been two weeks. i immediately knew he was buying snacks. so i looked at him and said, "why don't you have any money left? i just put $20 in your account." he drops his head and replies, "i've been buying snacks." so i said, "then it's not my problem if you get labor." and he said, "okay." and shut the door and ran to his classroom.

so i drove off and immediately started to feel like a shitty mom. i thought about bringing a check to the cafeteria. i thought about packing him a lunch and leaving it in the office. but then i went online and checked his lunch account.

apparently, my kid has a thing for flaming hot munchies. or just munchies, in general, because he bought six bags in ten days. i don't know what a buttermilk bar is but is sure sounds good, so maybe i don't blame him.

but the point is, he's been spending his lunch money like it's going out of style. i immediately lost sympathy for him and decided to let him "labor". and anyway, i think one day of cleaning the cafeteria during lunch recess will serve a better lesson than me saving him by bringing a check to replenish his funds. mommy isn't always gonna be there to save your ass, buddy. you need to pay attention to where your money is going.