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I know a lot of families have kids starting school, preschool, or daycare this week, so I first want to send a big hug for everything that comes with the transition. I hope it all goes as well as possible! We’re in our third week of school, but this is our first week with after school activities starting, so it feels…already like a lot.
And my Shortcut Toddler Meals are always a good spot to pick up quick and easy options.
On to today’s topic: There is something that I realized last year that has transformed how I think about kids lunches:
My main goal is to pack food that the kids usually like and that is easy for them to eat.
That’s it, really. I do not worry about variety, exposing them to new foods, or always packing a vegetable at lunch. I know that lunch periods are short and that there is a lot of benefit from safe, comforting foods during phases of transition—and all year long.
(For my thoughts on school lunch, I wrote “My Kid Buys School Lunch—Don’t Judge” a few years ago for The Kitchn.)
And this, I have recently remembered, was also something that helped me relax when my youngest son started eating at daycare when he was an older baby. I remember clearly looking at the menu and seeing “vanilla yogurt” and being really upset that they didn’t have plain yogurt for the babies. Because vanilla yogurt has added sugar. But then I went to share a few meals with him, sat on the floor next to his tiny little table, and watched him eat food he didn’t eat at home.
Roasted potatoes with an herb mix, green beans, shredded beef, and more. He was capable and confident as he fed himself (and dropped a lot in his bib, of course). He was learning to eat foods prepared by other loving adults, he was learning how to navigate meals with his little peers, and he was exploring food on his own terms in that new environment. The yogurt was one piece of information, but it wasn’t the whole story. (He did, yes, eat a lot of flavored yogurt in those months.)
And it didn’t, as I once believed, mean that he would only eat that type of yogurt for the rest of his life. Last week, I went to his preschool class full of energetic 3 and 4 year olds to make snack with his friends. We made yogurt bowls with a rainbow of colors of fruit, plain yogurt, granola, and some honey. Every Single Kid in that classroom ate a bowl of plain yogurt. (When I chose that yogurt, it had nothing to do with that memory of what he ate as a baby, I just connected them as I sat down to write this!)
Which, I think, solidifies my belief that it’s the cumulative impact of these food experiences that matters, not any one meal or food. Lunch can look a lot of ways and can include many different foods, but the most important thing might just be that the kids like it enough to eat satisfy their hunger.
So, if you are feeling a lot of pressure about the food your child is eating right now, or pressure that lunch needs to look one way or another, remember that you’re not alone—the messages are everywhere.
But just because you’re feeling pressure, doesn’t actually mean that there’s a problem. Maybe, if you zoom out to look at the larger picture of how and what we’re eating, things are just fine.
(That was a little bit of a tangent but I hope it hangs together in the reading of it!)
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