Dueling Lunch Notes
By: Kristin Cook
Tags: Life Lessons, Drawing, Art, Parenting, Moms

The parents are the winners in this battle

The lunch notes began a few years ago, when my now 6 year old, Elliot, started preschool. They weren’t a big deal, just little 5-minute doodles of characters he liked telling him to eat his lunch. I don’t think they did much to get him to finish his sandwich, but they made him laugh and that was a good enough reason for me to keep doing them.

vintage lunch note circa 2015-ish

Today, the lunch note thing has gotten a little out of control.

I currently find myself at the end of a very intense an all-out Lunch Note Duel. My competition? Ross. Dad of my son Elliot’s BFF, Max. When he started drawing his own lunch notes earlier this year, the kids began to check in with each other in the cafeteria, bickering and bantering about who got the cooler note each day.

We’re both pretty competitive (um, really competitive), so we decided to play off that a little and battle it out.

We’ve been letting the kids pick a prompt for us each day, and while there has been a lot of vetoing of “poop”, “poopheads” and “people eating poop,” they’ve actually given us some pretty good words to work with too: “goldfish”, “death star”, “LEGO”, “video game”, “friends”, “pants”.

“Death Star”

“Video game”

We’ve got a hashtag, we’ve got a Facebook page, we’ve got daily polls going to help us determine who wins. And we’ve got a big prize at stake: losing parent must hand-deliver whatever the kids want for lunch (Happy Meals, donuts, Happy Meals and donuts?) to the school cafeteria at the end of the duel.

But here’s the thing: there are no losers here. Everyone is winning in this silly competition, especially us parents.

“Alley”

There’s this idea that being a parent gets in the way of us doing the things we love. You often hear people say things like, “Oh I used to paint, but then I had kids and you know how that goes,” or “Back before kids I played guitar, but no time for that now!” And it’s true — kids take up a lot of our time and focus (as they should), but one thing I am learning, is that kids are also sort of the ultimate tool for bringing those things out of us.

Before I had kids, before I started doing these silly lunch notes, I had no reason to draw. I’ve always enjoyed art. I was pretty good at it as a kid and even through high school, but after that, I mean, what was I going to draw?

I had a lot of creativity inside me but nowhere to get it out. Until kids. I finally have a platform, an outlet to do this thing that I love, and it feels really good.

“Joke” (Max had the setup, Elliot had the punchline)

It also feels really good to see this rubbing off on my kid. Elliot has started infiltrating my Sharpie stash and drawing his own “lunch notes” for his friends, his sister, for me. It makes my heart happy to not only see him develop his drawing skills and explore his artistic side a little more, but also experience how much fun it is to make someone smile with something you’ve created.

In this “paperless” age, there’s something extra special about anything handmade, even if it’s just ink on well, paper.

Of the many lessons I’ve learned from this whole thing maybe the most important one for me is this: don’t make your kids an excuse for not doing the things you love; make them your reason.

Get out those paints, dust off that guitar. Draw the lunch note. Kids don’t care if you’re “good” at it or not. They’ll feel (and want to spread) the love, you’ll feel a little more fulfilled. It’s a win-win.

That said, I’m still totally going to kick Ross’s butt in our duel (kidding…kind of).

“Goldfish”

“King Pin”

“Friend”

“Chocolate”

“LEGO”

Want to get in on the lunch note revolution? Join our growing community of lunch noters on Instagram!