If you’ve been following me on Instagram you may have noticed I don’t pack my kindergartener the healthiest lunches. It may even surprise you to find out how deliberate I am with what I pack.
Since this blog is about “plant-based” living you may expect me to pack veggie wraps and super healthy lunch box fare. I hope I haven’t let you down, but I’m not concerned with my kid having a “Healthy” lunch box.
I have complete oversight regarding what my kids eat at home. At school, I really can’t know. I could pack a super healthy lunch box but that doesn’t mean it would be eaten. Instead I focus on the following ideas.
1. What Will Get Eaten
My son is 5 and eating five meals a week away from me. He is not quite used to that amount of freedom. The first few days of school I packed lots of choices. I wanted to get a good idea of “how much” he would eat during his lunch time. I instructed him not to throw anything away and to bring all of the leftover home.
Sandwiches would only have a few nibbles, if that much. Of course, sweet and salty foods were eaten right up. Fruit was hit and miss. His leftovers would normally be eaten after school.
2. Avoiding Ridicule
No one wants to be the kid with a weird lunch. I remember feeling lunch box shame when my lunch didn’t match the cool kids at the lunch table. I was the kid with bologna.
Somewhere between broccoli-flavored tofu nuggets* and bacon-wrapped candy bars* there is a happy medium of foods that make parents and kids happy. (*Please note that we don’t eat either of those.)
3. Quick and Easy
Have you been in a lunch room during elementary lunch? It’s a mad house, every man for himself. Even though there may be as many as 30 minutes scheduled for lunch by the time kids arrive at their table they may only have 15 or so minutes to eat. They best thing I can do for my kid is to pack food he can eat quickly and easily.
Elementary kids, especially kindergartener like mine don’t really understand how to budget their time. They may spend 10 minutes laughing and telling jokes then 5 minutes waiting for a lunch aide to help open their container. Everything I pack for my son is easy for him to open and can be eaten easily.
For more Back to School ideas visit my Back to School Pinterest Board. You can also check out Lunch Box Guide (it’s a printable) and my Lunch Box Essentials post.
Do you pack a lunch for your child? What do you normally pack?
UPDATE
We finished the school year and I have to say I’m pretty happy with our lunches for the year. Using the EasyLunchBoxes system saved my sanity. They held up well and helped us pack great lunches for our kids.
I visited my kindergartner one day for lunch toward the end of the year. The lunch aid said my son always had the healthiest lunch at the table. My son would occasionally ask for foods he saw the other kids eat, like lunchables and Cheetos. Instead we’d occasionally buy Enjoy Life Cookies that are allergy-friendly and once tried Organicasaurus dino shaped corn snacks.
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I agree! Though I do pack a mostly healthy lunch for my 1st grader, he does get the occasional treat. I sent whole sandwiches last year but this year am only sending half because he has snack just one hour before lunch and wasn’t eating as much. My son loves most fruits and veggies so that’s easy, but someone made fun of him last year for having sugar snap peas (one of his faves and he had requested them!). The next time I sent them, he didn’t even eat ONE. So sad. :(. So now he happily eats them at home, but they didn’t make the lunchbox again. Maybe we’ll try again this year.
Jenn, I know what you mean. I try to set my son up for success with every lunch I pack. I’ll occasionally pack half a sandwich but sometimes only 1/3. It works well and he eats the rest of it when he gets home.
I pack salad one day, that lunch box got lost for over a week. When we finally found it the salad was a big moldy mess.
I agree! My son gets so easily distracted and would come home starving with a full lunchbox. I finally researched bento style containers and ended up buying a yumbox about a month before the end of 1st grade last year. It turned out smaller portions and easy access to all the food by opening just one lid helped a lot! I also started to obsess less over what I packed him and pack more things he was sure to eat. He’s still eating healthier than all his classmates who get the depressingly crappy school lunch…
Danelle, My barometer is “is it better than cafeteria food” and even if it’s a granola bar, rice cakes, dried fruit and part of a sandwich I know the ingredients in those products are better than anything being served at school.
I know the schools don’t get a lot of say in what they serve so I don’t blame them. 🙂 That is why, at least for now, we always pack a lunch.
I was THAT kid who had the granola-hippy lunch in the early 80’s and wanted to die daily. 😉 Every kid had a cool lunch but me, it seemed. My Mom packed, bless her, healthy foods that were good, but it was just too much to face when kids are snickering.
Oh Sarah, I didn’t have the hippy lunch but it still wasn’t cool. 🙂
After my son lost multiple lunch boxes the first 2 weeks of school I made him take a brown paper lunch bag. He said kids were smashing it with Ninja Turtle lunch boxes. 🙂
I do pack a healthy lunch i’m just the kind of person that doesn’t really believe in exceptions to rules it makes it too easy to cheat other times my kids are very literal if I let him have something one time then they’ll think why can’t I have that every time
That makes sense. I still have certain requirements like no meat, no diary, no nuts (allergies) but our “lunch box food” like boxed raisins, apple chips, granola bars are only for school lunches, not for snacks at home. My son loves quinoa and spinach but I have a feeling it would just be a huge mess with very little actually eaten at school.
I’m a huge fan of people doing what works best for their family. 🙂
Great post! I do pack a fairly healthy lunch, but have had to learn what to pack that will get eaten also! Sunbutter & jam sandwiches, cherry tomatoes, cashews, oil-free home-baked goods, applesauce, bananas and dried fruit are usually on the menu. I learnt that wraps were too difficult for him to handle, apples took too long and didn’t get finished, and the same goes for other raw veggies like celery or carrot sticks. The school has a fruit-only policy for morning break, so the fruit has to get eaten, and any baked goods or other snacks are eaten at lunch time or after school. Works well!
Emma, the only wraps my kid can handle are sunbutter or wow butter wraps. A veggie wrap wouldn’t work for him but the sun butter and wow butter keep it glued together. Of course, sometimes he doesn’t eat them. Today I packed homemade banana bread so I know it will get eaten even if nothing else does.
SO SO true! Jacob is 6 now, and we’re still getting the hang of it. He tells me all the time that he had NO TIME to eat. I’m like, really?
Some days he eats everything and I worry if I didn’t pack enough, other days he eats nothing all day then devours everything on the ride home from school and doesn’t want dinner.
Doing what’s easy is what works!
Jacque sometimes I just try to pack at least one thing that is higher calorie, usually a granola bar or something with Sunbutter or Wow Butter so he will have enough fuel. He might “save” the apples until he gets home. I plan to visit my son for lunch one day soon just to see what it’s like this year. His school encourages parents to come have lunch with kids.
To day I forgot to pack his snack but found some vegan gummies (that weren’t very soft anymore) in my purse. I think he will be happy I forgot.
Thank you for posting this and being realistic. I work in an elementary cafeteria and have seen a huge variety of lunches come through. The majority of lunch does get thrown away, don’t waste your money and time packing an awesome lunch, follow the KISS method (Keep It Simple Silly). They are normally good with a simple sandwhich, a small fruit, a small veggie and a water bottle or juice; done, dont over think the lunches. The kids do spend a lot of time talking rather than eating even with the valiant efforts of the lunch monitors.
Thanks for the tips and reinforcement Christi!
I also try to get my kids buy in and show them the lunch to make sure there is enough. My 4 year old always wants more, my 6 year old usually wants less. 🙂
The first few weeks of school he would come home with all his food in his lunch box because he hadn’t really learned how to do the whole lunch thing.
Must depend on where you live. Here, home packed lunches range from lunch ables to tofu and quinoa. Cafeteria lunch is salad bar and fruit bar plus things like rotisserie chicken. Those first few “weird” parents helped start a trend and now all lunches of all varieties are the “norm.” There is also a large international poulation who introduce the kids to norms from across the world.
I pack my daughter a healthy lunch and snack with items she can eat quickly. She gets 20 minutes for lunch. I don’t slave over broccoli nuggets or super healthy foods. But she does get things like hard boiled eggs, cinnamon raisin couscous (her favorite and her friends devoured it at the school picnic), fruits, vegetables, zucchini muffins. She rarely gets a sandwich because she doesn’t want one. Our favorite, though – She has a bento to keep her foods warm and I send a LOT of leftovers that require no work except heating before packing.
There is a balance. And hopefully moms of all varieties pack what they feel comfortable with and not worry about what others pack 🙂