You know what you could do in a sane society that wouldn’t immediately turn the possibility into child exploitation? Give the kid a shift in the cafeteria on Friday making his waffles. Basic supervision to make sure he’s not getting anybody sick or somehow starting a fire with the waffle iron (pretty hard to do tbh). I let my 7yo make waffles as long as I’m around in case things go wrong or they want me to take over out of boredom.

Let him be “the waffle kid”. If he likes doing, he’ll keep doing it. If he doesn’t, he wasn’t doing it for the waffles in the first place and he has some other need that needs met. This shit is just reinforcing your authority for its own sake