If you are like me, sometimes the worst thing in the world is trying to think of what to put in your children’s packed lunches for school.
It’s hard to be creative and original and you can get into such a rut with deciding what to make.
Sometimes the hardest part is also your child changing their mind on what they like to eat nearly every week.
It is definitely something that can change a Sunday evening from relaxing to stressful in a very short space of time.
Over the years I have learned a few tips to help me out with this mighty task and I’m going to share them with you in this blog.
We are all in this parenthood job together, right?
Include different options within one lunch
Children do change their minds on what they like to eat regularly and that is just an unfortunate fact of parenthood.
Your child could absolutely love a certain healthy food one week and then hate it the next.
To counteract this and to stop any healthy, lovingly-made lunches going to waste, try and include small, varied options within your child’s lunch.
You could do a mini salad alongside half a sandwich, and then a variation of fruits, veggies, and snacks.
Children love variation and they will enjoy being able to pick from different things.
There is less waste involved and you can take the other half of what you make for your lunch or split it amongst your other children if you have them.
Make things colourful
If you are worried about making sure your child’s lunch is healthy enough, one of the best things you can do is make sure the lunch is as colourful as possible.
Keeping this as your aim means that you will naturally include a healthy variation of fruits and vegetables, and you are more likely to include all food groups.
If you are looking at the packed lunch and seeing a lot of beige and a lot of packaged things, it’s probably not going in the right direction.
Your children will appreciate the colour too and it will keep things fun and upbeat.
Plan ahead
One of the best ways to keep making healthy lunches all week from getting overwhelming is to plan ahead.
Plan lunches before you go shopping to make the most out of your groceries and cut down on waste.
Meal prep on a Sunday night and make any lunches in advance that you can.
Use the same items for your lunch and any other children in the family to make things as easy as possible and to make the whole process a little quicker.
Whenever we are tired and overwhelmed, we are much less likely to pick and prepare healthy options for our children and we are much more likely to go for the quick and easy options, which tend to be snack and junk foods.
Making healthy lunches isn’t always easy and we might not always get it right, but there are a lot of things that we can do to keep our best foot forward, and that’s all that matters.
We are trying our best and that is good enough!
