How to Get Kids to Eat Their Lunch
Help! My child won’t eat lunch at school!
Are your kids lunchboxes coming home from school hardly touched?
I’m here to help you!
I know what it’s like to open that lunchbox at the end of the day and find that your kiddo has hardly eaten anything all day. It’s so frustrating and sad - we want our kids to have good nutrition and have lots of energy to have fun and learn all day. But if they are not eating their lunch then it’s no wonder they are coming home so tired and hangry.
Why is my kid not eating their lunch?
The first thing we need to do if we want our kids to eat their lunch is to get a very solid understanding of why they aren’t eating it in the first place.
So let’s dig into the most common reasons why I think kids don’t eat their lunch at school. I’ll remind you that I’m not a nutritionist or dietician or a doctor. I am a mom with a LOT of experience packing school lunches. So my advice to you is not going to be professional advice, it’s mom to mom advice. In the article below I do mention a few situations where I think you might need to seek professional advice.
Some of these reasons have easy fixes, some of these are some hard truths you’re going to have to think about, and some are things you might need to get extra help with. But regardless, they are all challenges that can be addressed and you can get your kids eating their lunch.
Ok, so here are the most common reasons why I think kids don’t eat their lunch at school.
Top five reasons kids don’t eat their lunch at school.
They don’t have enough time to eat.
They aren’t able to eat independently.
They are too overwhelmed to eat.
They don’t know how to sit and eat.
They don’t like the food.
Ok so let’s get into these reasons.
1: They don’t have enough time to eat.
Spoiler: I think this one is a myth, or at least it’s not nearly as bad as you might think.
One of the biggest complaints I have heard from parents is that kids today, in US schools especially, don’t have enough time to eat. Lunch periods are too short, and then they have to line up to get to lunch, maybe longer if they are lining up again to get milk, it takes time to get seated, it takes time to get their lunches opened. After all that maybe they just have a few minutes to eat.
I’ll be honest and tell you I actually think this isn’t as much of a problem as you think it is.
I believe that your kid is telling you they ran out of time to eat it, but most of the time I think they’re pulling one over one you. I spent a lot of time in the lunchroom at my kids’ elementary school and I’ve watched a lot of kids at lunch time, and I can tell you with a high level of confidence that most of the time it simply isn’t true that they ran out of time.
Your kid isn’t going to tell you that they spent the whole lunch period messing around, getting up, talking, playing, throwing things... They’re going to tell you they didn’t have time to eat.
But after many hours of watching elementary age kids at lunch time, I can tell you that most of these kids are not even trying to eat their lunch in the time they have available. They spend maybe a minute or two looking at and picking at their food, they decide it’s not interesting and they move on, and they spend remaining time just messing around and waiting for the recess bell to ring.
So in my opinion the issue isn’t actually time. That said, I do have tips for ways you can pack foods that young kids can eat faster if that is really what they need.
The rest of the reasons are the ones that I think are the real reasons why your kids aren’t eating their lunch.
2: They aren’t able to eat it independently.
There’s a lot involved in this and it really depends on the kid, but there are things you can do to help. But often the reason is that you’ve sent them with a lunch that they need help to eat, and in a busy overcrowded lunch room it’s hard to get that help.
It may be that foods are in packages they can’t open and they have to wait for the lunchroom monitor to come around with the scissors to cut something open for them. It may be that the foods are in containers with lids they can’t get off. I’ve seen both of these issues more times than I can count - little kids having to wait and wait to get help opening their lunch, and by the time it’s open the lunch period is basically over. Some kids will try for a few seconds to open something and if they can’t get it open they just move on and don’t bother asking for help. And let’s not even get started about the quantities of totally unopened packages of food that get thrown in the trash.
Sometimes the problem is also that things are hard to eat. The items are too big, they aren’t cut into bites, sandwiches are too big, oranges aren’t peeled, apples aren’t cut.
Parents are sending a lot of items for lunch that aren’t actually very easy to eat. This is especially true for the littlest kids in the lower grades, but it’s also really common with kids of any age who might struggle with their motor skills a bit. We often don’t think about the motor skills required to open things.
I’ve got lots of tips that can help you solve this problem.
3: They are too overwhelmed to eat.
Food is a sensory experience - tastes and textures and smells and colors. And an elementary lunchroom is a sensory experience - crowds bumping and touching, lots of loud voices, and the sounds of packages and munching and crunching.
Some kids (and some adults) can’t handle crowd + touching + noise + food. It’s too many sensory things combined together and it becomes total sensory overload and they freeze up.
If this is the case for your kiddo, then you need to figure out how to reduce some of the sensory input. Sometimes you can do that really easily with some simple tricks to make the food easier and less overwhelming, and I talk more about that in the next post in this series. Sometimes there are easy solutions like noise protecting headphones if the biggest issue is just the noise.
Or you may need to look into accommodations that allow them to eat their lunch in a less crowded and quieter space, or have them sit with kids that are quieter, or some other solutions that reduce whatever is overwhelming them so they can eat.
You might need to talk to your doctor about a sensory diagnosis, and talk to the school about accommodations.
The bottom line is if your child has sensory challenges that are severe enough that they are affecting their ability to eat, that can’t be solved with simple accommodations like headphones, then they need support. This kind of support is available but you will have to work for it.
4: Kids don’t know how to sit and eat.
Sorry parents, but sometimes the problem is that you have not set your kid up for success.
If you aren’t requiring your kiddo to sit at the table at home to eat their meal and not get up until they are truly finished, then they aren’t going to be able to do this at school. I have observed so many kids who are being asked to sit at a table at school to eat and it’s clearly not something they know how to do. It’s quite obvious and easy to see which kids are taught at home to sit at a table during meal time and which kids are not.
It is your job as a parent to prepare your child for school, and teaching them how to sit and eat is part of it. I realize that there are kids with different neurology and some things are more challenging (I have a few of these neurodivergent kids so I get it), but most of these kids can still be taught to sit and eat, it just takes more effort and dedication.
If your kiddo’s cognitive, sensory, neurology, etc. challenges are so severe that they really aren’t able to sit still and eat then you need to work with your doctor to get them an appropriate diagnosis, and you need to be working with the school to get accommodations in place that allow them to eat their lunch in a way that works for them. But if that’s not the case, then you need to teach them at home to sit still at a table and eat their meal.
5: They just don’t like the food.
Often lunch comes home uneaten for the more complicated reasons like I’ve discussed above. But the hard truth is that most often the reason they aren’t eating their lunch is because they just don’t want to eat what you are packing.
Once you’ve ruled out any of the other reasons why your kiddo isn’t eating their lunch, if the problem really comes down to it being about the lunch itself, this is where I can really help you! Tips about how to plan, prepare, and present the food in the school lunch is where I’ve got you covered.
So there you have it, those are the top reasons why your child isn’t eating their lunch.
I know a lot of parents aren’t able to do get away from work during the day, but if you are able to I strongly recommend you spend a little time in your child’s school lunchroom so you can see for yourself what the environment is like and how your kid responds to it. Just a few lunch visits can give you really valuable insights as to what the challenges are and will really help you work with your child, and the school if necessary, to make sure they are getting their lunchtime needs met. (I have heard from some parents whose schools don’t allow this, but honestly I would have a very hard time entrusting my child to a school that didn’t allow parents to drop in and visit. That just makes me think they have something to hide.)
Now that we’ve got some understanding about why the lunch isn’t getting eaten, let’s get into some ways you can fix this.
As I mentioned above, if the reason is a more serious one around sensory needs and/or an actual inability to sit and eat in a noisy crowded space, then you have some homework to do and may need to talk to your doctor and/or the school to get some accommodations.
But if the issue is the lunch itself, whether it’s too hard for them to eat in the amount of time they have, or it’s just not appealing enough for them to bother, I’ve got loads of tips for you.
Head on over to the next post in this series for my best tips for how to pack a lunch your kids will want to eat - from my 15+ years of experience packing lunches for my own kids.
