Our kids pack their own school lunches.
There are several reasons for this. First, it fosters self-sufficiency and independent thinking. It also gives them some awareness and appreciation of how much work goes into planning and preparing a meal. More importantly, a child who’s chosen his own food is much more likely to actually eat those foods than a child who is surprised and disgusted by the choices someone else has made for him. No food is nutritious if it goes uneaten!
Best of all, it’s so much easier for the parents. Packing lunches is a lot of work, and this way, I get to just put my feet up and relax.
Of course, first I have to remind the kids to make their lunches. I have the choice of doing this as soon as they get home, when they are exhausted and cranky, or later, when they are cranky and exhausted. Either way, there is occasionally a bit of resistance; but this can easily be overcome with some firm, cheerful reminders. Here is a sample dialogue:
Parent: [Child’s name], please make your lunch now.
Kid: [No answer.]
Parent: [Child’s name], will you please make your lunch now. [Child’s name.]
Kid: [No answer.]
Parent: [Child’s name], please make your lunch now [Child’s name.] [Child’s name.] Make your lunch.
Kid: [No answer.]
Parent: LUNCH. LUNCH. LUNCH.
Kid: What???
Parent: Please make your lunch.
Kid: Okay. Sheesh! You can’t just say “Lunch!” and expect me to know what you want!
The child will now need to locate his or her lunch box. If by some miracle the child has not left the lunch box at school, on the bus, or in the Dunkin’ Donuts bathroom where you stopped for an emergency poo, you will be able to easily locate the lunch box by the cloud of fruit flies hovering overhead.
Your child may notice that their lunch box “smells funny for some reason” but may need some assistance in identifying that reason as last week’s tangerine peel collection that it seemed like too much work to throw away, so they brought it home because surely their mother needs some elderly tangerine peels.
No matter, you can easily wipe down today’s modern wipeable lunch box with a damp cloth, perhaps give it a once-over with some baking soda to ameliorate the stench, possibly douse it with kerosene, pat it dry, and you’re ready to pack the lunch. I mean your child is ready to pack his lunch all by himself, while you put your feet up.
He will accomplish this by packing one snack pack of chocolate pudding and then going to lie down under the table. Why is he lying down under the table? Because there isn’t any food in this house.
You will point out to him — possibly waving your arms a bit, as you point it out — that there is so much food, in such vast quantities, and in such an array of varieties, it would have rendered Mansa Musa instantly insane as his brain tried to comprehend the sheer opulent luxury of it all.
But no dice. All you ever buy, it seems, is dumb boring things that are barely even food, like fruit and meat and cheese and yogurt and crackers and trail mix and cookies and pudding and hummus and chips and vegetables and fruit snacks and pumpkin seeds and bagels, and meanwhile all the other moms are buying Flamin’ Hot Sharkleberry Pop Tarts with Limited Edition Rockin’ Sockin’ Tropical Holographic S’mores Drizzle Pods, because other moms love their children.
At this point, you may be tempted to remind your children that, when you were in elementary school, you used to bring in a baloney sandwich, an apple, and a couple of store brand graham crackers with jelly on them, and you considered it a special treat if the jelly had seeds in it. And there certainly weren’t any insulated bags or adorable mermaid-shaped mini ice packs to go in those lunches! We got salmonella and we were grateful for it! We considered it an honor!
But this approach is an error. Your child will consider the fact that you ate graham crackers just further evidence that you are some kind of defective moron who is incapable of judging right eating, and he will make fun of you on TikTok. It’s not fair, but that’s how it is.
Eventually, with some persistent reasoning and bargaining and a little bit of screaming, your child can be coaxed to continue adding food items to his lunch box, until finally he discovers that it is nearly full. He will have achieved this all by himself, with only a little bit of help from you, who will by this time have spent the last forty minutes standing there with your head deep inside the cabinet, mumbling, “How about Triscuits? okay, then how about Ritz crackers?okay, then how about Goldfish crackers? okay, then how about Wheat Thins? okay, then how about Saltines?” and all the while you can actually feel your bones wearing down and turning into dust inside you. How about Wheat Thins with the bone dust of your mother on them? How about that?
But your untimely demise aside, the good news is, your child will finally have a hearty, nutritious lunch. Well, a hearty lunch. Well, it is mainly chocolate pudding, but at least you know the little creep is going to eat it. And best of all, he made it all by himself, and saved you so much work. Looks like this generation is off to a fine start, and you can go put your feet–
-Oh no, wait. This pudding was produced on machinery that also processes nuts. I guess junior needs some help after all.
_________
PBJ Image: JefferyGoldman, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Good article. Lunch packing is a challenge.
Oh my word I laughed so hard!! Lunches are the WORST (no no of course they’re not, sin & the devil are much worse, but still it feels that way sometimes)—thanks for adding a bit of levity to the chore of making your kids make their lunches! Only thing you missed mentioning here is the aftermath: Hurricane Idalia hits the kitchen…
The state we just moved to decided lunch and breakfast are free this year and that alone made the move worth it
Haha!
The good thing about sending two kids back to college is then there’s two less kids to complain about this being an “ingredient household” with nothing decent to eat.
I laughed out loud multiple times (choking on my lunch I brought from home), and read this aloud to my co-worker.
Hah Hah Hah! I love this. And I am so guilty of the crime of taking the easy way out rather than be annoyed at my children and the world when I try to help them become self sufficient. (See our family’s long history of velcro and slip on shoes until 5th grade). While I did pack many a lunch, I also was queen of “you didn’t eat your sandwich yesterday? Ok, 2 Sweet and Salty peanut bars for you.” And if those don’t get eaten, they can stay there another day. Or two. Or forever.
But truthfully, my daughter did pack her own lunch without help from me starting around 4th grade. My boys never packed their own lunches (see velcro, above), but they all stopped carrying lunch boxes once they started high school. At that point, they prefer to just keep prepackaged peanut butter crackers and protein bars in their backpacks. I know my current high school boys sometimes buy food at school with their own money. And none of them ever leaves the house without his water bottle. Not gonna lie. I do not miss the lunch boxes at all.
Nothing wrong with the easy way- many younger boys are all in velcro into high school.
I make the lunches with prepackaged food until the kid takes the initiative. With picky eaters, it’s easier to give them the gogurt and goldfish so they actually eat. My kids grow out of it eventually. I have other battles I need my energy for.
I will admit it took me a longer than I’d like to admit to switch lunch box to brown paper bag for kid who lost his box 4 times a week.