The Perfect School Lunch for an ADHD Child

[swmom]

I'm trying to develop some healthier lunches for my child to take to school with her. Does anyone have suggestions of things they send with their ADHD kids to school that have plenty of the right foods, vitamins, etc. to help them with focusing(high protein items), etc.
After 10 years of pb&j sandwiches, she is FINALLY ready to try something new!

[rosyred45]

Sometimes in lew of traditional sandwiches, my kids make cracker sandwiches. Try cream cheese, peanut butter, regular cheese, anything that you normally snack on around the house.

I let my kids pack their own lunches. As long as I give approval for stuff they are fine. Plus, you know they are going to eat it, they won't pack something they don't like.

Peanuts is another good one, just thought of it, as long as there isn't any allergic reaction to it.

We usually don't do any sugary snack at all, unless I made cookies of some sort.

Hope that helps s little

[catatonic]

There's not a thing in the world wrong with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! To get the sugar content down and the protein content up though, you might want to try egg salad, chicken salad, or tuna salad sandwiches. Those are all popular with my kids. So is plain old cheese between two slices of bread...no mayo, no mustard, just the cheese Ma'am.

You can also eliminate the bread entirely and just send them with a bowl of chicken salad or tuna salad. I also boil chicken breasts, cut them in cubes, and send a bag of chicken cubes and a little bowl of ranch dressing for dipping. I'll buy a 1/2 inch thick slice of ham at the deli and cut it in cubes, and send ham cubes and cheese cubes with little stick pretzels to stab and eat them with. (That one is very popular!)

My boy does much better during the afternoons if he's had LOTS of protein at lunch. So I will give him plain tuna salad, provide a cheese stick or two, a baggie full of cashews or peanuts, and a high-protein energy bar (which I make with protein powder and peanut butter). I just absolutely stuff him with protein. I'll even send him with a box drink of soy milk (chocolate, carob or vanilla, since the plain is absolutely GROSS).

If you want to make it easier, buy pre-packaged single serving nuts and purchase commercial energy bars. You can buy tuna salad in a pouch. And it's very easy to open canned chicken and make salad with it. You can even buy cheese already cubed!

What also makes it much easier for me is to make lunch box food ahead of time on the weekend. I'll make sure I have 20 deserts (enough for all 4 kids) all baggied-up. I'll buy a couple pounds of nuts and put them in snack-size baggies I can just grab and pop in the lunch boxes. I'll make a bunch of chicken salad and put a half dozen sandwiches in the freezer (they thaw by lunch time). This makes it easier to get 4 kids to 4 different schools (high school, middle school, elementary, and mother's day out pre-school one morning a week) on time.

[rosyred45]

alright, Catatonic, spill on the protein shake/peanut butter recipie.

Mikey does alot better with more protein too. We used to go and buy raw peanuts and roast them ourselves, we'll be doing that again when school starts. I'll just have to think about having him shell them at home. He got yelled at for making a mess with the shells I didn't think they would mind, since it's not like you smear it anywhere

I'm going to have to remember the freezer trick, never thought about that one.

Thanks

[DenverSarah]

OHHH I love that ham n cheese with a toothpick idea. My son LOVES to poke stuff!

Something else I do is get good n healthy all natural hot dogs and send them cut up. Hard boiled eggs (he never eats the yolk). Hummus rolled with a tortilla. Celery stuffed with cream cheese or PB. Fritos with refried beans for dipping. That's about it.

[catatonic]

I like the hummus idea. I'll have to see if the kids will eat it. My 2 littler ones won't eat the egg yolk either. Why is that?

My kids love protein shakes for breakfast, and so do I because they're WAY faster than cooking something. Just dump into a blender: a carton of vanilla yogurt, a banana, a big gob of peanut butter (maybe 1/3 cup), 1/4 cup of protein powder (either soy or whey protein), a cup of vanilla soy milk (use rice milk if you avoid soy), about 1/2 cup frozen juice concentrate (we use pineapple) or a handful of ice cubes.

Our protein shakes change every couple of weeks as the kids get tired of the flavor. Just make it up as you go along. As long as it is sweet the kids will drink it, and as long as it has plenty of protein then I'd classify it as a perfectly adequate breakfast. If you really want the kids crammed with protein, give them a shake with a hamburger patty.

[Linda]

Regarding the egg yolk....I can't eat them because they make me sick to my stomach....just a thought.

[rosyred45]

That's what salt and pepper are for Linda, I couldn't eat them with out it

[Linda]

No....I get physically sick!!!!

[rosyred45]

The smell makes me nauseus----how ever you spell it...yeah, sick to my stomach, but that's why I use the salt and pepper.

What if it's like a scrambled egg? all mixed up?

[Linda]

I can't eat eggs at all and I love them!I used to eat them when I was a kid...but no more.

[rosyred45]

huh, that's weird.

[CalebsMom]

What do you do for a child that seems to like NOT EATING....lol

I've been having my son make his own lunch because I figure he'll eat it he made what he wanted. Yesterday he took a ham sandwich with a granola bar and $.25 for milk. He came home with a TINY bite from the sandwich. I'm like WTHeck is up with that.

[lllex]

I know exactly what you mean! My daughter is going through that phase, she brings home her lunch and it looks like all of it is still there except for maybe one bite. At least she hasn't thought of throwing the food away so I wouldn't nag her about not eating ;D

Laura

[rosyred45]

I found out that Mikey's friends were supplying him with his "lunch" last year.

He would trade his pineapple chunks for rice krispie treats

Make sure to ask what they had to eat. Mikey wasn't sneaky, but now that I hear him counting on the step------he's trying to get over on me still----he's waiting for bedtime.

I told him to count to 111 ;DDang and he's doing it.