To suggest eating separately from child

[VoldemortsMaid]

Is it unreasonable to eat separate to your child?

I'm at my wits end with dinner time. I actively dread it. All DD6 does is moan about the food, takes an ungodly amount of time to eat it and chats absolute rubbish the whole time. She gets distracted easy so we're constantly having to remind her to stop yapping and eat otherwise she'd be at the table for 2 hours.

Would it be unreasonable to give her dinner at around 5pm when she's used to having it and then DH and I can eat dinner later and it can actually be nice and we can chat about normal adult things without the constant stream of chat/distraction from DD?

@SusanKennedyshouldLTB

“Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.”

Catherine M. Wallace AUTHOR, POET, ESSAYIST

Does that include listening to my 7 year olds 257th rewrite of her Christmas list?

I’ve no answers, just wanted to empathise. My DSD similar age yaks away though dinner and forgets to eat / takes ages to eat. I don’t mind the yakking but it’s annoying having to always remind her to talk less and eat more!

How awful that you think your 6 year old talking to you is “yapping”. Poor kid. We don’t tend to have dinner all together during the week as husband doesn’t get home until late but I sit with the kids and love hearing about their days. And at weekends it’s great to take time over a meal and talk. Mine are 4 & 6 and we talk about all sorts of stuff, our favourite animals, funny jokes, we even tell stories. You sound like an utter grump

We give the DC dinner by themselves in the week after school, but sit with them and chat, and all eat together at weekends and (did!) taken them out to restaurants quite often too

Seems a good mix of our time and shared eating

We usually eat separately to DC, except at weekends. They eat around 5pm and that's way too early for us. I don't have my dinner until around 9pm

I can tell a lot of you don't have 6 year olds... the talking, the endless talking!

In 16 years of parenthood we’ve almost never eaten with dc during the week - DH is rarely home in time, often not back till 8 or 9 - and they all appear to be growing into happy confident healthy children who enjoy their food etc etc and they are not at all scarred by only eating as a family at weekends.

Even now (they’re 16, 10 and 7) I would far rather feed them at half five or so and then eat with DH later. Family time is important but so is adult time!! Tbf the 16yo does now tend to eat with us as he’s more adult than child but it’s so much nicer and less stressful to separate the younger two food wise. I always sit and chat with them whilst they eat (and they talk utter bollocks to each other) but I’d rather have a mix of grown up dinners and family dinners than a cast iron rule of always eating together! ‘Twas what I knew as a child too and I seem to have grown up ok.

The quote about making sure you listen to your children is really lovely but show me a parent who has always always categorically without fail listened earnestly to every single bit of nonsense that comes out of their child’s mouth and never tried to change the subject ever and I’ll show you a liar.

@VoldemortsMaid I think you are having a hard time. DS (4) has a strange combination of odd grammar (which we correct), flight of ideas and flits between subjects without any warning which makes it hard to follow conversation and quite tiring (also constant).

You don't need to be interested in what your six year old is interested in - that would be a bit weird. It sounds like you spend plenty of time conversing with her, and it's important for her to learn not to monopolise the conversations.

I think adult dinners when you eat other meals together is entirely acceptable.

@SusanKennedyshouldLTB love that 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

I'd give her the boring food and have something else yourselves. DS2 was a ridiculously restricted eater for years; at one point he ate bread, mild cheddar, raspberry fromage frais, cucumber, satsumas, plain pasta and Jaffa cakes. That was it. Any attempt to feed him anything else was doomed. Eventually saw a psychologist who said, well, feed him what he likes and encourage him without pressure to try other things, he will eventually, so we did. I'm surprised he didn't die of sheer boredom after a while. But I always cooked nice food for the rest of us (with enough for ds2 to also have some if he wanted). And he did, eventually, broaden out a bit!

DH and I can tell she doesn't like the food, so we ask what's wrong and she tells us.

Stop asking her what’s wrong if you don’t want her to tell you. If she volunteers that she doesn’t like it tell her to do her best and shut it down. If she’s eating better at breakfast and lunch bulk up those meals and give her a light evening meal - she might just not be someone who likes a big meal at the end of the day.

We have a mix of family meals and eating separately. Kids ‘yapping’ is an accurate description to the unending stream of consciousness we are getting every waking moment.

Eating together is not magic. It is a good thing as it allows people to connect/model eating etc
I'd say quite clearly it isn't working for you/her at present.

She eats dinner, you drink coffee, time limit set, both of you chat for the rest of the day if anything like my chatterbox.

My DD is 3 and she eats earlier than us 4 or 5 times a week. I think it's absolutely fine.
And please, to those saying you're being harsh in your description of your DD's talking! My DD definitely yaps. She will talk non stop about absolute shite, barely coming up for breath. Am I always listening intently?! God no! Sometimes I'm too busy gripping on to the last vestiges of my sanity!

Are both you and your DH always finished work and ready to eat at 5pm? That must be quite unusual.

I’m assuming that she is an only child because it would be no big deal for the kids to eat with each other if more than one, and the parents to eat later. I also have an only, but we dodge the issue because he eats at preschool and we don’t finish work till at least 6 anyway. We eat as a family 3 meals a day at weekends and that works for us.

I’d say that sitting with her but eating separately is fine. Or (I’ll get flamed for this)- let her eat in front of the TV?

Are you not starving again before bedtime if you eat at 5?

How about a picture type clock and a simple explanation of the time ? Half an hour should be enough?

Of course 6 year olds yapper! FFS. Mine talk utter shite and they're quite a bit older.

One of my DDs sounds very like yours OP. She'd talk the whole time without drawing breath never mind eating. At about the same age, we had to actually train her to stop talking and eat. Lots of chatting about good manners and taking the turn in conversations, listening to someone and then answering or asking for more detail.

We also made a point of going around the table and making each one contribute something.

I personally don't like eating separately and can't be bothered cooking twice. I'd rather get it over and done with and everything tidy and away

It's fine to eat later if it will make you feel less stressed around mealtimes. I'm not sure it will stop your DD chatting, complaining and not eating.
We had a rule that you didn't need to eat food you didn't like but you weren't allowed to complain about it. The other habit we started was everyone having a chance to speak. Usually someone poses a question eg how was your day? what was the best part of today? did you learn something today? what surprised you today? etc etc Then everyone gets time to answer so no one person can dominate. As a PP said, it's about teaching manners and how to listen as well as talk.

OP, you're getting such a hard time for apparently disliking your 6yo Ig it makes you feel any better I have four DC and they all chat shite 90% of the time. Some posters here don't seem to realise that there is a middle ground between totally ignoring what your DC say and hanging on their every word, this middle ground is the space most normal parents occupy where outloud we say things like "that's nice" and "then what happened?" while inside we're thinking "I am fucking sick of Pokemon...".

I would allow a reasonable amount of time for dinner, 30-40 minutes is enough, and then clear the meal away regardless of how much has been eaten. If she's had next to nothing or it's going to be a long time until the next meal (e.g., dinner time through to breakfast time) then around an hour after dinner offer her a plain snack such as toast, cheese and crackers, veggie sticks, etc. Phrase it as a separate entity such as "snack" or "supper" rather than as a replacement for the meal she ate too slowly.

As for getting her to try new foods, when you offer new foods always make sure there are 1-2 of her safe foods on the plate so that there is to pressure to try the new foods and she cannot claim there is nothing she likes. Don't try persuade, bribe, beg, or otherwise talk her into eating them. If she tries them, she tries them. If she doesn't, she doesn't. Just keep offering new foods as and when without comment.

It's not wrong to have mealtimes without the children either. Twice a week I feed the DC and sit with them while they eat then DH and I have an adults only dinner once they're all in bed. It's important for us to have that time together as a couple, especially at the moment where opportunities for date night are thin on the ground.

The big question is, how old is she?

I cook two evening meals every evening, and two lunches apart from at the weekends. My husband finds sitting with my son (asc) so stressful that it is just easier this way. The meals we do eat together (two lunchtimes per week) are spent with me trying to make sure ds doesn’t
eat with his fingers or with his mouth open, that he doesn’t start an arguement or drop food, that he eats over his plate etc...and dh staring in increasingly silent seething fury till it all gets too much and he storms off to eat somewhere else.

It’s a lot of extra work, but I couldn’t contemplate eating together for all meals, the stress would be far too much. (I sit with my children while they eat their meal).

“Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.”

Parent-guilting claptrap.

The big question is, how old is she

If she likes pasta and chicken then serve a little of what she likes with each meal. It’s the only way to deal with picky eaters without losing your mind.