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'd love to eat as a family but dh doesn't get in till 6.30 and dd (10 months) is almost ready for bed by then, I've tried to rejig her naps so she can stay up later but it just doesn't work. So she has dinner earlier and me and dh eat at around 7.30.

I don't think I'd like to eat dinner at 6pm anyway! It seems too early to me.

MrsJayy - most families in your experience, but clearly an awful lot of us don't know anyone who eats as early as 6. We are not lying! Millions of regular office jobs involve working 9 to 5.30 or 6, if you add on a commute, how could you possibly have dinner prepared and be eating by 6?

My last job before children, I considered to be super-cushy. I could leave at 5 and get home on the train for 6pm. I might start sorting dinner then and then in the summer months would spend a blissful hour pottering round in the garden or watching tv while it was cooking.

7pm is the absolute earliest I could contemplate eating dinner. Anything else just feels absolutely wrong !

I don't know anyone who eats later then 6.30.

Perhaps it's just because I love my food but I'd happily eat dinner anytime between 5 and 9. Eating dinner can never be wrong, whatever the time!!

I was just responding to the shocked and astounded postesr who couldnt fathom that adults eat at 6 thats all the downton comment was clearly a joke

It often is just your circumstances.
When DH and I were both working we finished at 6.00pm with an hours commute.
When you have done that from 18 until 30 it's hard to suddenly think supper at 6.00pm is sensible. It will always feel ridiculously early to me.
If we both got home at 5.00pm then supper with the children at 6.00pm may well have become our habit.

I think you should feed the kids whenever works best for them (maybe that's earlier, maybe later, depends on when you find best to do homework etc)

But you wait to have dinner with your DH

I don't think it's fair on your DH to have to eat alone, bit miserable, equally I don't think it's fair for him to expect the kids to wait to eat until he's home.

Maybe the DC could eat tea a bit earlier and then have a supper with you and DH - like milk & toast? Or maybe a snack earlier and then their proper tea with you.

Personally if I ate dinner at 6pm I'd be hungry again by bedtime (usually around 11pm) and starving by morning, but it all depends on your own routine!

Northern and not posh here. We eat at 7 at the absolute earliest. Nobody I know is even home by half 6 or so, let alone having tea ready by then.

Well obviously hmm you can't have dinner at 5.30 if you are still at work. Just like some people can't have breakfast at 8.30, like some on here do, because they are at work at 7.30. If you have to be out the door at 5.30 for kids activities then dinner at 7 isn't an option. I also wouldn't be at a park at 6 pm,it would be either too dark, cold or busy.we are there at either 3.15pm or 9am on a weekend lol. My kids couldn't last till going to bed at 9pm every night or so, assuming that's bedtime if your LO isn't eating till 8.30. Everyone is different and every family is too as can be seen easily on this thread, I too also like seeing how others work :) I'm a bit of a people watcher too lol

I'm amazed at this thread. I never eat dinner before 8 pm and I'm retired, so nothing to do with getting home from work. I couldn't eat at 6. When my daughter was little she had dinner earlier and I ate with my husband when he got home from work.

"most families eat around this time" - I think you meant "most families I know".

Conversely, most families I know eat later. Eating as a family here is impossible during the week as DH is never home before 8; and when I worked full time I was the same. Kids eat about 6.30-7, I eat with DH about 9. Totally normal amongst everyone I know.

This comes up on here quite frequently and I'm always surprised at the number of people who seem agog at the concept that not everyone sits down for a family meal at 6. It's not too hard an idea to grasp that a lot of people just aren't home from work at that point, surely?

I usually do dinner in the week; I used to do two sittings, as DP often isn't in till (well) after 8. Stopped that years ago.

We eat some time between 7 and 7.30, depending on if I've got my @rse into gear. DP often isn't home by then so his gets left for him.

6pm is definitely too early for anyone in this house - on the rare occasions the kids eat that early somewhere else they're starving again by 8.

Dc eat between 5.30pm and 6pm here then DH and I have ours around 8.30pm. At the weekend we do try to have breakfast, lunch and dinner together with dinner being at 6pm.

I don't think I could eat dinner with the dc on a daily basis. I like to relax when eating not constantly reminding them to sit properly / chew properly / actually use their knife and fork etc etc

Don't know what time DS 5 eats as nanny feeds him before I get home at around 1845. Sometimes I wait for DH, sometimes not, he gets home around 2130 so sometimes we won't eat until 2200. Would love to eat as a family but it is unlikely to happen.

snap Hiroslea

Regardless of class or anything else, eating at 6pm or soon after is impossible if you don't get home from work til 6.30! Is it very unusual to come in from work at that time? - it's totally normal for DH and me. We live in London, finish work 5/5.30, get home 6/6.30. Potter about, put younger DD to bed, have a drink and cook, eat dinner with older DD between 7.30 and 8.

DD1 is 13 - she's been eating at that time with us since she was about 8 I guess. Before that, both DCs would eat around 5pm and DH and I had dinner later. I always had dinner with DH - can't imagine not! Dinner for us is the end of the day - nothing much else happens afterwards, beyond clearing up and TV, reading, getting ready for the next day etc.

"It's not too hard an idea to grasp that a lot of people just aren't home from work at that point, surely?"

Well quite. You'd have to have non-standard office hours or live very close to work in order to eat at 6, and most people don't.

Actually, now I think about it, now we live outside London there are quite a few people locally who work very locally and finish dead on time everyday. That's just very much outside my/DH's experience, which involves working later than 'normal' office hours and taking a good hour to get home.

We all eat together as a family at weekends anyway.

I guess it's because he's self-employed, and often leaves early, I think that he could easily be home a bit earlier if he wanted to. It's different if you have to be there until a certain time though. I do sometimes wait to eat with him later, like on Fridays.

In my experience, it's unusual for primary aged DCs to eat much later than 6:30, regardless of if their parents working patterns - as generally childminders feed DCs in their care around 5-6pm.

However, it's also the norm round here to not eat dinner as a family if Dad (and it's usually Dad) works in the City and it's considered a bonus if he's home intime for bathtime/reading a bedtime story. Most couples I know of primary aged DCs eat together once their DCs are in bed. (And also most woman I know who are on diets say the hardest bit is not picking at their DCs left overs at 5:30 or having a small portion of what they are having and then still eating dinner with their DHs later on!)

We're unusual in that DH doesn't follow London hours at work, so is home around 5ish, and is usually starving as he's had breakfast before 6, so eats his lunch around 11:30 - 12noon and is happy to switch to DC timings. This does suit me best as I'm not cooking twice and I've found it easier to avoid evening snacking with a full stomach from an early dinner than to avoid 5pm snacking when I'm eating dinner later.

There is a theory that only having carbs before 5pm does help with weight loss, something about having digested your food before you go to sleep, I certainly lost weight when we moved to eating earlier with the DCs rather than separately from them after 8pm once they were both asleep, but that might be more about not snacking as much overall in the day.

oh and I agree that it's important to eat as a couple, even if that means not with the DCs, it always seems very sad when one person is left to eat alone because they work later. (obviously not if they aren't getting in until 10pm).

But once we moved to all eating together with the DCs, it did seem to free up much more time for us to actually get stuff done in the evening, rather than losing most of the evening to cooking again, eating and then cleaning up from dinner.

Dinosaur - not everyone has a childminder to feed children. If they go to an afterschool club for example it finishes at 6.30pm here and kids get a snack of milk and fruit at 4pm once all in from school finishing, no meals.
Mine I often collect and bring to my office, where they do homework, read, draw, play and then we head home after 6

My dc eat at 5-5.30 because they are starving by then ( they are 2.8 years and 14 months).Ds wakes at 7, dd at 8 so they have breakfast at 8 ish, then lunch at 12 ish, snack at 3.30, tea at 5-5.30 then bed at 7.30. Me and dp eat at 8-8.30 after the kids have gone to bed.

I don't particularly want to 'eat as a couple'. I'd rather eat with my teenagers if their father isn't home yet, than leave them in some sort of child shift and then eat with him at 8.30. He doesn't feel particularly sociable when he gets in anyway.

It's nice if we are all together, but otherwise I'd rather have three of us together at least. And we have a nice time, and chat about stuff and laugh. Otherwise I'd hardly see them as they would eat and then head for their rooms.

Tea time here is anything from 4pm to 8pm, nobody here keeps regular hours.
surely, each family does what suits them best.
i am cooking a large curry atm for me and dh, we will eat at whatever time he's finished.
Ds2 is cooking for his gf after work, they will eat between 5pm and 7pm.