Apparently many Moms look forward to their kids being on summer vacation. Is it the time spent with their kids? Could be. The lack of routine? Maybe. The elimination of homework routine? Absolutely. Surprisingly though, the one thing I hear from Moms over and over again, which totally perplexes me in terms of a "benefit" of the children not going to school is this:

"I don't have to make lunches."

What, the kids don't eat lunch in the summer? Isn't it inherently easier to make all the lunches in the morning (or the night before) instead of chasing the kids around the house for an hour asking what they want for lunch? And then not having what they want, hearing them complain about how you're making it, and then watching them sneak food from the snack cupboard while you're doing it?

I love giving my kids food that they will be eating somewhere else so that I don't have to be there to listen to the litany of complaints, which I regularly get during the "face-time" of breakfast and dinner. If I make it and put it in their lunch, once they flip open that soggy bag at their desks they have limited options:

1. Eat it all and tell the other kids how their Mom is the best. Hahahahaha.

2. Eat only the good bits (cookies, chips, etc) and throw out the fruit and sandwiches.

3. Trade away all the fruit and sandwiches for some other hapless kid's cookies and chips.

4. Don't eat it and suck it up. The lunch supervisor doesn't care that you don't like the crusts or the angle of the knife cut on your ham sandwich.

5. Whine to the kid beside you about how much you hate your lunch, only to have them respond with "Have you ever tried licking a cat?"

I recently went on a field trip where we had to bring ours, and our children's lunches. When my seven-year-old son and I sat down to eat lunch I was amazed at the disparity of the offerings. My son had his regular white bread and jam sandwich, with some cookies, a pear and a small chocolate. Yawn. He ate half the sandwich, two bites of the pear and the chocolate. And then threw the rest out. Since I don't have to listen to his "I'm so hungry" whining in the afternoon when he's back in class, I let him do it. But I didn't really need to know he did that with his lunch. Somehow, I was thinking that while at home he'll not offer to take fruit, eat a whole sandwich or skip the chocolate option, I was sure that at school he would be exemplary in his eating habits. Do you see what I'm saying about the lunch angle, ladies?

Nope, for me the real benefit of the kids finishing school at the end of June is...wait a minute...I'll come up with something...oh yeah. They go to sleepover camp for a month in July, where they claim that "the lunches are awesome! No offence, Mom." None taken.

Follow Kathy on twitter at www.twitter.com/kathybuckworth. Kathy's latest book "The Blackberry Diaries: Adventures in Modern Motherhood" is available at bookstores everywhere.