To think these are typical meal times/bed times in the UK

Yes OP, your eating times are pretty standard if you have smaller children - 3 meals split between the day - slipping supper in at about 19.00 before bed.

I like structure, our DS behaves better with structure and knowing when things are happening and needs a good 10 hours kip at least, so bed at 19.30/20.00.

I know most my mum friends stick to them times, one doesn't have any set times and just lets her DD decide, I find that bizzare as she can miss lunch completely but them have tea 20 mins before bed. But it's her house her rules, each to their own.

I find it bizarre when people act shocked at something that is commonly a norm.

I think your timings are a bit stingy on the later side. Hotels usually serve breakfast 7:30-9. 6 unusually early. And a lot of adults working late will be eating at 8:30/9 by the time they've cooked something.

I'd say 7-9 for breakfast

12-2 for lunch

6-9 for dinner

Adult bed-time between 9 and 1. (I go to bed about 12:30 and get up at 6:30. Would be up at 3 am if I went to bed at 9! But some people need more sleep.)
Kids bed-time at 7-8 seems right.

I think your times are quite normal for the UK. We do everything quite early as I’m in the gym at 5:30 and the kids exercise before school most days too. So we eat no later than 7 as I’m up at 4:15. It just depends how your household works.

So if a friend invited you for lunch at 1.30 and you hadn't had breakfast you couldn't manage a small lunch Surely if a friend invited you wouldn't you plan ahead and eat less prior to the lunch date?

Oh she’d hate me!!

I get up at 5, breakfast 7, lunch 10/11, dinner 4/5, bed by 8/9.

29, two little kids (5 and 2) and 16 weeks pregnant.

How does these work if parents work full time? My work finishes at 6, I'm home around 7. So I wont see my kid at all? Also, at weekends, if he goes to bed early he is up at 6!! no thank you. Also, in summer its still light at 7 - to me, its so weird to make kids go to sleep while its still daytime.

Good old Soviet routine here - lunch at 1-2 (when I was growing up that would be "dinner", main meal of the day), supper at 6-7 and bed at 9 for kids, 10 earliest for adults. Up at 7-8.

I still remember vividly the the tune for the evening news at 9, our household's signal for me to be in bed, or else!!

Eating before you go to bed is quite unhealthy IMO.

Like many things, it suits some people better than others.

I rarely eat breakfast, lunch/dinner (our main meal) is 12.30-ish, I have a snack about 5 and that’s it. DH eats breakfast at 7.3p, is happy eating late at night but I can’t eat late.
I go to bed very early, well before 9pm, mainly because of ill health, I can sleep until about 4.30am.
Just as well that I am retired!
When I was working and when the DCs were young breakfast was 7.30, lunch 1.00 and tea 5.30/6pm. They were usually in bed before 9pm.

I think that if you work typical office hours, these timings are reasonable. And these timings also fit in with the pattern of a school week. So yes, a lot of people will do this, at least during a working week, in term time. But you might still see them have their breakfast half-way through their morning because they can't eat much at the time they need to leave the house, or have their dinner nearer to bedtime. A few will naturally be even earlier than your timings, I have a friend made this way who is up and having a breakfast at 5am, and has a family dinner at 6pm and bed about 9pm. Fortunately they don't think they are right and everyone else is wrong.

Work and school timings are skewed towards early risers so these might not be the most natural times for quite a lot of the population and while some people will stick to them on holiday, or when retired, others will eat later and go to bed later given the chance. Some people also seem to be much more naturally adaptable about what times and quantities they eat so long as they get enough overall. And people with certain medical conditions or medications may have to time precisely to those, which might mean they have to stick to 'work/school' patterns all the time.

Your friend having a different body clock, routine etc. is fine. Your friend trying to tell you that only her way is 'right' must be annoying. Unless you were already being annoying by trying to imply that you are 'right' and she isn't.

Your times are too early for me. I don't think of 12 as a normal time for lunch except for hospital patients or in an old folk's home, and likewise I don't want dinner at 6pm. I'm probably not home from work by then. And my son hasn't been in bed by 7pm since...ever actually. We are still eating dinner around 8pm.

I still think it is odd of your friend to turn up at 2pm with her own lunch, but I can believe if you are inviting people over at that time that you have eaten very early to be finished and washed up by then.

And it isn't really odd to be in bed by 10pm, but I don't know many adults who achieve it. I wish I was one of them!

They certainly seem in the range of “normal” to me. We ate earlier when the kids were younger but I hated it but we did what was best for the majority.
DH could eat a huge lunch at 2pm then tea at 5.30 happily I tend to not eat lunch or breakfast prefer a brunch at around 11 and dinner at 7pm

😳😳😳😳

Maybe her and her children sleep later so it then pushes back all her meal times?

Same!!

Your timings sound normal to me, we wake at about 5.30, breakfast at 6-6.30, lunch at 12.30 and dinner around 5.30-6pm. Baby is bathed at 6.30pm and in bed for 7pm and we go to bed between 9.30 and 10pm.

We have breakfast when we get up - normally 6am during the week.

Dinner at noon
Tea at 4pm.

Eating before you go to bed is quite unhealthy IMO.

Yes, this is me too. We didn’t always eat/go to bed so early (as I mentioned, I grew up in Spain so 10pm dinner was more usual!) but generally life in the UK isn’t set up for that sort of timetable, so we adapted. My children are happy and thriving so it works for us.

This with bells on!! Lots of kids sleep less… and kids are chronically tired!! Most adults also don’t get enough sleep… has significant negative health effects for adults and developmental impacts for kids!

she was adamant that eating dinner before 8pm was unbearably common, and that it is far more refined to dine

There is a class element to this. Upper class types (and those who aspire to this) do tend to eat later imho. My very plummy mil is another example of breakfast at 10, lunch at 3.30, supper at 9.

Its a class indicator because the whole point of the definition of upper class is that they don't work, so no one has to be up at 7am. The "later meals" upper class day is structured around the meals being social events designed to fill an otherwise empty day - so breakfast is slap bang in the middle of the morning, lunch takes all afternoon and supper all evening. Entertainment could go on well into the night because no one had to be up the next day. All well and good when you've nowhere else to be.

Working people would have wanted to eat earlier, to fit in entertainment during the evening because if the knocker up is going to wake you at 6 you want to be in bed by 10.30pm.

Yep, normal times. If you work a standard hours job lunch hour will almost always be taken between 12-2pm. The canteens don’t usually serve lunch after that.

If you have to get up for work or school you need to be in bed 10-11pm ish to get enough sleep. And you don’t want to eat dinner close to sleeping.

If you have a commute for work you probably leave around 7-8am so need breakfast between that.

It all fits around normal working hours and school times. I know a lot of people work shifts, or more flexibly, or don’t work at all, but for the whole of my working life all of the many places I’ve worked we did those hours.

The timings are on the early side but normal I'd say.

I do think in the Uk we eat meals quite early and put kids to bed early, but if that's what suits, that's all that matters.Nobody in our house ever woke at 6, even when the kids were tiny, but they were naturally more night owly and so everything was a bit later than average. Even so, I wouldn't have batted an eyelid at dinner at 5.30. Obviously if my dc had been up early and ready for bed by 7, we would have adapted accordingly.

The main thing I find amazing is my friends who work standard office hours and manage to get dinner , bath and bed all done by 7! when the kids were tiny we had them in bed by 8 and even then there wasn't time for a bath every night.