How to Motivate Your Kids to Make Their Own Lunches

Reward the Result

When your kids produce a finished product, reward them for completing the project.

1. Pay them money.

After all, they have just made dinner for the family. If you took your family to a restaurant, you would pay the chef and servers. How much more fun to pay your own kids to reward their effort.

2. Do the dishes. If they cook, you take clean up duty!

This was exactly how we started cooking. When I realized my boys did not know how to cook a meal from start to finish, I created quick lessons to bring them up to speed. In my membership Teach Your Kids to Cook, we start with the basics. The videos (starring my two sons cooking) are short and packed with all the information you need to master a technique. There are also printable technique and recipe cards covering that month's focus. To check out the membership click here.

3. Treat them to a weekly adventure. You could go to a park, visit a splash pad, take a hike, go see a movie. My teenagers love to go to Sonic happy hour for a Chocolate Dr. Pepper or a Peach Iced Tea. It doesn’t have to be big or cost a lot of money. The anticipation is part of the thrill.

4. Reward them with screen time or staying up past their bedtime. If neither of these examples apply to your kids, think about things you normally limit. Now is the time to be generous with something you normally do not allow.

Gamify the Cooking Experience

Making a game of an ordinary task makes it seem so much more exciting! Create a choose your own adventure meal. Decide on something you will make together and let your child choose which direction to take the ingredients. If you’re making macaroni and cheese: choose a different pasta shape, a new type of cheese, and a crunchy topping.

Let your kids become a food detective. Have them interview grandparents about a recipe that is part of your family’s food story and recreate the dish. Or start your own pretend cooking show. My kids loved watching unboxing videos on YouTube when they were younger. How fun would it be to create an unboxing video with ingredients for a meal?