Get a shallow bento box for braces lunches

A shallow bento-style lunch box is the best thing for a kid with braces because it keeps portions small and soft food reachable. Deep, single-compartment containers are the enemy here.

Braces kids eat soft stuff — yogurt, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, soup, soft fruit — and that gets gross fast when it’s all piled in one deep tub. A bento with three or four shallow compartments keeps everything separate and keeps portions automatic. No wrestling with a giant container to get the last bite of applesauce off the bottom.

The Bentgo Kids is the obvious pick. It’s shallow by design, the latch is easy for small hands, the compartments are portion-sized, and the whole thing goes in the dishwasher. If you want to pack something warm like soup or pasta in a thermos, the OmieBox does that — it’s a bento with an insulated jar built into the middle, but it’s a little deeper, so weigh that tradeoff.

What to avoid: anything with one big deep compartment, dry snacks mixed with wet food, and containers that require two hands and a prayer to open. School lunch is already stressful enough when your mouth hurts.

The soft-food phase doesn’t last forever, but the right box makes the whole year easier.