Packed lunches - am I the boring mean mum?

[rumpleteaserspaws]

I hate doing packed lunches with a passion and am dreading doing them daily when the DCs return to school!
My DC's have had a few days at holiday club over the past three weeks, and I've had to do their lunches for that. They have been complaining (albeit nicely ) about them having a "healthy" lunch, because their HC friends have nicer (so read more sugary) stuff in theirs.

So, I'll tell you the contents and you can tell me if I'm boring;

Sandwich of choice, usually tuna or egg mayo, or cheese w/ tomato or cucumber.

Veg pot - carrot, cucumber, tomatoes.

Piece of fruit, sometimes two.

Squeezy yoghurt of some kind.

A treat type item, either crisps, a club-type of biscuit, mini Soreen loaf.

To me that seems like a perfectly normal packed lunch, mainly healthy but with a bit of fun stuff. We are not a mega healthy household in that they get sweet stuff more often than I'd really like. They certainly aren't deprived of anything. This type of packed lunch is what they'll be getting daily when they return to school, but I can already envisage the complaints I'm going to get, argh!

Do we have competitive undereaters on lunchbox threads now? 🙄

I would not be too strict. I would add crisps too if their holiday club is 9-5 hours.

Sometimes it's nice to fit in with your peers. - teaflake
Not at the expense of your actual health - blacktop

Oh for the love of puppies...

The children's health is not going to be jeopardised by lunches they have had over the course of a few days at holiday club over the past three weeks.

Do you have any idea what the other children were eating, @rumpleteaserspaws?
It's possible you have (with the best of intentions) come across as a bit of a wet blanket.

You have all my sympathy wrt the chore of making packed lunches. It's a thankless pita. But as long as they are eating sensibly at home, easing up a little on the wholesomeness of lunch can serve an important social function for your children.

• Also, are you sending the egg or tuna salad sanswiches with an icepack or are the lunches refrigerated? Anything with mayo/egg in it needs to be kept chilled or you run the risk of it going off and causing illness.

I wouldnt do fruit and veg but thats because I am a lazy bitch.

Also, are you sending the egg or tuna salad sanswiches with an icepack or are the lunches refrigerated?
Anything with mayo/egg in it needs to be kept chilled or you run the risk of it going off and causing illness

Not likely in the three short hours between drop off and lunch....Get a grip lovey

Sounds normal to me. Mine are going to holiday club tomorrow with a banana, wrap with ham and cucumber in it, yoghurt, satsuma, flap jack and mini cheddars. It bothers me that this is carb based but I can't seem to find alternatives that they will eat- happy to hear any suggestions anyone has?
I'm currently freezing their drinks as an ice pack and they take an additional water bottle.

Sounds like a reasonable packed lunch.

Mine took packed lunch to school from age of about 12 because decided queueing up for school dinners took up too much of his lunch break. This was years ago.

Two sandwiches which were usually cheese and pickle; an apple, a carton of juice, a chocolate biscuit like Penguin or Kitkat and sometimes a packet of crisps. Everyone else had much the same, the sandwich filling varying.

Nobody worried too much about packed lunches or school lunches because they had a decent meal in the evening.

Oh I forgot, a yogurt.

@rumpleteaserspaws could you make me lunches please? That sounds awesome!

Count yourself lucky you’re allowed to send along eggs and tuna. It opens up quite a few options. We have a nut, seeds, fish, egg, nut oils and kiwi fruit free school food policy.

Plus a strong ‘packaging-free’ and ‘processed-free’ initiative.

I’m all for avoiding allergy issues, and environmental initiatives, but I’m often stumped for interesting school lunchboxes with all the ‘banned’ stuff.

I’m a bit by so many posters advocating crisps/chips. Why give kids something so devoid of nutrition, that’s full of bad fats and salt? I get it’s convenient, but is crackers and cheese so much harder?

Sounds yummy and sensible.

If the yoghurts sweetened then it's in the "treat" bracket really so it might be swapped for something else and the meals still about the same.

Sound perfect op. Our lunches are the same with out yogurt.
In winter I send a thermos of soup and sometimes as a treat they get cold Takeout pizza which is Much loved

Where are the hummus and sushi brigade that normally show up on a MN lunchbox thread?!

Sorry, I'm in a different time zone so only just seen this! I'm here now.

Yep, sushi all the way. But in fairness I only do it because everyone in my house likes sushi so I can just make one thing and then split it between everyone.

I'm in the sushi brigade too. DD, 12, has loved sushi since toddlerhood. She's currently upstairs eating nori rolls for lunch. All the kids I know around here are crazy about Japanese food (and anime and cosplay), and a lot of schools have sushi as a lunch-order option. Mind you, I'm in Melbourne, where sushi bars do very well, even during Stage 4 lockdown.

For ye Brits curious about authentic Australian cuisine -- fairy bread is not a school lunch item, it is a treat made for birthday parties. A child bringing it to school is probably eating leftovers from a party. Made with white bread, marge and sugarous, artificially coloured 100s and 1000s, fairy bread looks a lot better than it tastes!

Your packed lunch sounds great.

We made fairy bread with my brownie pack once and it certainly did look better than it tasted (and it didnt even look that good

OP your kids lunchbox sounds pretty normal. Maybe you could give them some kind of control over what they get by allowing them to choose what "treat" they get (from a limited selection) rather than your decision

I think sushi is quite a common lunch in Australia. Mine won’t eat it so it doesn’t go in our lunch boxes.
Doing Bento boxes seems to be quite popular here which is a good way to go package free too.

It sounds perfectly fine. I wouldn’t add crisps. Mine basically get a sandwich, piece of fruit and if I happen to have any in the cupboard, a biscuit.
Their friends will often have crisps and 2 or 3 other snacky stuff but my dc have also told me those that do rarely eat the sandwich or fruit, they just eat the yummy stuff.

Also from when they were little, I told mine the fruit should always get eaten first (it’s their starter) followed by sandwich and biscuit for dessert. That way at least I knew they’d got some fruit inside them.

My only problem is the egg and tuna, they smell! Kids don't want to be different and someone will make a massive joke about the smell of the sandwich.

Sounds normal to me.

For reference, my standard pack lunch when I went to school (in 70s) was,

Cheese and lettuce sandwich
Penguin biscuit
Apple

Squash in flask

Sounds perfectly normal!
For variety you could add
Mini sausages/sausage rolls
Cheese squares
Fruit salad pot instead of a piece of fruit
A dip with the veggie pot
Flapjacks
Hot cross bun
Do they decide what sandwiches they want? Giving them the option of what filling they’d like makes it sound like they’re choosing their lunch rather than you. And why not do a more ‘Funday Friday’ lunch with a treat of their choice? With crisps and a pasta salad. A smoothie makes a Nice change to a piece of fruit too once a week!

rumpleteaserspaws there’s absolutely nothing wrong with your lunches. Your children are being typical children and wanting what their friends have. I can remember being envious of certain children in primary school when I was young. Their “sandwiches” were slices of Madeira cake or rich tea biscuits sandwiched together with butter, whereas ours were just “boring” bread with meat or salad or whatever. However, I knew that there was no point in voicing my opinion to my no-nonsense (teacher) mother as even though I wanted what they had, I also knew they were extremely unhealthy and there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of my mother opting to give us these sandwiches. Your children probably know this too (hence them being nice about it, rather than sulking/arguing/demanding) so carry on as you are.

As an aside, I’m shuddering here when I read about the number of you who would include crisps. I’m in Ireland (teacher) -so we never have school dinners anyway, children always have packed lunches-and in a great number of schools, crisps are banned, thank goodness. Apart from the mess they can create, the stench in the classroom would be absolutely unbearable. Ugh!

I do the same; holiday club is probably different but I thought you got in trouble with school if you have an unhealthy lunch box. Surely kids need to learn healthy lunches from young so that as adults they eat healthily?

Mine the same though dd2 friends would exclaim at how small it was. All these friends are noticeably overweight and would have enormous packed lunches that I would struggle to eat as an adult.

You should do what my DM did to me when I complained my ham sandwiches were boring. Ok I was 18 and in my first job and when I opened my sandwich box she had cut the sandwiches into rabbit shapes using a biscuit cutter. I made my own lunch after that.

Sometimes it's nice to fit in with your peers.
This is a touch pathetic imo.

I never give mine sugary stuff really in packed lunches, sometimes crisps, but it's never been an issue.

I would just say 'I pick the things I know will give you the most energy' or something and ignore.

My lot eat various treat things at home or other times of course but once you get the formula of cake every day in packed lunch it is hard to break, so I never started it.