Making packed lunch

My 7 and 9 year olds make their own lunch and I just check it after to make sure they haven’t snuck in anything silly like a whole packet of biscuits

Amen to this!
So much easier

I'm 42 and a very good cook, my mum still makes me lunch if ever she's seeing me. I love doing the same for my dc. Of course they should be able to make it, but something about looking forward to your lunch warms me up. Our culture is based on love through food anyway.

Mine have made their own lunches from secondary. They also had the option of buying some from school and we provided money for that on their school account but they often preferred packed lunches as what friends had. I chuck mine in my box 2 mins before I leave the house in the morning, they have previously liked to be more organised and do theirs the night before. Fine. My youngest in primary has school dinners still.

Funnily enough my kids had their year 6 residential last October and they said exactly the same. There were kids who had no idea how to make a bed.

I was brought up by a mother who was one of 8. She and her younger sister cooked Sunday roast lunch for 10 every weekend from aged 13. That was after cleaning the entire house!!!!

I do lunches for my 15yo dd but that's because she's out most nights doing sport training and then trying to fit in homework etc around that and doesn't have much free time at all. If she was just mooching around at home and the shops I'd get her to do it

I was just thinking that some of these things are a result of the benign neglect experienced by dc of single working parents 😅. My now 11 year old has years of experience making her own lunch. She's a whizz with the air fryer and can make lots of basic pasta dishes. She can work the washing machine and dryer and sometimes does but her older sister who is 14 loves doing laundry for some reason and is a bit more reliable at hanging things so they don't crease 😆. She was also the only one in her dorm on her class residential a couple of weeks ago who could properly make a bed including duvet cover on to duvet which they were required to do. She did all the girls beds in the dorm!bas a pp said I think some people have no idea what children are actually capable of managing themselves and the independence and self esteem it gives them

My husband makes the kids packed lunches when he makes his own. If he’s got a work lunch he still makes the kids their packed lunches.

Mine are 15 and 13 (Y11 and Y8) and I always make their lunches.

I don't have much free time to give them in the week, I make their lunch as a way of showing I care about them etc etc

I should have said I am single and work full time. So I don't have time. It is something they can do easily before I even finish work.

@Crystallizedring my kids have been making their packed lunches for nearly 2 years. They are 12.

If my daughter (16, just started yr 12) wants a packed lunch I make it for her. I also cook her breakfast most mornings too. It's something I have time for, and I enjoy knowing she has started the day with a good meal and has something healthy, that she'll enjoy, for lunch.
She could do both things herself, and she does plenty of other things around the house as well as a part time job, but this is one thing I'll continue to do for her.

Dd is in Y7 and I do make her packed lunch. It’s a transition period. She’s never really taken packed lunches before, so it’s just me making sure it’s got sufficient decent food in it and it gets done on time (we also have to leave 45 minutes earlier to drive to bus stop, so it’s a new routine for all of us).

Will I do it forever? No. Sometime in the next few months, we’ll transition to her packing her own lunch (she has done it before for school trips, transition days, etc). I will not be still doing it at 17. When I was her age, I was cooking my own dinners and doing my own washing. So she is perfectly capable, it’s just to help her out for a bit.

I have never in 15 years made Dh a packed lunch though. 😂

My daughter has just started year 4, she makes her own packed lunch. She might ask for my help with chopping her raw veg (carrot, pepper, cucumber) but makes her own sandwich and adds fruit, crisps and does her own drink.

You’d have to have loads of junk food in the house for the kids to only pack junk though. We don’t have that stuff, so they couldn’t pack it even if they wanted to (they don’t).

From secondary school, I would expect my children to make their own lunches. I think I would supervise though, dependant on the child. I know that I started making my own lunches at 11 and didn't pack anything remotely healthy (except the sandwich, which I promptly binned at school).

If I was staying in bed while my kids made their own lunch I’d probably feel a bit shit too. Im not though, I’m up and about, getting myself ready for work, chatting to them about what they’ve got on at school that day and evening plans, sorting out my younger disabled child as he is unable to dress himself etc etc.

Haha! I was momentarily excited thinking I would be able to have a luxury holiday due to mine being on free infant school meals...

It still works out about 2k per year I think assuming home made lunch costs £1 and you're doing 3 lunches in total. So a good saving

Yeah also this. I wfh now and live alone with my daughter. I get up earlier than I have to (technically) and sort breakfast/see her out the door. Seems a bit miserable for her to be sorting herself out while I get another half hour in bed.

I make the whole family's packed lunches regardless of age. Just something I do

Absolutely family dynamics! I make my 17 year old DD's lunch as she has an eating disorder / no interest in food. If I didn't make it for her she wouldn't bother and we would get in a bad cycle.
I make my year 8 child's lunch as we are rural and he leaves the house at 7.20AM. He's fully aware that if he left for school later I would not make his lunch for him.
I would love my children to make their own lunch and would in a different situation.

I make my 14 year old DDs. I am making my 7 year old's anyway and she has a long walk to school and has to get up early so I don't mind doing it. I think she needs to start making herself some simple meals though so was going to start that with her this year

Just a cautionary tale my mum stopped making my packed lunches when I was 16 and just gave me money instead. BUT I was given no advice or prompting about meal planning or healthy choices by my parents. As a result I used to eat utter crap from the canteen and put on a lot of weight. So if you let them fend for themselves give them advice and support first.

Combining it then sharing it out again doesn't save work, it adds to it. It's more complicated because everyone has to learn to identify every item of clothing, and you're adding extra jobs of moving every item of dirty clothing into one communal space, sorting every clean item into separate piles, and someone taking on each stage of the process. Doing it communally may run harmoniously with everyone leaping up to help as soon as the load is dry, but in practice it tends to live in one or two people's mental to do list while the others forget and having to be cajoled. Then the cajoling is yet another task. I used to wash and hang out 56 socks a week and someone had to sort those 56 socks into 28 pairs and then 4 piles of pairs, remembering who owns every single one. Then those 4 piles had to be conveyed separately to 4 different rooms. Whereas when DD does her own washing, everyone gets a simpler task. Combining the washing increases the complexity of the job exponentially.

I mean it's not a big drama. I can sort 56 socks, I can delegate my teenager to do so, I can fold a wash and sort into piles as can my husband. But it's not simpler than everyone doing their own when they have enough in their basket. DD doing her own is massively more helpful to me than her folding a communal wash when I ask, and it's better for her to be taking ownership.

Hmmm. I read it in a magazine. Maybe it's not £7k a year. £7 per day for the kids and then a fiver for the husband.
Oops. Ach well, at least I got a holiday out of it 😂