What does your secondary school child have in their lunchbox?

[RedSkyAtNight]

As title really.

DS's lunch options seem to be

• spend fortune in school café
• not eat packed lunch on the basis it is boring.

We've asked him for ideas of things that would be "non-boring" but he's not really come up with anything.

DS's Spanish buddy always brings in a beautiful assortment of charcuterie meats and tomato bread apparently. DS has begged me to do him pesto pasta at least, in a vain attempt to appear a bit more exotic maybe? Nah, we'll stick to wrap, crisps and cake bar

@DumbledoresApprentice are those kids teens? I used to take a flask with hot food when I was a teen and got funny looks /comments from other kids and staff. My younger teen likes the idea but won't give it a go.

Op I agree that eating a good lunch would be better but having had years of food coming home uneaten, I decided I'd rather they ate something to tide them over and then eat more once home than nothing at all! Could you do a bank trip once a month to get plenty of coins for change or, what I'd probably do is give a set amount per week/month (say £2/day or whatever the right amount is) and say if it goes before end of week, he has to take a boring sandwich for the rest of lunches that week/month (on the basis he has to learn to budget at some point) !

but, the school meal option is still more expensive 😕

pesto pasta or leftover pasta
couscous (use the flavoured sachets)
mini pizza or make pizza rolls
sausage rolls or pasties
chopped veg or prepared fruit
crackers cheese and ham
cold sausages
mini quiche

all portable and mine have eaten at some point in lunch boxes.

daisy if we give DS any amount of money he always spends it straight away (in a good week it might stretch to 2 days). He seems entirely unable to budget. He's actually begged us not to give him lump sums as he can't resist spending it. I know he has to learn to budgeting somehow but there's a limit to how much crap I'm prepared to watch him buy while he learns. If we send him in with "boring" sandwich he won't eat it, which I know is his choice, but I'd rather he ate something!

Chicken and salad wrap, satsuma or apple, breadsticks and small choc biscuit like a Penguin or similar. DD hates the canteen says it's greasy and everything is orange and breaded!

Ds is dairy and wheat free. Lunches for him are usually flask based. So curries, chilli, stew, pasta, pulses etc. That's it I don't add any extra treats as he finds he is quite full after a flask of hot food.

Yep, secondary age.

• Sandwich on brown bread (on rota: egg / tuna + cucumber / turkey + tomato slices / parmesan / humus / smoked salmon...)
• But if we have pesto pasta left over from dinner, then he takes that and no sandwich.
• Veg of fruit (cherry tomatoes + olives or pickle, peeled carrot, banana, apple, blueberries, strawberries...)
• Extra carb (crisps, humus chips, lentil chips, nachos, corn cakes).
• Cereal bar/flapjack for mid-morning (I make them at home, much cheaper!)
• Extra snack for after school clubs (choc rice cakes/piece of cake/biscuits).

Have you tried just taking him to the supermarket (or the online supermarket) and asking him to find what's not boring?

On the other hand once we forgot DS asd needed a packed lunch for a trip so gave him some money and told him to grab lunch from the supermarket. He told me he had a packet of crisps and a chocolate bar. I told him I was so sorry and he said no it was the best packed lunch ever!

Ham in white bread
Sausage roll
Fruit
Mini roll or biscuit
Possibly crisps

We top up the canteen card with a few pounds a week so she can have something at break with her friends, or choose to have 1 hot dinner a week.

Sandwich, cake and sausage roll (do do do do do doo)

Though lately he prefers a mini pork pie. Also autistic.

My DS is alway starving so :

Roll or bagel filled with either ham , cheese, tuna or smoked salmon

Rice cake
Yoghurt

Packet of crisps

Piece of fruit

Mini pot of hummus with a pitta bread or a sausage roll for morning snack. ( they have a very long morning as lunch hour isn't until 1pm and school starts at 8:20 am )

We give him £5 every other week on his catering card to but the odd hot snack as a treat.

RedSky how do they pay for lunch? My approach to enforce budgetting has been to state a weekly amount that I am prepared to pay, and refuse to top up once that's gone. So they can either budget properly or splurge on Mon and Tues and eat "boring" packed lunches for the rest of the week. The budgeting improved quite substantially when I followed through on the threat.

The unexpected bonus was that they also decided that my packed lunches weren't so bad after all and now they mostly have packed lunch.

My children are older teens so pretty much do their own thing. ds decided last year that lunch took too much time so just took a handful of (dried uncooked) pasta and some crackers to school every day and ate something nicer when he got home. dd takes a sandwich and a snack of some form (cereal bar, couple of biscuits etc). They used to eat a ton at primary but I guess they've finished growing now (both around 6' for a few years now).

ChickenCalledKorma same threat but has no effect. We've tried it a few times and every time he spends the money as quickly as he can (the school does enforce a daily limit of £6 which is the only barrier he has). Last time I gave him money that was meant to last him for 5 meals (we agreed he could have school meals twice a week) and it was gone in the first 3 days (the quickest it was possible to spend it or it would have gone sooner!). Same thing happens every time we've tried this (roughly every term). He has zero self control. All very well to say it's gone, it's gone, but £6 a day is a ridiculous amount to be spending.

This might be a mad idea, but how about giving him the same amount of money and setting him loose in the supermarket with the challenge of seeing how much nice packed lunch stuff he can buy for the same amount?

Yeah, that's the sort of thing I'm trying to do with him. He's reluctant to actually go to the supermarket (yes, he's really not helping himself) but I'm starting to show him more of the household budget, in particular trying to get him to understand about food prices and what we (as a family) spend on food and what alternative things the money might buy him. He does know it conceptually but that doesn't seem to (yet) stop him spending any money he has. He's the same with any other money he gets - not restricted to lunch money!

he's doing economics as a GCSE option - I know that's nothing to do with personal budgeting, but I'm hoping it might give him more of awareness of how money "works"!

Leave him to his own devices.

I packed my own lunch in high school. I wouldn't have been keen on anything my mum packed for me (fickle teenagers). I don't think any of my friends had their parents packing their lunch at that point. Packing it myself meant I knew what I wanted to eat, and it would all be eaten.

Yesterday and today DD had 4 falafel, a pitta bread, a small pot of hummus, salad, an apple and two mini brownie bites.

She's veggie now so we've had to be imaginative. No more ham or tuna sandwiches.

Sometimes she has soup in a flask but we've had to try a few before finding one that keeps it hot enough.

You could try getting him to do in on online supermarket shopping, doesn't necessarily have to buy it online could just show you what he's chosen. Could give him a budget for a weeks packed lunches. He might prefer moaning though!

DD (16yrs) has any one of the following with a piece of fruit, water, snack bar or muffin/couple of biscuits or nuts. Luckily there are no food restrictions at her school. DD is vegan so there's not a lot she can buy from the canteen so she either takes lunch in or starves.

• Usually cold leftovers from the night before (pasta & sauce, lentil bolognese, eggplant bake, spinach & potato pie, dahl & flat bread, leftover pizza, roast veges)

-Sometimes soup in a thermos with some cold toast.

• Whole avocado with rice crackers

• Hommous with rice crackers

• Rarely sushi/nori rolls

• Rarely Vietnamese style rice paper rolls

• Sometimes a wrap with lettuce, tofu, peanut butter & sweet chilli sauce

• Sometimes a vege pasty (cold) with tomato sauce.

• Sometimes fried Jap tofu with soba noodle salad.

• Never sandwiches, sadly

• Sometimes just a green apple if she's disorganised/running late

Dd14 takes a bagel/wrap/ciabatta, small popcorn, cereal bar, Apple and grapes. (she often doesn't eat it all) My dc take the same every day, they prefer to know what they are getting rather than have variety.

Sorry but LOL at "he's doing GCSE economics". I can feel your frustration from here!!!

Loving the idea of getting a teen to do an online packed lunch shop with a budget, though. I'm going to steal that one.

Ds has now changed his lunch items:

• Chicken/Tuna sandwich square thing
• Banana/apple/grapes
• Mini malt loaf thing or cereal bar if he's feeling adventurous