Ideas
When lunch keeps coming home uneaten
When a packed lunch keeps coming home, the cause is usually one of three things: there was not enough time, something in the box was hard to open or eat, or one food is not one your kid is ready for. Change one thing at a time, and keep a short note of what came back for a week before you decide which it was.
Ask about lunch, not about the food
“Why didn’t you eat it?” tends to get a shrug. Questions about the lunch period get more: who did you sit with, did you wait in line, when did the bell ring, which part did you eat first. A kid who ate the crackers and the fruit and brought back the whole main is telling you something different from one who opened nothing.
Lunch at school is not lunch at the kitchen table. Walking in, finding a seat and talking to friends all come out of the same few minutes. A box built for a slow lunch at home is not always the box a six-year-old finishes in a cafeteria.
Make every part easy to open
Watch your kid open the box at home, once, without helping. A tight lid, a yogurt tube, a twist-top thermos, a cheese stick in its wrapper: any one of them can use up the time a part needed. If they cannot open it in a few seconds, change the container, or open it partway before it goes in.
Make it ready to eat
A whole apple is a lot of chewing for a short lunch; slices go faster. An orange that needs peeling is a job; a peeled clementine is lunch. Cut it, peel it, take it out of its wrapper, and every part is one step closer to eaten.
Pack a little less
A full box can look like too much to start. For one week, try a smaller main and the rest of the box as it is, and see what comes back. If they come home hungry, add to breakfast or the after-school snack before you add to lunch.
Keep one food they always eat in every box
Every box gets one thing your kid eats every time, so lunch is never all new. Put the new or unsure food beside it, small, and only one at a time. If the box comes home with the sure thing eaten and the new one untouched, that is not a failed lunch. It is what trying looks like. There is a whole week built this way on A week of school lunches for a kid who eats five things.
Keep a week of notes before you change anything else
Each afternoon, write down what came back, part by part: all eaten, some, or came home. After a week the pattern is usually plain. The main every day points at time or the main. Friday only points at something about Friday. Everything on the thermos days points at the thermos. Then change the one thing the notes point to.
A food that comes back twice in a row is worth putting away for a few weeks rather than packing a third time. Tastes change. It can come back later in a different form, or beside something they already like.
When it is more than lunch
If your kid is not eating at home either, or you are worried about how they eat, that is a question for their doctor, not for a lunchbox.
Where Lunch Sorted fits
Lunch Sorted is a school-lunch planner for parents, and the week of notes above is something it keeps for you. Once the box is home, it asks what came home, part by part, and a food that comes home twice in a row goes on hold for three weeks, so the next week leans toward what gets eaten. The question about what came home is part of the Household plan; planning the week and the shopping list are free for one lunchbox, and every new household gets everything for its first three weeks. The help page has the details.
The planner is free to try at lunchsorted.app, and the iPhone app is on the App Store.