#happylife: When should you stop making your kids’ lunches?
With summer’s end in sight, you may be dreading (or anxiously awaiting) the back to school transition.
For many parents, that transition comes with once again making lunches for the kids to take to school. But when should you stop doing it for them?
A new Good Housekeeping article cites a doctor who says your kids should make their own lunches starting in third grade.
Damon Korb, M.D., a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, wrote a book called Raising an Organized Child, in which he outlines five steps to encourage independence in children.
“We want to create independent thinkers and problem-solvers, so they can be ready for the real world. If we do everything for them, they never get there,” Dr. Korb writes.
He suggests kids start being responsible for making their own lunches around third grade. Althought you might have to guide them at first — show them that they need to have a balanced lunch, take them through where to find the ingredients, etc — Dr. Korb claims kids can master the task fairly easily, if you let them.
Dr. Korb also suggests by age eight and nine your kids should be taking baths and following their homework instructions on their own. By 10 and 12, he suggests they can be packing for a trip by themselves.
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