Thursday, March 20, 2008

Yummy Lunches

A couple of weeks ago the "brown bag blues" made their way into our house.
I leave for work pretty early in the morning so Dave handles all the aspects of getting Ben off to school, including packing his lunch.
Well, a few weeks ago Ben had a couple of really rough days at school that involved a few bad choices, some disrespect, and a whole lot of crankiness. While discussing this issue it came out that his lunches had been lacking in healthy-ness during that time.
Now granted it was the week after his birthday and Valentines day, so we did have an abundance of treats and sweets in our house and I had not done any serious grocery shopping for a while so we were getting low on the nutritous fare.
Well, it seems that a few to many of those not so healthy, but
oh so delicious goodies
made it into the lunch box in place of the
brain foods
necessary to get any 8 year old through their day, much less one that suffers from
low-blood-sugar-stinky-attitude-disorder.
(I am certain this is a real disorder!)
I certainly do not hold my husband responsible for the
"brown bag blues"
that struck that week because I had not done my job in providing the nutritous ingredients.
So, my first plan of action was to
pitch the remainder of the sugar-laden treats
into the garbage.
Then I headed out to the grocery store with Ben in tow to help me decide on what good things he wanted in his lunch box. Then I typed up a list to go on my fridge with three categories:
Main Course, Fruits & Veggies, and Treat.
Now each day Ben is supposed to go to the list and pick one item from each category to put in his lunch box. Dave does help him with preparing the main course, but other than that, Ben is responsible for making sure that his lunch will get him through the day and
so far, so good.
He has not had any more of those tough days.
Now that's not to say that he doesn't still suffer from the
LBSSA disorder,
but at least now the crankiness holds off until he is in the car on his way home!



Here is one of his favorite main courses:

7 comments:

Lee Ann said...

Way to go...to figure out the problem and go after it. and I think it's incredible that he actually eats that for lunch. Anna wouldn't touch even one ingredient in there.

Meagan said...

You know, I think I might suffer from LBSSA disorder! :) Maybe I should eat some of those yummy looking wraps! That is so great that Ben will eat good food like that. I think Micah would eat that too. I tend to stick with good old PB and honey (which is his fave), but it is good to mix it up a bit! What a great idea to make a list of choices for him and give him a sense of responsibility in the lunch making process. Bravo, mama!

Gina said...

I like the idea of a list of foods. Our lunches are usually a sammie, a fruit, carrots and dip, a small amount of chips (less than you would get in a single serve bag), and some crystal lite or real juice or milk. But it does get rather BORING- those wraps look yummy.

Gina said...

By the way, we all suffer from varying degrees of LBSSA around here- me being second only to Abby.

Emily said...

Looks good... way to battle LBSSA. We are plagued with that around here too.

Debbie said...

Ok...now those pb&j sandwiches my daughter eats every stinkin day look bad. Those wraps look delicious! Way to go Ben for making such a good and sophisticated choice!

Julie D. said...

yum! those look awesome!