Category: Parenting

Being a mom is no easy feat, but being a working mom can often feel like a herculean task. Balancing a full-time career, caring for children, and ensuring everyone in the family eats well can be challenging. Finding time to cook nutritious meals amidst a hectic schedule may seem impossible, but with some clever meal planning and preparation strategies, it’s entirely achievable.

Here are eight meal prep tips with healthy recipes that will save time and reduce stress while keeping your family well-nourished.

1. Plan Weekly Menus in Advance

Meal planning is crucial to ensure you have a clear roadmap for the week ahead. Without a plan, it’s easy to fall into the trap of ordering takeout or serving processed foods. By dedicating a small portion of your weekend to creating a weekly menu, you’ll save time and effort during the weekdays.

Start by selecting recipes that your family enjoys, and make sure to include a mix of proteins, grains, and vegetables. Once you have your menu, create a shopping list to ensure your pantry is stocked with all the necessary ingredients. Involving the family in planning can also help cater to everyone’s preferences, making mealtime more enjoyable.

2. Utilize Healthy Meal Preparation Techniques

The foundation of healthy eating begins with how food is prepared. Using techniques like grilling, steaming, and baking helps retain nutrients while minimizing unhealthy fats. For example, opting for olive oil instead of butter or deep frying and using an air fryer are excellent alternatives that make meals healthier.

One quick and wholesome meal you can prepare in under 30 minutes is an air fryer chicken legs recipe. The air fryer allows you to enjoy crispy chicken with significantly less oil. Here’s how to do it:

• Ingredients: Chicken legs, olive oil, garlic powder, paprika, salt, and pepper.
• Instructions: Coat the chicken legs with olive oil and spices, then cook them in the air fryer at 400°F for 20-25 minutes. The result is perfectly crispy, protein-rich chicken that’s much healthier than its deep-fried counterpart.

Healthy meal preparation techniques like these can make all the difference in your family’s diet while keeping your cooking time short and efficient.

3. Batch Cooking and Freezing

Batch cooking is a lifesaver for working moms. Preparing large portions of soups, stews, casseroles, and grains allows you to have multiple meals ready to go with minimal extra effort. Once cooked, divide the food into individual portions and freeze them. When you’re pressed for time, simply reheat a portion, and dinner is served.

Consider preparing dishes like vegetable lasagna, chicken stir-fry, or chili, which freeze well and can be easily reheated. Label each container with the contents and the date it was prepared to keep track of your frozen meals.

4. Quick Breakfast Solutions

Breakfast is often neglected in the morning rush, but preparing it in advance can ensure your family starts the day right. Overnight oats, chia seed pudding, and egg muffins are great options that can be made ahead of time.

One quick breakfast recipe you can try is spinach and cheese egg muffins. Simply whisk eggs, mix them with spinach and cheese, and bake in muffin tins for 15-20 minutes. Once cooled, store them in the refrigerator for up to five days. In the morning, reheat an egg muffin or two, pair it with fruit or toast, and you have a balanced meal ready in minutes. A cup of coffee for each adult in the home, and the breakfast is complete. Making use of a coffee bean delivery subscription can also help to make sure that you never run out of coffee, especially during hectic mornings.

5. Invest in Quality Containers

One of the most underrated aspects of meal prepping is having the right storage containers. Investing in durable, leak-proof containers keeps meals fresh and organized, making them ready to grab and go. Opt for glass containers for storing salads, soups, and pre-cooked meals since they’re heat-resistant and won’t retain odors. BPA-free plastic containers are also useful for portioning out snacks and meals.

By using clear containers, you can easily identify the contents without opening them, reducing the time spent searching through the fridge. Divided containers can be especially helpful for pre-portioning complete meals or storing snacks separately. Your organized fridge will inspire you to stick to your meal plan and resist the temptation of ordering out.

6. Prep Ingredients Ahead of Time

Prepping ingredients in advance is a simple yet effective way to save valuable minutes during hectic evenings. Spend some time over the weekend washing, chopping, and storing vegetables and fruits for quick assembly throughout the week.  Store food in ingredient bins for easy access. For instance, wash leafy greens and store them in airtight containers lined with paper towels to keep them fresh for longer.

Marinating meats overnight is another smart move, as it cuts down on cooking time while infusing flavors into your dishes. Pre-cooking grains like quinoa or rice is also useful. Store cooked grains in the fridge for up to five days and use them in stir-fries, salads, or as a side dish.

7. Make Use of Slow Cookers & Instant Pots

Slow cookers and Instant Pots are indispensable tools for busy moms. They can prepare hearty and healthy meals with minimal effort. All you need to do is add your ingredients, set the timer, and let the magic happen.

A slow-cooker chicken chili is an excellent option for cold days. Here’s a simple recipe:

• Ingredients: Chicken breasts, beans, tomatoes, corn, and spices.
• Instructions: Combine chicken breasts, beans, canned tomatoes, corn, and your favorite spices in a slow cooker. Set it to cook on low for 6-8 hours, then shred the chicken and mix it back into the chili. Serve with avocado slices, cheese, or cilantro.

Alternatively, the Instant Pot can significantly speed up your meal prep. Dishes that typically require hours of simmering can be ready in under an hour. You can also use it for steaming vegetables, cooking rice, or making yogurt.

8. Keep a Well-Stocked Pantry

A well-stocked pantry is the backbone of any successful meal plan. Keeping essentials on hand makes it easy to whip up quick, healthy meals without a last-minute dash to the grocery store. Some pantry staples to consider include:

• Canned beans and chickpeas for salads, stews, and chili.
• Whole grains like quinoa, brown rice, and couscous.
• Spices and herbs to add flavor to any dish.
• Canned tomatoes for soups, pasta sauces, and casseroles.
• Healthy oils like olive oil and coconut oil.

Having these ingredients readily available enables you to mix and match them with fresh produce and proteins, giving you a versatile and adaptable meal plan.

Conclusion

Meal prepping is an invaluable tool for working moms seeking to balance their career, family, and health goals. By incorporating these practical tips, you can simplify your weekly cooking routine while ensuring your family enjoys nutritious, delicious meals. With a bit of organization and planning, you’ll find that meal prepping not only saves time and reduces stress but also brings joy back to the kitchen. Embrace these strategies, and let meal prepping become a source of ease and empowerment in your busy life.

Read about 10 healthy and easy preschool lunch ideas your kids will love.
Learn how to talk to kids about junk food marketing.

Whether you’re relocating across the state or the country, moving safely is the key, especially if you have kids. You’ll need to research schools, ensure that the area is safe for everyone in the family, and plan your move so that everything goes along seamlessly.

Having so many moving pieces to consider at once can be a lot to handle. However, with a solid strategy, you can make the move a success.  This comprehensive guide provides advice on how to be safe and avoid stress when relocating your family.

Research Safe Places for Your Kids

As a parent, one of the first steps in moving safely is to research the city where you’ll be living to ensure that it’s safe and suitable for your children’s needs. Start by looking up crime statistics in the area and comparing them to other nearby areas to find the best place.

If your kids are still in school, look into potential school districts, so you’re sure they’re suitable for them during this stage in their lives. When considering school districts, it’s essential to research academic performance, which you can determine by looking up graduation rates and proficiency levels in various subjects, like reading and math. You should also look up each school and learn if it fits your core values. Finally, research the district’s safety measures. Do they have disciplinary policies and emergency protocols in place? Verify that they do.

Next, consider whether this neighborhood has safe areas for young kids to play. It’s good to have a place where children can unwind. Plus, time spent on the playground is good for physical health and helps them learn to communicate with others.

You should look up several factors when choosing a neighborhood with safe play areas, including traffic flow. Unfortunately, children make up a portion of pedestrian traffic facilities, so research the statistics in the area. Also, if you’re able to visit the city before you move, ensure that there are sidewalks, lower speed limits, and speed bumps on the street. You’re also likely to find a safer and more suitable place for your kids if there are more children in the new neighborhood. An area full of families with kids is more prone to have extra services and more play areas from which to choose.

Make Plans and Talk to Your Kids About Moving Safely

The last thing you want to do when your goal is moving safely with kids is to surprise them at the last moment with the news that you’re all leaving. Many young kids and teens likely have friends they’ve grown close to, schoolwork they’re excited about, and maybe even a part-time job to consider. You don’t want to make the process more complicated or dramatic.

That’s why it’s essential that you sit down and communicate with your children. Tell them why you’re moving and when you plan to depart, and then ask them how they feel. You may be able to ease their concerns and help them feel better about the whole idea. They’ll also know that it’s time to say their goodbyes and get a bit of closure.

You’ll also want to get your kids involved when completing your pre-move checklist, especially when heading across the country. That starts by determining a move date. If possible, push it out far enough so that you and the kids can manage your affairs. You may need to give your job notice, and your teens may need to do the same. You also need to inform their school and handle other miscellaneous tasks.

Another big step on your pre-move checklist is to start packing. If you’ve lived in your current home for a long time, you and the kids likely have many belongings to sort through. Allow the kids to be a part of the process, especially regarding their rooms. Everyone should separate items by what they want to keep, what’s trash, and what can be donated. If your kids have large collections of video games, guitars, or something else that takes up a lot of space, this may also be a good time to teach them about the value of self-storage.

Remember Mental and Physical Health

Keeping your kids safe and happy during the move is key, so consider their mental health. This transition is likely weighing on their minds. So, plan out the move so you’re not always rushing and that there are breaks to give you and the kids a chance to mentally refresh. A good idea is to get your kids a journal so they can write down their thoughts when they’re stressed and make a scrapbook of sorts to remember the experience. Once you get to the new home, continue to help your kids cope by getting them involved. Allow them to paint their room or choose the color and design.

Next, consider your kids’ physical health, especially when setting things up in the new house. If you have young kids at home, be careful when moving potentially dangerous substances, like medication, laundry detergent packets, and cleaning products. To protect yourself and kids of all ages, make it a point to prevent furniture tip-overs. Secure all large free-standing objects with mounts, braces, or wall straps and reduce the chances of a fall.

Finally, try not to take on too much at once. It may be tempting to have you and the kids do all of the heavy lifting and moving, but you need to stay safe. Hire movers to help with the load, and it will be easier for everyone.

Moving is a Lifelong Journey

As children mature and embark on new adventures, such as students moving to attend college, acquired skills that ensure safe and efficient relocations can be a great asset. Learning how to pack belongings securely, understanding transportation options, and familiarizing themselves with new environments are important steps in the process.

A big move can be tough on an individual or an entire family if you let it.  With proper planning and consistent communication, it can become easier for everyone. Keeping kids of all ages involved can turn a daunting experience into a positive transition. Learn more about how to prepare your kids for a move.  Check out this helpful infographic:

How-to-Prepare-Your-Kids-For-A-Move
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About the Author
Katie Brenneman is a passionate writer specializing in education, mental health, family lifestyle and online safety. When she isn’t writing, you can find her with her nose buried in a book or hiking with her dog, Charlie. You can follow her on Twitter.

Everyone, including people who are yet to have children, knows that parenting isn’t easy. Never has been, probably never will be. It’s stressful and time-consuming, but above all else, it’s an extremely responsible job. And, for the most part, parents do take (or at least try to take) responsibility for the upbringing of their children.

However, with each passing year and decade, life tends to become more and more stressful, despite the many comforts that developments in technology bring us.

To enhance their knowledge and understanding of this topic, parents can consider enrolling in a positive parenting program that offers insights and strategies for managing screen time for young children effectively. These programs provide valuable guidance on fostering healthy digital habits and maintaining a balanced approach to technology within the family dynamic.

And in such a stressful day-to-day, it’s easy to see how many young parents nowadays seem to struggle. Young and small children get easily bored, lack the ability to keep their attention focused on something for more than a couple of minutes, and constantly demand attention. But when you are overwhelmed with other tasks and have several additional responsibilities and things to attend to, it becomes next to impossible to devote your entire attention and energy to a toddler, whose own energy never seems to run out.

Balancing Control and Technology

All these factors combined have led to a common trend in recent years, where parents would simply opt to put a tablet or a smartphone in the little hands of their toddlers. As we all know too well, the little gadgets have this weird property, where they can turn 10 minutes into two hours without us noticing. Apparently, this also works on young children and toddlers, despite their attention being no longer than a couple of minutes.

This shouldn’t actually come as a surprise, considering most of the content we consume nowadays is short-form and perfect for someone with a toddler’s attention span. However, while young and small children can be forgiven for not being able to stay focused for too long, this is something that they are supposed to grow out of. By giving them a source of endless short-form entertainment, you are only reinforcing their lack of attention span, which can have severe negative effects on their cognitive abilities in the long run. And this is only one of the many problems associated with letting your children be raised by a screen, that we’ll talk about in the next lines.

The Negative Impacts that Screens Have on Young and Small Children

We already talked about the problem with the impeded development of a longer attention span caused by letting your toddlers use smartphones and tablets. However, while I think this is one of the biggest problems, it only scratches the surface of the mountain of problems that can come from such a parenting strategy.

Here are some of the other more serious issues that people need to consider before putting one of their adult gadgets in the hands of an impressionable child.

Eye Strain

Starting with one of the more obvious problems often associated with excessive exposure to screens, eye strain is definitely something you can expect to occur if your child is spending too much time on their tablet, smartphone, or computer. And since we are talking about young children whose bodies are undergoing rapid development, allowing their eyes to constantly be under the stress caused by a digital screen can lead to all kinds of vision and eye-related problems in the long run.

Sleeping Problems

Toddlers and young children are generally known to often have a hard time falling asleep or staying asleep for too long. This is, in fact, one of the main stresses of parenting, because if the toddler is awake, so must be the parents. And as far as sleep is concerned, overexposure to screens tends to make matters a lot worse. You see, the content that appears on the screen of a phone or a tablet greatly stimulates the hyper-sensitive nervous system of a toddler, which means that there’s even less chance of them falling asleep after having been in front of a screen. This is why it’s a particularly bad idea to let them use something with a screen when it starts getting time for bed, as this is a sure recipe for a long and sleepless night for both of you.

Digital Disconnection

The younger a child is, the more impressionable it is, which means that its mind will be more affected by what the child gets exposed to. This is also why people say that the first seven years play the biggest role in a person’s mental development. However, if a child spends more time being exposed to the digital world than to reality, this can eventually result in the child suffering from the so-called “digital disconnection”. In other words, the child will have difficulty telling apart the real world from the virtual world and will think that everything they see on the screen is something that applies to real life. The results from this can be pretty unpleasant, as the child won’t know how to behave or act and will start becoming more and more confused as it begins to grow up and experience more of the real world.

Behavioral Issues

Excessive use of smartphones, tablets, or computers is also prone to causing behavioral problems in young children. The child becomes more likely to oppose you, especially when you try to separate it from its favorite digital toy. Aggression and irritability are also likely results of overexposure to screens. Since the smartphone/tablet has become your main method of regulating the mood of your toddler or young child, attempting any other strategy is bound to be faced with intense opposition. All of this is without getting into the specific influence that different types of content available on the Internet can have on a child.

Addiction

Lastly, I want to talk about an issue that not many people have when handing over a smartphone to their toddler, so that they could be left alone for an hour or two, and that is the fact that screens are addictive. Many studies over the years have concluded that smartphones can affect the brain in the same way as actual drugs. They can make a person addicted to them to the point where getting separated from the device can have symptoms similar to abstinence. Consider that these are effects often seen in grown adults, who are supposed to have at least some form of impulse control. And if this is what can happen to an adult person as the result of excessive smartphone use, then what’s left for a young child, or worse yet, a toddler?

Final Notes

Obviously, it’s very tempting to get a moment of peace from your screaming toddler, who’s constantly throwing tantrums if you don’t give them every second of your attention (and sometimes, even if you do). However, parenting isn’t supposed to be easy, and as overwhelming as it may be sometimes, it’s still the parents’ responsibility to do their best with the upbringing of their children. Taking the easy way out and letting them be raised by colorful images or other people that appear on a plastic screen is the exact opposite of what a parent should do and, hopefully, this post has helped to remind people of this fact.

Packed lunches are often considered healthier than foods offered in the school cafeteria. However, less than 2% of packed school lunches meet the key healthy standards. As a parent, ensuring your kids eat well-balanced meals is essential for their growth and development.

With the right recipes, you can avoid deficiencies below nutritional standards and ensure your loved one gets the nutrients they need while enjoying their meals. If you’re looking for some inspiration for healthy and easy preschool lunch ideas, you’ve come to the right place! Below are 10 options that your kids are sure to love.

1. Nut Butter and Banana Roll-Ups

Create a delicious variation of the classic sandwich by making these roll-ups. Spread some nut butter on a tortilla, place sliced bananas on top, and roll everything up. Then, cut the rolled-up tortilla into smaller pieces for a tasty snack.

2. Fruit Skewers with Yogurt Dip

Is your kid having trouble eating fruits?

This is the ideal picky kid’s meal. Skewer fresh fruit like grapes, melon cubes, and strawberries. Serve the fruits with a side of plain Greek yogurt for dipping.

3. Pasta Salad

If you have a busy morning, you can whip up pasta with diced vegetables, cheese, and a light vinaigrette dressing. You can make it ahead of time for added convenience. Serve chilled as one of your cold lunch options for warmer days.

4. Colorful Veggie Wraps

Create vibrant veggie wraps using whole-grain tortillas. Fill the tortillas with a variety of colorful vegetables like lettuce, bell peppers, carrots, and cucumbers.

For extra flavor, add a spread of cream cheese. You can also include this meal among your healthy children’s dinner options.

5. Yogurt Parfait

Layer vanilla yogurt with granola and fresh berries in a jar for a tasty and nutritious treat. You can also add a drizzle of honey or maple syrup for extra sweetness. Additionally, you can sneak in some organic baby meals in the yogurt.

6. Homemade Chicken Nuggets

For a tasty preschool treat, coat bite-sized pieces of chicken in whole wheat breadcrumbs and bake them until crispy. Serve with a side of yogurt-based dipping sauce or ketchup.

7. Mini Pita Pizzas

To make mini pita pizzas, top whole grain pitas with tomato sauce, shredded cheese, and your kid’s favorite toppings. These may include olives, diced bell peppers, and mushrooms. Once done, bake until the cheese melts.

8. Fruit Kabobs

Thread chunks of fresh fruit onto skewers to create fun and colorful fruit kabobs. To make it fun for your kid, mix and match fruits like melon, strawberries, pineapples, and grapes.

9. Mini Sandwich Skewers

Strand mini kids sandwiches made with whole grain bread, cheese, and deli meat onto skewers. For a balanced meal, pair it with a side of organic lunch chips.

10. Ants on a Log

Fill celery sticks with peanut butter or cream cheese and topped with raisins. This snack can be a great source of fiber and healthy fats for your kid.

Try Out These Preschool Lunch Ideas for Fun and Healthy Meals

Incorporating these preschool lunch ideas into your child’s meal rotation can help ensure they receive the nutrients they need to flourish. Remember to involve your children in meal preparation and find ways to make it fun.