TikTok Mom Reveals She Makes ‘Fake’ Homemade Lunches For Her Kid's Daycare

The monotonous task of making kids’ lunches can be a drag. This can be especially true if a kid’s school has strict guidelines when it comes to what a parent can and cannot pack. Schedules are busy and time is at a premium, and it’s tough cooking and preparing 5 homemade lunches a week.

Well, in an attempt to unload some of that lunchtime stress, one mom has shared a hilarious and actually super smart hack that could save parents plenty of time when packing lunches. Now, she’s going viral.

TikTok user @MammaThings shared in a video that now has over 2.4 millions views how she puts food that she ordered or bought into plastic food containers, passing it off as a home-cooked meal.

The viral video shows the mom scraping what appears to be a microwaveable dish of chicken and pesto pasta out of its original plastic container and into a lunchbox. She then takes some prepackaged Bluey cookies and dumps those into a separate plastic container.

“When daycare makes you send a lunch and...you aren’t allowed any packaged foods and they request warm, homemade meals over winter,” she writes in text overlay on the video of the parenting hack.

“Bang some berries in and a banana 😂,” she writes in the video’s caption.

After the video went viral, the TikTok mom admitted to Newsweek that this hack video was different than her usual kids’ food and recipe content, but she’s glad it shined a light on a common issue for parents.

"I make 'mom content' on TikTok and focus on sharing easy recipes and ideas for children, but sometimes a raw moment like this slips in," she told Newsweek. "We are not allowed packaged foods in the day care lunches that we send, so I was showing a way to fake this because it has been a long week!"

"Sometimes day care requests, although well-intended, can place additional mental loads or pressures on moms so we need to find a way to work around that from time to time," she added.

Her video also sparked conversation in the comment section, with several users weighing in on her food hack and the daycare’s lunch rules.

“If they aren’t paying or packing it’s not their concern what your feed YOUR kid. they say fed is best 😅,” one user wrote.

Another said, “as a daycare teacher i can promise you it’s management and as long as kids are fed teachers don’t care.” The OP replied, “This is comforting to know.”

One TikTok user joked, “‘Yes these Spider-Man fruit snacks are homemade. Thank you for asking!’”

One user wrote about how a school in their area allegedly has similar mind-boggling rules.

“A local school won’t allowed the same type of food twice in one week. One sandwich, one pasta dish etc,” they wrote.

Some users were not so keen on the OP’s food hack and thought her bending of the rules wasn’t cool and praised the school for their rules on packaged foods.

“Ok as an ex childcare worker they legit mean food in packages we have to actually cook instead of just heat up,” they wrote.

“This is a great standard for daycares and schools to have,” another user wrote.

Another user commented back, “It’s completely unrealistic for working families to do this every single day.”

This viral moment is not the first time that a child’s lunch selection has been a topic of conversation. One British dad went toe-to-toe with his daughter’s school after a lunch supervisor made some out of line comments about her lunch. Another mom was called out for packing her son “disgusting” food with an unpleasant odor that was apparently very “distracting” to other kids.

Whatever happened to fed is best? Am I the only parent jumping for joy when my kid eats one piece of broccoli a week with her daily PB&J?