I need to get better at meal planning. Well, WE need to get better at meal planning, it definitely doesn't have to be just my job. We have two kids (7 & 10), but luckily neither is really picky.
Aside on pickiness- The younger one was a tad picky up until age 5-6 or so, but the older one would always eat anything. I am not sure, but I suspect part of their willingness to eat a variety of foods is because we never made special kid food, if they didn't like it, too bad, I guess they were just hungry until the next meal. If we ever ate out, they'd eat off our plates, we didn't order kids meals. If I ever make them something "kid-like," say, a box of Annie's mac and cheese, I add some kind of veggie to it so it is half (or less) pasta, half (or more) veggies, make a roux and add extra milk to amp up the creaminess, add a dash of cayenne and a squirt of mustard to the mix, then serve it with a sprinkle of smoked paprika. These additions up the nutritional value and increase exposure to complex flavors. Bonus, I think it is much tastier than the box directions, too.
We eat vegetarian/pescatarian most of the time, I would say meals with meat are once a week. I had been vegetarian for 20+ years, and the kids were vegetarian until age 5 or so. Once they decided to start eating meat, it made me the only vegetarian, and I just started to feel rather restricted being the only one.
We mostly cook stuff from scratch, but occasionally have some sort of convenience food (frozen dumplings, refrigerated filled pasta, frozen battered fish).
The only meal planning win we have is that for the last 5-6 weeks, I've been doing a crockpot meal on thursdays. I'd love to have a loose outline for every week, like, mexican mondays, crock pot thursdays, etc. It helps to have it narrowed down to a group of options when making choices.