How Often Do You Cook or Make Meals for Your Kids?

[Shooby]

Do you make them breakfast, lunch and supper? At what age do you make them responsible to make some of their own meals? Yesterday I had a busy day so I told DD she would have to make her own dinner and she made herself some coated pork chops, mashed potatoes and gravy.    How much meal prep and cooking are your kids doing?

[Deleted]

I generally cook at least one meal a day, often at least two actually. My kids could feed themselves for quite some time on their own though. I will say they will likely go through all the precooked/reheat stuff before they bother with real meals though... But they both are perfectly adequate at making a varied menu of meals. They are 13/16, but have been capable of getting themselves a meal for a while now. 

[Shooby]

For some reason, my kids don't like cereal.  I mean, I lived on cereal growing up. And, no I don't have time to make eggs in the morning, sooo figure it out!

[Deleted]

We aren't cereal people either. Since we homeschool though I do cook breakfast about half the time. The rest is split between grabbing something and going right to lunch.

[Shooby]

My younger son is always like " I am not hungry" when I am cooking for everyone else. Then, all of the sudden, Mom can you make me something to eat...", lol.

[marvholly]

My 'kids' are now 35 & 39.

None of us were much on breakfast back then.

Lunch I did make before they went to school but it was often fish sticks, grilled cheese or mac & cheese. I did pack lunches many days when they were in primary grades other days they bought. When they hit jr high they were responsible for packing their own meals.

Dinners I generally cooked EVERY night. Even though I worked I was an early into/out of the office & the first home. kids sometimes helped a bit. DDs learned to cook a bit when oldest was 10 or 11. I was a girl scout leader and we did a luncheon for the mothers as a project leading to a couple badges.

[Shooby]

I don't cook every night. We are all coming and going. School board, basketball practice, volleyball, my other son works, etc. Sometimes ya gotta fend for yourself.

[Shooby]

Do you make your kids cook for the family? I am trying to institute that a bit as well.

[Deleted]

I'm hit or miss with that. I'll do good for a few weeks, making them each choose a night/dinner... Then we'll get caught up in the mess of schedules again and it falls by the wayside.

[The Captain]

Weekdays:

 Breakfast is cereal, bagel, or an occasional pop tart (over my objections).

Lunch is brown bag 4 days, hot school lunch on the 5th day.

Dinner is made 3-4 nights (with leftovers the other weeknights).  Every now and then we will have DD make Matzo ball soup for dinner.  It's easy.

Weekends:

I cook breakfast both mornings (if we don't go out for the occasional treat and if I'm not working).  One day it will be some kind of breakfast casserole/bake and the next traditional eggs, sausage or bacon and toast.

If we go out for dinner on Friday night we'll cook and eat at home together both weekend nights.  DH and I work well together in the kitchen but can't seem to get DD really interested yet.

As a 12yo tween she's much more interested in inhaling eating food than cooking it.

So far she can scramble and baste eggs, do toast/bagels etc.  She can make matzo ball soup from a mix and knows how to heat up frozen potstickers the right way.

I feel like a bit of a failure as a parent...

[Deleted]

I think my kids cook more because they are home more. I could see how with busy schedules it would be difficult to fit it in more often.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

I don't cook breakfast that often, it's usually frozen waffles, toast, cereal or pop tarts.

Lunch is whatever we can scrounge up on weekends. On weekdays I take leftovers from dinner to work. DH either skips lunch or takes a can of soup

On weekdays Gwen eats breakfast and lunch at school.

I cook dinner at least 5-6 nights a week.

Gwen can use the toaster and she can make her own sandwiches. At four she isn't ready yet to be cooking an entire meal by herself.

She cooks with me pretty regularly. I even let her stand at the stove and help me cook which drives DH insane. She has been burnt a couple of times but nothing serious.

She really wants to use a knife and help me prep but I don't feel she is ready to be learning knife skills just yet.

I am toying with the idea of letting her start later this year. I need to find her a really good pairing knife that will fit her hand and then I can let her work on veggies I've already prepped.

Eventually we'll graduate into her cooking an entire meal. I feel that cooking is a basic life skill that everyone should know. I don't want her ending up on Worst Cooks in America someday!

[Deleted]

I really need to get my 12 year old into cooking for the family at least once a week.  He handles his own breakfast and lunch every day.  Because of the 4 year old, I provide dinner every night, but it's not always a home-cooked meal.  It might be a frozen entree or leftovers. 

For breakfast, older son wants Cheerios nearly every morning, it's tough to get younger son to eat breakfast, but he'll occasionally eat cereal.  Sometimes I'll just make french toast sticks and he'll have them and a juice box during the drive to town.  On weekends I'll normally make a bigger breakfast, egg and cheese, sausage, bacon...

Lunch, everyone is at school/work most days, weekends is whatever we find that's easy.  I don't generally make lunch, it's sandwiches and fruit kind of stuff. 

[billisonboard]

My mother did not get up in the mornings. She taught my older sister to get her own cereal. She taught me. We taught younger brother. We were also responsible for doing dishes in the evenings. Mom had a favorite story about how one day, when she made it out of bed, there was only one cereal bowl in the sink. We had decided to use one bowl in shifts to cut down on dishes we had to wash.


MYM

[ArchietheDragon]

I need to get my oldest to start making something.   If a 4 year old can make a sandwich she should be able to, too. 

[Value Buy]

When the kids were young and in school, my wife who worked, fixed breakfast every school day and Saturday. Sunday breakfast was usually out at a restaurant

It was for the boys, more than for me.

We always had a sitdown cooked meal in the evening also.

It was more of a let's talk together and see what EVERYONE is doing, especially the kids.

Unfortunately, as the kids got into the teen years, they learned how to fake out the parents on what was really going on with them

Now retired, usually cereal and a bagel, freshfruit. Bacon and eggs, maybe twice a week, Mcd or Burger King breakfast once a week.

AT least two mugs of coffee and a Danish to start before the cereal.

Sandwiches at lunch

Sitdown cooked meal at the table every night, unless it is take out or delivered, twice a week.

I even find myself in the kitchen with her fixing dinner, but I still have to respect a safe distance from her and let her do it her way.

She gets upset with me asking stupid questions why we do it a specific way.

I tell her I am trying to learn, not, tell her she is doing it wrong. She does not believe me.......

[Angel!]

DD (4) & DS1 (6) can make sandwiches & toast. DS1 can also cook stuff in the microwave like chicken nuggets.  Other than those simple foods, I still make all meals.

DD loves to help me cook.  She helps me peel veggies and mince garlic.  I also give her a non-sharp knife to chop some foods.  Doesn't work for everything, but if I slice onions, she can then chop them into little bits.  And she can cut up fruit for DS2 (1) to make it bite size this way too.  I was letting her crack eggs the other day, but that turned into a bit of a mess.

[swamp]

My kids make sandwiches and chicken nuggets.

[billisonboard]

Jan 20, 2015 10:52:55 GMT -5 swamp said:

My kids make ... chicken nuggets.

From scratch? Pluck the feathers and grind it all up?


Couldn't resist.

[siralynn]

My kid is only 1.5 years old, so I'm still responsible for "making" all of her meals. But I don't do a ton of "cooking" to do it. Mostly involves a lot of microwaving frozen vegetables, cutting fresh fruit, doling out yogurt/cheese/Cheerios, pulling meat off of Costco chickens, etc.

As a family, we're doing better eating at home, but we still don't do a ton of cooking from scratch. We do a lot of meal assembly from other pre-made components - salads, rice+canned beans+cheese+pico de gallo, that kind of thing.

[whoisjohngalt]

I make all the meals.

I think my husband secretly hates me bc he doesn't want the kids to touch too many appliances in our kitchen or allow them to do things unsupervised.  If it wasn't for that, they would be a lot more self sufficient.

[dancinmama]

I have a 27 year old.  One of his Christmas presents was (8) HUGE servings of lasagna that I had batch cooked and frozen for him.  He loved it!!

I don't cook for him on a regular basis, but once in a while when I'm batch cooking for us, I will pass some portions on to him.

[jeep108]

I usually don't cook breakfast or lunch.

My husband, daughter and I taking turns cooking dinner. Tonight is fish tacos my daughter will be cooking.

[Deleted]

I don't cook breakfast (but DH does, several times a week). I can't deal with food in the morning so I won't cook or prepare it (now that they're older) but I buy a variety of breads, cereals, spreads, jams, etc.

I won't cook lunch but I'll provide soup, sandwich fixings, leftovers, ready meals. IMO lunch can be a cold meal. I'm happy to warm up soup or make a sandwich, but I won't actually COOK lunch.

I DO cook dinner 4-5 times a week, generally from scratch. DH cooks 1-2 times a week, only from scratch.

HS here is extremely arduous, and DS3 (16) is usually gone from 7 am to 6 pm (and that's when he doesn't have after school activities). So as much as I'd LOVE to hand over some of the "dinner duties", I don't. DS3 also has a significant commute (45m each way).

My DS1 is 28. The other day, DS3 said, OMG, you've been cooking for kids for 28 years!!! Tell me about it LOL. I told my kids years ago, if I could feed them pellets, I would LOL. 

I did consider asking DD (who recently left home) and DS3 to prepare dinner once a week, but in the end, I didn't. DD was in a hospitality program so she often had to work evenings. DS3 has SUCH long days, and SO much homework, and he's SO helpful in a multitude of other ways (ie mowing the lawn, cleaning the house when our cleaner is off, doing all his own laundry), I didn't have the heart to add anything else to his plate. 

My kids CAN cook, and I think that's the important thing. They definitely knows how, and sometimes they make dinner for us, but it's not on a rota.

Now that it's generally just the 3 of us left at home, I buy more pre-prepared food than I used to, which makes making dinner easier. Sometimes I buy a cooked chicken.

I'm SO sick of cooking dinner most nights, but I'm going to continue doing it for another 1.5 years until DS3 graduates from HS. 

And then I'll buy a stock of pellets and / or cook one or two great meals a week. ;-)

[thyme4change]

I cook breakfast maybe once a month. The kids do toast or English muffin or cereal. I make a pot of steel cut oats and keep it in the fridge. I am the only one who eats it. That are welcome to it, but disinterested. Although I don't cook breakfast, we all eat together every morning.

My kids started making their own lunch in Kindergarten.

They will make themselves snacks, like quesadilla.

Dinner I generally cook most nights. For awhile they had a night that they would cook, but then both of them ended up with crazy schedules, so either I or my hubs cook.

[NastyWoman]

My kids CAN cook, and I think that's the important thing

Meh! My kids couldn't cook water when they left home - we had a live in cook/housekeeper for many, many years while in SE Asia so I didn't cook at that time either (it was way too hot to be cooking). So I taught them to cook after they left home over the phone!  They have actually become quite good cooks over the years with the help of "tech support" aka yours truly . Tech support consisted of coming up with what to prepare form "I have this and that" to getting calls about "what is the next step".  Ask me how much I remember of fixing computer problems on my own... I have my personal tech support for that

[NoNamePerson]

I worked so we could afford to eat out     Cooking was never my thing so I avoided it at all cost much to my son's happiness!!!!

[Apple]

Jan 20, 2015 10:18:09 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

I don't cook breakfast that often, it's usually frozen waffles, toast, cereal or pop tarts.

Lunch is whatever we can scrounge up on weekends. On weekdays I take leftovers from dinner to work. DH either skips lunch or takes a can of soup

On weekdays Gwen eats breakfast and lunch at school.

I cook dinner at least 5-6 nights a week.

Gwen can use the toaster and she can make her own sandwiches. At four she isn't ready yet to be cooking an entire meal by herself.

She cooks with me pretty regularly. I even let her stand at the stove and help me cook which drives DH insane. She has been burnt a couple of times but nothing serious.

She really wants to use a knife and help me prep but I don't feel she is ready to be learning knife skills just yet.

I am toying with the idea of letting her start later this year. I need to find her a really good pairing knife that will fit her hand and then I can let her work on veggies I've already prepped.

Eventually we'll graduate into her cooking an entire meal. I feel that cooking is a basic life skill that everyone should know. I don't want her ending up on Worst Cooks in America someday!

If you want to do a "safe" start, you can make croutons and have her cut slices of bread with a butter knife or one of those plastic kitchen knives (some aren't too sharp, and they'd do the job).  Melt some butter with parm cheese and herbs, drizzle it on top, and toast in the oven on a low heat (I think I used to do it around 200?)

[Apple]

My son is 17, and he's starting too cook for himself (and me) a lot more.  Wednesday, I emailed him a recipe for pulled pork, and he had it in the oven before I was off work.  It had been a crockpot recipe, so I had to add a cooking temperature and let him know what to cook it in (it was too big for the dutch oven, so he was supposed to use the roaster, but, apparently, if you can cram it in there and it just sticks up over the edge a few inches with no over-hang, it "fits"... he had to help me transfer it to the roaster when we got home--it looked like a huge meat muffin!)

If he has to make his own dinner, he doesn't worry about sides, just makes the main dish-- fish, chicken, beef, pork, whatever we have in the fridge.

[Ryan]

My oldest is 6 and is not a big eater.  If he has to make/get it himself, he'd probably rather not eat.  Even in the mornings when he's eating (dry) cereal and wants more, I will tell him to get up and get it and he'll say "Actually, I'm not that hungry".