Carolyn Hax: My wife complicates simple tasks

As long as her "complications" are expressions of love, your beef with her is without merit.

DEAR CAROLYN: My kids are in elementary school and they bring lunch most days. My wife usually packs their lunch with the kids’ help, and we have a lunchbox that divides things basically into snacks, a spot for fruit, vegetables, etc.

My wife follows a bunch of Instagram accounts on getting creative with these lunches, using cookie cutters to cut out sandwiches, not repeating items in the lunchbox, using various themes. She involves the kids by allowing them to pick certain parts of it.

This is a hit-or-miss. Sometimes it simplifies it, sometimes they engage in a 10-minute conversation about having an orange or grapes in their lunch. We also fix them breakfast and dinner every day, obviously, and we make it as balanced as we can.

I think the energy my wife puts into these lunchboxes is a time-waste. I don’t see what the problem is with just giving them a sandwich and a piece of fruit, or even just having them buy hot lunch. Last year my wife said I didn’t have to do anything with lunch, but at the end of the day, I am still listening to her pack the lunch, washing the lunchbox, etc.; we all live in the same house, it’s hard to clearly delineate this stuff.

I think this is part of a larger pattern where she makes the simple complicated and I just really don’t want to be around it, even if I’m just observing. Where do we go from here?

Anonymous

DEAR ANONYMOUS: “We” being you.

Meaning, you can go out of earshot, no?

Or step back to get some perspective. This is who your wife is. And she’s entitled to her ways. Maybe they’re not the most efficient way to operate, and maybe a parenting expert would look at the blurred authority lines that create a lunchbox-fruit equivalent of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce and need to self-medicate, but simplification isn’t the only worthy goal here, not even in the morning get-to-school crush.

This could be the source of the warmest memories your kids have of their mom. Or, a useful education on nutrition, one compartment at a time. Or just a little bonding.

You don’t know — nor does she, nor do any of us — what parental quirks will drive your kids nuts or screw them up or age into their loving nostalgia. All you can do is ask: “Is there risk of significant harm?” And then answer it the best you can, knowing your own biases.

And when you don’t find any real risk of harm, use that as your motivation to find something to love about her ways. (Or just to like about her; you don’t sound too fond of her at the moment.) She’s all-in with your kids! And has offered to do all the work! And is patient like some of us (ahem) can only dream about. That’s got to have benefits for all of you, if you take a moment to look for them.

If the “simple” she makes “complicated” generally involves expressions of love, then leave her be. If there’s more to it, then address it for what it is and leave the lunches alone.

Adapted from a recent online discussion. Email Carolyn at tellme@washpost.com, follow her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/carolyn.hax or chat with her online at noon Eastern time each Friday at www.washingtonpost.com.