Waiting to 6pm and no later for dinner together

[LovelyBath77]

My husband is self-employed. He gets a bit huffy as he likes us all to eat together, but I say we usually wait till 6pm is and go ahead with the children's dinner as they get a bit hungry by then. I usually have something with them.

AIBU?

In the week, my H and I eat our dinner once children are in bed. 3 year old eats at nursery, 5.5 year old is fed by her child minder. I don't get home until 6:15-6:30pm, and husband regularly not home until 7pm or later if working late. There is no way we could all eat together. 3 YO has lunch at 11:30 at nursery!
At weekends we have lunch later - around 12:30, and then all eat together around 6pm. Husband then tends to snack on cheese and biscuits if still hungry around 9pm.

Dc are little (4&2) and eat about 5-6pm (I say eat, but what really happens is I give them dinner, they don't eat it and I throw it away). DH and I eat between 8-9pm depending on the dc bedtime.

We eat different food from the Dc who wouldn't eat what we have (not that they eat what they have either - sigh).

Even as s child I ate 8-9pm as that's when my parents ate and we all ate together.i don't think I could eat at 6pm every day. Even our Sunday 'lunches' are at 6.30pm just for the children's sake. But we'd rather them at 8. If we go to my parents they eat then even for xmas dinner. No concessions for children!

We didn't use to pick up from nursery until 6, so supper is always around 7 maybe later depending on what we are cooking. Bed around 8/8.30 and up again at 7.30. I favour eating together and giving my daughter a veg/hummus type snack when we get in whilst we cook.

In answer to the OP I don't think it's unreasonable to want to eat together some nights.

How can people eat before 6?!? What time do you finish work? I don't know anyone who gets home before 6:30pm

What time/what do you have for lunch if you eat at 6?

I start the kids tea almost as soon as we get home from the school run at 3.30-45. It's usually ready by 4.30-5 and we eat then. DH eats when he gets home from work which is around 6.30. Friday and at the weekends we all sit round the table and eat as a family. My kids are 6 and 3. 7pm my two are having a bath and bedtime wind down. I can't imagine feeding them that late. They would never sleep!

MN is odd sometimes. On one thread, most people seem to be in bed by 9pm but on here there seems to be a competitiveness of who can eat the latest. I presume the people who eat late are heading off to bed at 9pm (which I think is far too early if we're discussing times!)

We eat at 6pm and people I know think this is late! Most of them eat at 5pm with kids. A lot of people I know with office jobs work 8am-4pm so they are home earlier. I don't like my dc eating late as they feel ill going to bed on a full stomach (they go to bed at 8pm). I also don't like going to bed on a full stomach it gives me heart burn. I find it interesting that people eat so late, I could not cope with cooking two separate meals and the cleaning up I would feel like I spend my evenings cooking and cleaning. I like to be done and dusted by 7pm! Even before kids when I worked full time I ate at 6.30, I was lucky though and only had a 30 minute commute. On holiday we eat later though, about 9pm, but my dc would be so tired if we did that on a school night.

I very rarely finish work before 7pm and its usually 8pm. Start between 8 and 9.30am (I manage my own hours). As a result, I never eat before 8pm.

That said, I often just have crackers for dinner as am well passed being hungry by that point.

If I'm in and cooking on a Saturday night, I am for about 8.30pm for supper.

Do you work Thingiebob? In households where both parents work average office hours, no one is going to be eating at 4.30/5.00pm. Surely that is not too difficult to imagine?

"What time do you finish work? I don't know anyone who gets home before 6:30pm"

For most of my life I've worked 9 to 5 and only done overtime if there was a special event coming up. I couldn't cope with more than 45 minutes commute so the latest I'd be home would be 5.45
At the moment I work 10 to 6 and am home by 6.15,

A few of my friends commute and are not home until late but their nanny gives the children dinner after school. I couldn't imagine having the energy to feed my children later in the evening. I'm not a very energetic person though lol.

The activities my children do are between 6 and 8 or later for the older ones. So they need to eat at about 5-5:30.

AKA I get home at 5.20pm and I'm a professional. We sometimes eat together at 6pm, or else DD will eat at 6pm and we'll eat later. She's in bed at 7pm, so we can't stretch dinner much beyond 6pm.

Gwen, all I can say is, you're lucky. I get home by 6pm on a good day, but 8.30pm isn't unknown.

I live on my own so what time I eat is up to me, it's generally about 7.30 to 8pm. Growning up though, we ate at about 5.30pm, and then a snack at 9pm which I certainly wouldn't want to faff about with now!

Mine are 6 & 9 & we eat with DH at 7:30-ish with bed at 8:30-ish.. I grew up eating that late (as my dad commuted from London & so I've never thought of eating any earlier). We've always eaten together at that time (& sometimes even later at weekends) even when they were tiny - til they went to school we didn't even had a set bedtime & they're still very adaptable now. That do have a bakery snack soon they come out of school., then clubs and / or homework lessons, then supper, stories & bed. I can't be arsed to cook two separate meals / nor do I know how people have time to get supper ready that early? We too have been accused of being Spanish by earlier eating / rising friends. Whatever works for you OP but a bit later (with by the homework before) might work at their ages & mean you only have to do one serving & make your other half happy life. (My mum also said a shared supper was a great way of keeping an eye on us as grumpy teenagers - hunger overcomes adolescent insolence.)

Apologies for some of the random words of my last post - just got swift key & was watching Bake Off too! Sorry!

Thanks Artandco. I was wondering if you ended up with a really late bedtime! My children are still at the age where they can be exhausting - full time questions, monitoring, redirecting them from things. For my sanity I need some quiet adult time before bed! Personally I eat 8ish. I sit with the children and have a drink and maybe some vegetables. Then I eat properly once they are in bed. As an adult I couldn't eat 5ish, unless I've missed lunch. On holiday we all eat later. I prefer to eat lightly and later in the heat. My children will happily eat 9/10pm then, but their whole schedule shifts. Everything normally starts too early to eat after 6.

Same as CocktailQueen - any later than 6pm during the week means a later bedtime which means a harder get-up in the morning which means grumpier little uns. YANBU.

Something limitedperiodonly posted alot earlier on in the thread got me thinking.

It's true that the idealised family meal time of the whole family passing anecdotes and interesting conversations over a delicious cooked meal is often far from the reality of family dinner.

I rarely 'do' family dinner and have felt guilty about it for years. Like I was guilty of ripping the fabric of family life into smithereens!

I love everything family dinner and Sunday lunch stands for. I care deeply about the values of togetherness and connection and daily sharing.

So why don't I bloody well pull my finger out and walk the talk?!

Well I've just clicked why. It's a case of stating the bleeding obvious but if appears I was so busy ignoring it I genuinely didn't 'get it' until now.

Flash of insight from the heavens.

I grew up with enforced family dinners and they were the absolute worst time of the day. Each day, every day, for years, with no respite. 18 years, you'd get less for murder.

Dinner was when my mother had a captive audience to abuse me and my darling sister, and my dad. Abuse over food and abuse with food. A truly wonderful combination. I knew this of course, and predictably had an eating disorder then and now, and i do food very, very differently in my house. Very protective of DS and his relationship to food. But didn't somehow relate it to my failure to do these dinners that I rationally believe in yet somehow never quite happen.

I've just gone down a bit of a rabbit hole with some rather unpleasant memories and flashbacks. Not just me but my sister, and the ways I tried to protect her, and her me. Really took me back.

It's taken me by surprise to remember quite how bad it was, and it makes so much sense that it's still effecting me today in ways I didn't clock before.

I feel a lot less guilty about family dinners now though :)

Illuminating, but not the lightest of threads for me.

From what I understand of the OP's situation -- she has kids of 7 and 11, eats dinner with them at 6 latest without DH, DH wants them all to wait till about 7pm so they can all eat together. The kids don't go to bed until 8.30, at the earliest. In these circumstances, I think I'm with the DH, though I can see both sides. I think that eating a family meal is really, really important, and it's good for both parents and children that the kids should get time round the table with the dad every evening. If that means waiting an hour for supper I think it's worth it. A substantial snack at 5pm is probably called for (with portion reduction at dinner if necessary). If the OP is unwilling to have the kids wait for dinner, then I think she should at least wait for her DH to get in before eating herself (presuming he gets in before 10pm, which is the late mark for adult dinner for me). It's grim making your partner eat alone, my DP always waits for me and I'd be upset if he didn't.

My OH wouldn't want our hungry kids to wait for him getting in late so we can play at being the Waltons. He would prefer them to eat when they are ready for their meal.
I can't remember the last time we sat down as a family to eat.

I would find it utterly grim not to eat with my lovely teenagers at 7.30 (worse if I had to sit and watch them eating though frankly I wouldn't, I'd go back to my desk upstairs) and then eat with their father at 9pm. In this house there's dinner, and if you miss it there will probably be some dinner left. (If there isn't, nobody is incapable of boiling up a bit of spaghetti).

I didn't expect DP not to eat with them on Monday when I was out either, though he did very kindly do me a bit of extra pasta for my return.

I eat with my "lovely teenagers" most days. Usually at 4.30pm.

My OH doesn't though. Why would I want two dinners? to eat with my teenagers and then again with OH? Seems a martyrish thing to do.
I am in bed by 9pm anyway.

User - don't you all eat lunch? Lunch is between 12-2 for most people. If I ate at 1-1.30pm for example, there's no way I could eat a full meal again 3 hours later at 4.30pm.