To not want to do packed lunches?

[TickledOnion]

Just had DD1 (age 8) in tears because she desperately wants to move to packed lunches. It's all or nothing at her school. You sign up for a term of school dinners or packed lunches.

All her friends have packed lunches and they sit in a different dining hall to eat. So she has to sit with the same 2 girls everyday as they are the only ones is her year who are on school dinners. She doesn't dislike these girls but they aren't her close friends.

She likes some of the food but not the overcooked veg and there are a couple of days where she really doesn't like the meat bit of the meal.

My reasons are that I really, really hate making packed lunch. I am a single parent so it is just more mental load and more stuff to do each day. DDs are not particularly helpful around the house and I feel like I have enough to do nagging them to do every single thing every day. They do very little without being asked 20 times.

And it's a balanced meal that I don't have to think about. It's stuff like meatballs and pasta or bbq chicken and rice. Which means I don't feel guilty if I do pizza or fish fingers or beans on toast occasionally for tea.

And if I did it for one I'd probably have to do it for both.

So, AIBU to say no despite the tears?

Packed lunches are the work of the devil but when I have to do it, I buy stuff I can easily chuck in, I don't do sandwiches anymore especially since they don't get eaten

Check Pinterest. They have lots of ideas to help kids pack their own lunches.

"Mental load"? Come on. It seems like some people just choose to make things more difficult than they really are. Adding 6 things to your weekly shopping list is not not mentally draining.

1 x extra loaf of wholemeal bread
1 x cheese (or ham, or whatever your kid likes in a sandwich)
1 x jar of pickle
1 x 6 pack of yoghurts or similar
1 x pack of clementines or bunch of bananas or bag of apples.

Just make the poor girl a packed lunch you misery guts! Or get her to make it herself. It's only really a sandwich surely? She can even make them all on Sunday and freeze them. The rest is just stuff you chuck in like crisps, fruit etc.

I'm totally with you in this OP. I'm also a working single parent, life is beyond hectic. My evenings are filled with work and chores, and I haven't got time to be faffing around making sandwiches and trying to find appropriate snacks to put in a packed lunch. My kids are fussy too - they won't eat fruit, one doesn't like ham, the other doesn't like cheese when it's gone "sweaty", they get bored if they get the same thing over and over, but refuse to try new stuff etc etc. So, it's school dinners all the time, non negotiable . They've stopped asking now.

Can you maybe speak to school about the consequences of split lunch?

My DC was also very keen for a packed lunch for different reasons. Every time they occasionally needed a packed lunch for school trip, I made up a lunch the likes of which would not be made on a daily basis.

Once I explained what an everyday packed lunch would look like, very much less keen

I had packed lunch at school and all my friends had hot dinners and got to sit somewhere else. It was horrible. You miss out on a nice relaxed bonding time. I used to throw my packed lunch away - not sure how that was supposed to help! - so sorry, I think YABU to not do something simple that would make your DD happy. It’s not going to cost more over the week and would take 2 mins tops.

I hate making packed lunches as well but I can make a decent lunch much cheaper than what school charge for lunches, and my youngest doesn’t like the cooked lunches and would end up with a sandwich anyway. It’s not much faff really I am into year 7 of doing it here. We make the lunch and put it out on the worktop and it’s down to the kids to get it all packed up.

TyneTeas I have stopped the packed lunch asking in its tracks for now by pointing out that school dinners come with pudding, and packed lunches made and supplied by me would feature just fruit/yoghurt Every. Single. Day.

Pretending schools lunches are a balanced meal is just an excuse. It isn't if they dont eat it.

You need to get a grip and pack the lunch, it really isn't a big deal. A week in and you wont even have to think about it.

Sorry OP but I think YABU.

Can you remember being 8?!Friends are so important. And if the other 2 girls are away or ill, does your DD then sit alone?

As everyone else has said, it takes 2 minutes to stick a sandwich, yogurt fruit etc. in her bag. Agree with asking her to help if you really can't handle it.

Not like you are being asked to make a bento box daily

YABVU, this means a lot to her and would take minutes.

Mental load unless you've missed a huge drip feed it's just called normal life. As for the, doing the house stuff, they are children so as long as they tidy their things away then they shouldn't be doing chores anyway. That's the adults job.

Don't be mean. It must be miserable to dread lunchtimes when she could be having a nice time with her friends. Packed lunches aren't too bad once you get in to the swing of it and maybe you could make a deal with her that you'll let her have packed lunches if she takes on responsibility for a job around the house.

I have never done packed lunches. I just hate the idea. Of constantly making sure I have enough .... bread, youghurt tubes etc. I make them for Ds2 when he goes to holiday club for a day or 2 at half term. I like doing it then. Because it’s not every day. I’d hate the every day thing.

Over thinking.

Add a few extra things to your weekly shop as PP said a few comments up.

Takes 5 minutes to make.

Do your usual dinners. Do you worry about having a more balanced dinner on the days that she hasn't eaten the soggy veg and meat she dislikes? Probably not. It will all balance out over the week.

Go on. It'll be lovely for her.

It’s only hard if you try to create super duper packed lunches with loads of variety.

I’d get her to make up her sandwiches for the week (plain ham, cheese, chicken breast) at the weekend and chuck in the freezer.

Then every day she collates a sandwich, cherry toms (could be portioned into bags at the weekend) and cucumber sticks or a carrot (I’d expect at 8 she could peel a carrot and cut cucumber) and then a pack of crisps and either a yog or a piece of fruit

If you have the same thing every day there isn’t much mental load.

Apart from brief stints in year 6 and year 9, I had packed lunches throughout my school life. When I was primary aged, my single mother used to buy a loaf of the 7 day fresh (I think you can still get that?) bread for the week, and I'd have cheese or ham or Marmite or any combination of the above three sandwiches that she'd make the night before. Occasionally I'd have cheese pasta, a sausage roll (again, pack of 5/6 bought at the start of the week!) or leftover chicken drumsticks from Sunday dinner with my grandparents instead of a sandwich. It was just me and her, and (this is probably outing to anybody who knows me enough) for two and a half years we used to drive 40 miles each way to work and school every day. Somehow, she could spare the 5 minutes to make a sandwich and put together some extras.

Secondary aged, our circumstances had changed drastically (we were a family of 5 by the time I was 14) and I made my own lunches most evenings, gradually increasing to making sandwiches for all 5 of us fairly regularly. It's boring, sure, but even for a whole family, I never found it that hard work, especially doing it in the evenings. Either get DD to help (she's old enough, and should encourage her to eat everything in the box) or make it part of your "making dinner" routine - while food is cooking, throw together a sandwich, stick it in the fridge. Boom, done.

I have fond memories of being around 8-10 and eating packed lunches with my friends.

Could you tell her that you will make her packed lunches if she in return does one chore for you.

E.g. Emptying the dishwasher every morning or hanging up the washing when it's finished.

Say you will assess it at the end of each term and of she isn't keeping up her end of the bargain you will stop doing packed lunches.

I started making my own lunches at her age for exactly the same reason. Bread rolls are easier than sliced bread - all she needs to do is shove in some cheese or ham, put it in a sandwich bag and she's sorted.

If she doesn't do it, she goes back to school dinners. I really enjoyed the grown-upness of self-catering (though the novelty has worn off now )

If you don’t mind the initial outlay, we have found the bento-style lunchboxes like the Yumbox an absolute godsend. I have a basket of packed lunch foods in the fridge (things like mini blocks of cheese, salami sticks, sausages rolls, grapes, strawberries etc) and a basket in the cupboard with pretzels, those little cakes/flapjacks you get in boxes of 20 from Tesco, and I just put out the boxes and the baskets on the table and fling something into each compartment. My record is three packed lunches (reasonably well-balanced) in under five minutes

I can see where you are coming from in terms of knowing that she has had a good hot meal for lunch so it makes the evenings easier and for that reason I would stick with the school lunch. However, just so that you realise, a packed lunch takes a tiny amount of time to prepare if you follow the advice of some PPs. I also think that I can prep a healthy packed lunch for less money than a school lunch.
I would be tempted to chat to school about the problem as schools are generally looking to increase their uptake of school lunches so wont want to lose your business.

YANBU. I'd get to do her own or no joy.

Personally I would complain to the school about the kids being separated and the inflexibility of their system. Every school round here lets you do packed lunch sometimes and hot dinner sometimes so it can't be that impossible to administrate.

Having said that surely they are only sitting eating for 15 mins or so and then out in the playground so it is not like she gets no time with her friends. She may be being a but melodramatic about it.

If I let my kids make their own lunch they would have a ham sandwich and chocolate biscuit and that would be it. I would rather make it myself and provide veg/fruit and a decent variety of stuff. They have 2-3 school dinners a week.

I don't really understand the issue thh. How long does it take to make a sandwich? I make my DD preschool lunch when i make her breakfast. She is ultra fussy so it's either the same sandwich or pasta with the same bits every day. It takes all of 5 minutes to make.

Frozen sandwiches sound awful, doesn’t the bread get soggy and what about the lettuce cucumber etc!

You obviously don't freeze the salad items! You just pop those fresh in the lunch box each day.