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?

I don't get home til 6 pm so no way would we be eating by then. Some days we might be about to eat around 6.45 if I'm just reheating food or doing freezer stuff. Tonight we will be lucky to start eating at 8pm. It totally varies for us though I had to admit, in an ideal world we would have all eaten and washed up by 7pm.

6pm is NOT early - even my teens need to be fed before then.

Although I appreciate some have to eat later as some posters on here don't get home til 7

Have always suspected Bibbitybobbetyyhat to be amongst the upper crust!
Seriously though is it not bad to have undigested food in your stomach when you go to bed? The kids are eating very close to bedtime in most cases. Mine would eat so much when they get in from Childminder's that they wouldn't want any dinner. I struggle to make them wait the half hour the meal takes anyway.

Plus, if I ate my tea at 8 when would I have my supper?!

6 is definitely too early for us, it's not a matter of how hungry we are, but we don't even get home by 6. Dinner is at 7 in this house.

My children have never slept for more than 11 hours per night. Even in the halcyon days of babyhood and toddlerhood, they went to bed at 8 and woke up at 7. I kept them up til 8 so they could see their dad on a daily basis. Many working parents don't get home from work until that sort of time. So for our family, a 6pm dinner really is very early.

Has op come back and said how old her children are?

With regards to the class thing....

www.putlearningfirst.com/language/12dial/dinner.html

And she sits back....

6pm isn't early to eat with children?

We eat at 6 as that's when DH gets home and that's seen as v late to others at the school.

If it's a class thing to send your children to bed on full stomachs then hey, who knew?!

I have been doing the same since DS started eating meals with us (previously fed at nursery). 'he sometimes works extra during the week so he can have a short day Friday. We need to start bedtime around 7pm so I wont wait past 6/6.30 at the latest.

Another one for the Daily Rag then.

Mrswinkler, I think there's probably a class and a north-south of England thing going on. Those who find 6 too late probably work long hours or have a commute and that might be more common around London.

Have something to eat when they come home from school and eat dinner later, sorted, never got the whole idea of having to eat an an exact time every day.

I think 6pm is too early but more for the adults than the kids. If I ate at 6pm I'd be snacking again by 9pm.

I think a class thing too; my friends who eat this early also prepare 'supper' which is a posh thing!

My mum used to make up wait for my dad. It was not 6pm I am talking about but 10 or 11 pm
Yes that is right.
Ok this was in Spain and dinner time is late but it meant I would stuff my face before that and ended up with eating disorders for years.
So to wait a bit yes but people get hungry and I dont want to do that to my DC

Between 5 and 6 for toddler usually for us. i wouldnt do any later for a child under 7.

Tea and then supper it sounds greedy to me. In an ideal world 6pm is just the right time to eat before bed.

6pm is far too late in our house. The children go to bed at 7 and I don't think it's nice to go to bed straight after eating a meal.

Working class, father was a miner and I grew up in poverty. By the class chart posted above I'm upper class.... hahahhahahahaha

it is a working hours thing, not a class thing. When I did an office job I'd be lucky to be home by 6:30, having started at 9. evening meal is 8 or later.

but kids need feeding earlier as they go to bed earlier.

The kids in our house split dinner across 2 meals - they'll have something a bit filling when they come home from school (5pm) and something light/a snack with the adults at 7:30pm. Bedtime is then staggered between 9 and 11 for all the kids depending on age. They all get their 8-9 hours (at least) and are all bright, happy and healthy.

My two couldn't wait longer than that. They'd be starving and would end up in bed too late and would therefore be tired and grouchy next day. They are 9 and 6.

I normally feed them around 5.30, and I either eat with them or with DH, depending.

Mind you DH doesn't get home until 8.30 or later so the kids waiting up to eat with him isn't an option anyway.

Yanbu. It is not a good idea to go to bed too soon after eating as your body doesn't lower blood sugar as well when asleep. You need some time to get blood sugar down to normal.

Special have you thought about cooking for the week it will keep in you're fridge.

I don't think it's important to eat together so long as you do other things as a family. It's not much of a bonding experience if the kids are too hungry and tired to communicate with him. I also wouldn't want to force teenagers who would rather be elsewhere to make small talk over the table.

If it's not too much trouble for you, could you feed them earlier and have a second sitting for when he gets home so you can put on a nice frock and gaze into his eyes

mrswinkler that website doesn't exactly look like the best source of information tbh.

There is definitely a north/south thing going on. We always get the short end of the stick.

I must admit that this is a bit of a "thing" for me. When I was growing up we lived with my GP's and my DGF was insistant that dinner was served at 6pm, with all the family at the table, on the dot. (from later experiences I am sure that he was on the ASD spectrum) He said that he couldnt digest properly if he wasn't sat to the table. If anyone was late, including for sporting activities, they had to eat off a plate kept warm in the oven.

So, in our house, self employed Dh and 3 x DS's, dinner has always on the table, at 6pm, and we all, always, sit to the table to eat it. I get soooo twitchy at eating later, even 6.10pm seems too late and wrong. DS's always ate with us, even when tiny.

But, it's so, nice, to sit down and eat together every night, the conversations that we had, disecting the day, the laughter and the relaxation.

Oh, and for us and all the DS's, 6-7pm bedtime was out of the question. They went to bed 9-10pm at the earliest, even when they were small and at school. They always reliably got up at 7am.