Bagged lunches for extremely picky child

[PenelopeJune]

I need some suggestions!

My son is starting kindergarten this fall, and it's all day. He's EXTREMELY, extremely picky, so I figured I'd be packing his lunches every day. His diet is so limited, but I really don't want to pack the same lunch every single day. I thought maybe you guys would have some easy, packable suggestions for me? Or ways to make his few items healthier? And ways to pack them to make them appealing to a picky kindergartener? (there are no limitations to what the school allows, it's not a peanut-free school)

He eats:
peanut butter and jelly
bananas
raisins
yogurt
hamburgers/cheeseburgers
cheese (but only yellow cheese, like cheddar)
crackers
any junky food/snacks
oatmeal (but only if it's from a packet )
muffins


Thanks in advance!

[maddymama]

We have a picky-ish lunch eater in our house. What I do is have her help me pack her lunch.... many times with leftovers from dinner. Our school's classrooms have microwaves so they can nuke a dish for up to 1 minute (no more or else the whole lunch time is spent microwaving kiddos lunches). I also try to pack three things, but two of which I know she'll eat and one new thing that I'm not sure she'll eat.
I also know many moms do Bento boxes and make them gorgeous... I'm not that organized.
~maddymama

[ollyoxenfree]

Does he like pasta? Mac'n'cheese?

My dc often take leftover pasta, re-warmed, in Thermos carafes. He may need a little help opening the Thermos, so you may want to check that there will be a lunchroom helper. You can't count on the teacher to be there - s/he has to eat lunch too!

Hummus and other dips and veggies are popular.

For sandwiches, try different "breads" - bagels, English muffins, biscuits, croissants, tortilla wraps....

[LaughingHyena]

I'd get fed up with it but DD seems to prefer the same lunch. I think she likes the predictability.

She usually has a sandwich (cold meat or tuna or cheese)
A few sticks of cucumber, carrot, apple (rubbed with lemon juice to stop it going brown) or whatever fruit we have in stock. Sometimes we add dried apricots or other dried fruits

For deserts she likes yoghurt, especially the ones in tubes. I buy them on sale and freeze them. They are defrosted by lunch time and keep the rest of her food cold.
Rice pudding also goes down well.

While she likes dips and so on at home she doesn't seem to eat it if we send it to school. I wonder if it is a time thing or if she just likes to have similar lunches to her friends.

[PenelopeJune]

Thanks guys. I'd forgotten about bagels, he likes those, too. I could send a bagel with cream cheese. And croissants, maybe with slices of cheese in them. He does like mac and cheese, but only the Kraft kind, which I don't buy because it's so expensive.

I was thinking about going with the Laptop Lunches boxes. I think it will keep me more organized to give him a more balanced lunch. Plus, it has the little containers so I can send him yogurt or pudding, and not have to buy individual packages.

This will be so much easier when my daughter goes to school! She eats everything!

[onthemove]

oh lunches...while my dd's are not super picky they both like different things. but the things they both like in their lunch are soups, although one won't eat beans, but I spend my Sunday afternoons making soups for the week. They like beef barley, chicken noodle, and spring pea and they take these in a thermos. Today they both took chicken noodle soup, tapioca pudding, pineapple and 2 mini cucumbers. Sometimes it just depends on the day or the week whether they like something or not. Good luck because lunches can be frustrating at times.

[rainyday]

Originally Posted by PenelopeJune

Thanks guys. I'd forgotten about bagels, he likes those, too. I could send a bagel with cream cheese. And croissants, maybe with slices of cheese in them. He does like mac and cheese, but only the Kraft kind, which I don't buy because it's so expensive.

I was thinking about going with the Laptop Lunches boxes. I think it will keep me more organized to give him a more balanced lunch. Plus, it has the little containers so I can send him yogurt or pudding, and not have to buy individual packages.

This will be so much easier when my daughter goes to school! She eats everything!

I HIGHLY recommend the Laptop Lunches or Planetbox lunch boxes. I've found with my ds that being able to just open a lid and see ALL the food at once makes a big difference in how much gets eaten. If I send several little bags or containers of food, some of them just never make it out of the bag at all! With both the Laptop and the Planetbox, ds can see all his food at once, and he seems to eat a lot more of it that way. And I love that they kind of force me to have different types of food in there, so it does end up being more balanced.

As for pickiness...I've found that kid-friendly serving methods help. If I stick in a big slab of something, ds might not eat it. If I chop that same thing up into little cubes and stick a toothpick in one of the cubes, he's way more likely to eat it. I think it's the fun of stabbing something.

I send pretty non-traditional lunches because ds is picky. I usually send a vegetable, a fruit, some sort of protein, and some sort of bread. But I choose ones that he likes or has liked in the past. So, his vegetable is never carrot sticks because those just won't get eaten. He likes peas, so I send those instead, for example. The bread might be a sandwich, but ds doesn't like many sandwiches, so often it's just buttered toast, crackers, or plain pasta. His lunch doesn't end up looking like what I ate as a kid!