Let me share with you a PARENT CLUB TIP: school lunch doesn’t have to be complicated. Really. Use these 5 Ways to Your Making School Lunch Wrong and how to fix it as guidelines to un-complicate your school lunch conundrums.
5 Ways to Your Making School Lunch Wrong
First off, let me say, I’m not a fan of negative writing. It really should read Tips on How To Make School Lunch Better (because positive feels better right?!). As parents, we really just try to do better (and attempt best sometimes). That said, we are complicating our lives with school lunches…and we really can right the wrong and make them better.
Dictator Lunch Making (aka you have to eat it because I made it). Dictator lunch making just doesn’t fly. You have to be realistic about your child’s food likes and dislikes. How many new things they are willing to try before complete meltdown. How much time they have to eat. And finally, can they open the darn food container themselves. Don’t be a dictator. Include your kids on in school lunch planning. Make an EASY SCHOOL LUNCH LIST together (it’s a boredom buster and school lunch planner both at the same time!).
You don’t take your kids grocery shopping. I always joke that when I take my tween with me to do the food shopping the bill is always more expensive (not a joke…it’s the truth!). But that is because she actually puts food she wants to eat in the cart. Not entirely a bad thing. Why guess what the kids want to eat when they can actually choose food they want to eat. Making healthy food choices is a life skill. Help them develop it (and take the guess work out of lunch).
You think school lunch is a sandwich. It isn’t. Not always anyway. Though I love me a ham sandwich…my son does not. I created this handy-dandy EASY HOT SCHOOL LUNCH LIST to help you think outside the sandwich.
You run out of food so you send lunchables. Please…don’t let this happen. Ever. Plan your lunches. You can even pack dinner leftovers in the freezer and use those as Plan B lunches when the run-out-of-food day arrives.
You think Pinterest is your friend. Pinterest is amazing for inspiration…but it can do us wrong…believing we have to be some bento-box-ninja to be good parents. Lunch doesn’t have to be fancy. You don’t have to send sandwiches in shapes with crusts cut off. You don’t have to make everything from scratch (there I said it!). The only obligation you have to lunch is to make it kid-friendly and healthy.
Your lists are pretty close to what my kids take in their lunches!
I am so glad that I no longer have to pack lunches 🙂
I din’t mind doing lunches for my kids, it’s when everything would come back untouched, that is when I would get upset!
Our son is young enough that he doesn’t want to go shopping with us; he doesn’t help pick out anything that isn’t packed with sugar lol
This is a great list of food and I love letting my kids to choose what they want to buy at the grocery store for their lunches.
I love these ideas , my daughter is super picky and tough to make lunches for so I let her make a lot of choices when it comes to the foods she wants to bring , its a win win ,
This is a great article. My daughter has never liked sandwiches since she was in kindergarten so I have always had to come up with different ideas for her. She is great in the fact that she loves left overs so I often make enough dinner for left overs the next day. My 2 kids love their hot lunches. They are easy and they like them.
Fantastic information. lunches are so hard for me with 3 picky eating kids LOL