Raising Mentally Strong Kids by Letting them Pack Their Own Lunch

One of the biggest challenges of raising mentally strong kids is that for the process to work, they need to start taking ownership of small aspects of their life.  They can’t have parents who just take charge of everything and are in constant care taking mode.  This is where school lunches come in because it’s a super easy item to hand off and help kids to own from the grocery shopping to packing up each morning.

If kids know they own it, they will step up.

This is the biggest thing for the school lunch hand off.  Parents need to really let them own it and be ready for some potential for a few less-than-ideal lunches.  The huge thing is that if a child detects or experiences that they can hand this back then they will.  This is just human nature and doesn’t mean they are lazy.  If the kids can read that parents are committed and its been clearly communicated, then they will step in and own it.

For our family, this partly happened because I’ve always worked really early and so my wife was solo getting the kids ready for school.  Our kids walk to school and so the morning routine has always been pretty independent.  The funny thing was that we noticed how much the kids would flex the whining in other aspects of life, but the morning lunch routine had just become the norm and so they didn’t fight it at all.

Bringing the Kids into the Shopping Trip

It’s pretty typical that I drag my kids along with me to the store on Sundays when we need to reload for the week.  I tell them that they have to come to make sure that we have what they need for lunch.  We look at the fridge together beforehand, but they are responsible making sure we grab what they need to complete their lunches for the week.

It is good for kids to pull items off the shelf and see the prices for the items.  This helps them start of slowly understand the cost of things and can also spark good conversation if Dad makes them put back a certain item because its twice the price of something that is nearly identical.

A side note on this is that now that my kids are in middle school, this is a cheap trick to get a little extra time with them.  From experience they know that I will forget what they need at the store and so they are willing to come with me to make sure we get it.  The little bits of conversation along the way are a great bonus.

Making the morning routine much more manageable

A big thing that has helped with this lunch routine is that it takes the edge off the mornings getting ready for school.  As I mentioned prior, I’m normally wake the kids up as I head out the door and so it provides one less thing for my wife to worry about as she still helps them get going each morning.

Our lives are plenty busy and so this one little thing to take the edge off each morning is more than welcome.

 If you like this article, check out two more on this topic:

Raising Mentally Strong Kids by Involving them in Home Improvement

Raising Mentally Strong Kids by Helping them Understand the budget