Welcome to YTF Community, a place to safely share in the challenges and joys of feeding our families.
Welcome to the recurring series where I share a look at what I actually served during a random week. My goal is to be more off-the-cuff than I am in my videos on social media—or in my photography here on my website which are taken by a professional photographer when my kids are in school or camp—as another way to share the reality of feeding kids.
And since we are coming up on back-to-school season and super-cute and styled lunches all across social media, today’s post is meant to help add some reassurance to the mix.
I’ve been sharing toddler lunches online for almost as long as I’ve been making them in real life. I was recently interviewed for a story where the first question was “Where do you stand on the idea of decorating a lunchbox…”, so I realized it was time to more directly talk about my approach because I have never, not once in 12 years, considered the need to “decorate a lunchbox”.
Yes, some kids can benefit from more sensory input in a lunchbox. Yes, some parents take great joy in packing a lunch that is nutritious and beautiful. Yes, there are times when making homemade Lunchables or homemade Uncrustables is actually fun, or a brilliant way to entice the kids to eat foods they’d otherwise call boring.
And also: I think we need to remember that if making a kids lunch feels too hard in anyway, you can just opt out of it—any of it. You do not need to use cookie cutters to turn carrots into flowers or making sandwiches look like bear faces if you don’t want to. You can use the same lunchbox year after year if it’s working for you. You can choose to remind yourself that content you see online was, in fact, made to be shared on the internet and there were likely choices made to make the content look more visually interesting. It’s quite possible that the social media lunch you are judging the ones you’re making at home was never even served to a child.
You can pack mostly the same foods each day to ensure the kids have enough food they can easily eat—because that is actually the thing that matters most.
To prove all of this and to attempt to balance out some other messages you may hear in the next few weeks, here are a week’s worth of real life toddler meals that are a little bit less fuss, but still include a variety of ingredients, textures, and flavors.
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Thank you for this! I’m currently struggling with/stressing out over what to put in my 20-month old daughter’s lunchbox (she’s being a bit more selective about what she’ll eat these days, resorting to mac and cheese or air most days). This was a great reminder that some pancakes and yogurt (two things she is currently into) = a great lunch. No need to fuss or try to create some savory option that she doesn’t want.
It can be so hard and I hope the yogurt and pancake options are useful!