Additional Coverage:
- Snack duty at my child’s preschool nearly broke me. Then I decided to stop caring about kale chips. (businessinsider.com)
My Epic Fail as a Preschool Snack Mom
It was my turn for preschool snack duty. Simple enough, right?
Wrong. I stood frozen in the grocery store, paralyzed by the sheer number of choices.
Peanut butter? Choking hazard.
Raisins? Also a choking hazard.
What even is a healthy snack these days?
Overwhelmed, I grabbed some bananas and a bag of Cheetos. Surely, that would be okay, right? Spoiler alert: It wasn’t.
Picking up my daughter later, a whiteboard message near the door read: “Please remember to prioritize healthy snacks (we are a kale chip-friendly classroom).” Ouch.
It wasn’t directed at me, but it might as well have been tattooed on my forehead. I could feel the judgmental stares of the other moms, whispering about the Cheetos Mom.
The shame was real. It wasn’t just about the snacks, it was about the pressure to be the “perfect mom,” the one who sends in organic, gluten-free, rainbow-arranged fruit skewers. Snacks had become social currency, a way to signal your parenting prowess.
But something shifted that day. I realized this whole snack game was a charade.
I was striving for standards no one had actually set. There was no official snack rubric, just the imagined judgment of others.
So, the next time snack duty rolled around, I sent in pretzels and applesauce pouches. No fanfare, no apologies.
And guess what? The world didn’t end.
My daughter was happy, and no one fainted from the lack of kale chips.
This whole Cheetos debacle taught me a valuable lesson: It’s okay to let go of other people’s expectations. My daughter needs a present mom, not a perfect one. And sometimes, that means choosing joy over guilt, and simplicity over kale chips.