AIBU about clearing the table before everyone has finished?

[StayOrGoOrWhat]

My youngest DD, aged 3, tends to eat more slowly than the rest of us and if she realises that we’ve all finished, she stops eating. So once we are done, we remain seated with our plates there and just chat until she has finished.

When we are at my DMs or she is at ours, as soon as anyone has finished she starts collecting plates up and taking them into the kitchen. It drives me mad! She’s even been known to bring dessert in whilst DD is still eating and is then surprised when she abandons her food in favour of cake.

I’ve asked her not to and she has improved but it seems like some kind of compulsion to start piling plates before we are all done and it is driving me mad! Made me remember how when I was younger, DF would still be eating and have had the entire table cleared around him. So, AIBU to think that’s it’s just not great manners to clear up before everyone is finished?

It’s the same when people are Sefer and then just chow down not waiting for the last person
Even worse is a restaurant

As I say, it’s so common. Only old men and common people do this

@Excelthetube

It’s the same when people are Sefer and then just chow down not waiting for the last person Even worse is a restaurant

As I say, it’s so common. Only old men and common people do this

But some people want to live like common people, want to do whatever common people do?

Think it’s funny how many if you keep calling her my MIL. For a change though, I’m actually moaning about my own Mum.

I hate watching people eat once I've finished, it makes me feel ill.

I appreciate that she has a preexisting annoying habit from the sounds of things but I think the arbitrary insistence that everyone must stay at the table until everyone has finished eating quite inconsiderate of people's discomfort, which is surely the opposite of what manners are supposed to be about.

It takes about 2 hours to prepare and 10 minutes max to eat!

Neither of these statements is true in my experience. But in particular who on earth eats a roast dinner in ten minutes -max! - visions of people shoveling food into their mouths without a break and no conversation. I don't believe anyone posting here eats like this.

I also wonder about people who can't be dealing with an extra ten minutes at the table because they have things to be doing. yeah for breakfast but dinner/tea? you seriously can't just sit while a child or partner or guest finishes their plate?

on an aside, I hate when I have people over and we have reached the end of a meal - maybe a celebratory meal - and are just chit-chatting and someone decides to clear the table. My sil does this and I always tell her to stop. I am happy to clear the table later on or in the morning. I like her a lot and we get on well but she has different tolerance of family dinners etc. I have no problem at all if she is bored with the conversation at the table and wants to move into the living room or go to bed or slip away. but I hate that because she is done with us she wants us all to be simply done.

I hate watching people eat once I've finished, it makes me feel ill.

So your response is not to clear plates and make people finish up but to leave the table yourself.

@MichelleScarn
So everyone has to be on your schedule?

I am not entirely sure I understand which bit of my post this was aimed at since you quoted it all. (Why have people started doing this?)

But my point was that people don't always eat slowly through choice. I am not abnormally slow, but would find it impossible to eat quickly. At what is meant to be a relaxed and enjoyable family Sunday lunch, why would you make someone feel hurried and awkward? Which, believe me, is how you feel if all the other plates have been whisked away and it seems as if everyone else at the table is sitting there watching you eat.

I’m a bit staggered reading these responses. Do people honestly act like this in their own homes? All of my children including my 4yo correctly follow 'table manners' when eating out, or when we have special guests, but we aren’t bothered at all when we’re at home. Meals start getting eaten the second they're served to someone, anyone can leave once they're finished. And if I'm up the wall with chores I need to do that evening then I'm not sitting and waiting for everyone to finish before I start clearing up. How miserable and controlling do you have to be to give nan a verbal warning and complain about her on a public forum because she dared tried to help clean up before your child had cleared her plate?

yes people do act like this in their own homes. They wait till everyone is finished before clearing the table. It is a thing. most people consider it good manners.

As for your drama of "a verbal warning " like it was a police warning and " "complaining about her on a public forum" as if it was naming and shaming on twitter. get a grip. Do you realise you did the same when you were talking shit about the OP just now?

It’s really, really bad manners BUT I’ve started to do this at home. My eldest DD is the slowest eater in the world and old enough to understand that it’s even worse manners to hold everyone up by 20 mins while she chats and eats like a bird, when everyone else is done and dusted and wants to get on with their lives.

So, most evenings, we all get up while she’s still eating, kitchen gets cleaned up and dishwasher switched on, teeth brushed, story read to other D.C., and DD will STILL be sitting there eating her food, daydreaming, humming to herself. Happens every day and quite frankly we’ve stopped caring about being rude.

I’m with @5foot5 . I’m a naturally slow eater and always have been. Growing up, I was always the last in my family to finish my meals, even though I wasn’t chatting or sipping water or any of the other heinous crimes PP have mentioned, and it just made every meal time tense and horrible as my parents chivvied and hurried me and made me feel terrible about eating so slowly. I wasn’t doing it on purpose! But all the huffing and clearing away around me and pointedly giving my siblings dessert while I was still ploughing through the main course (we were also not allowed to leave anything on our plates…) contributed to me developing a really unhealthy relationship with food and also with eating in public.

Yanbu....your Mum sounds incredibly impatient. I hate it when people have to whizz around like there's no tomorrow, they need to calm the heck down!

I’m a bit staggered reading these responses. Do people honestly act like this in their own homes?

I'm mid 50s, as a child we did this as a family so that when we did go out to eat we knew how to behave.

Even now when I eat most meals on the sofa watching TV when I do eat at the table it will be set properly and not immediately cleared (even when on my own).

As for getting on with chores, I have been known, when my health allows, to cook 5 course meals, my guests need a gap between courses as do I.

@5foot5 it's the quote button that let's you do that.

What I meant was, you seem aggrieved at school people were frustrated with you, then your plans to be passive aggressive around others not waiting till you're finished 'oh don't let me hold you up'.

Are people not going to have to sit around and watch you eat regardless if their plates are cleared or not?

@MichelleScarn
Are people not going to have to sit around and watch you eat regardless if their plates are cleared or not?
But I think we are back now to the question in the OP as to whether or not it is rude to clear plates before people are finished and I am clearly in the camp that feels it is. The unspoken message is "Right we are done with that now and just waiting for you" which can be very off putting to the slower eater.

BTW I am not an extraordinarily slow eater so I wouldn't be keeping people waiting all afternoon. Just think an extra few minutes when you would expect people would be happy to sit and chat. After all someone has to be last to finish. I might even claim I eat at a normal pace and it is other people who gobble their food too quickly!

@SukonthaM yes, from looking at the responses, people really do this. Sorry to hear you think I’m miserable and controlling for wanting my 3 year old to not shove her plate to one side because everyone else has finished. Hopefully she will grow out of it and be happy to continue even when she realises we have finished and then I can be less ‘miserable’ at the table.

I personally think it’s more miserable that people want to hurry their family members along when they need a few extra minutes.

But in particular who on earth eats a roast dinner in ten minutes -max! - visions of people shoveling food into their mouths without a break and no conversation. I don't believe anyone posting here eats like this

I would be very annoyed if anyone tried to talk to me while I was eating. I can talk to someone, or concentrate on tasting my food. If my brain is forced to focus on conversation, my food will pass through my mouth without being tasted.

It's not a solution to switch between the two every 30 seconds, a break in concentration in either activity means my brain is not in the same state when I return to it.

Conversation is OK between courses, but not while I'm actually eating.

@Pallisers

I hate watching people eat once I've finished, it makes me feel ill.

So your response is not to clear plates and make people finish up but to leave the table yourself.

I was talking more about the huge amount of people saying the "correct" thing is for everyone to wait at the table until everyone has finished eating.

But still, if it's been a reasonable amount of time and most people are finished, I don't see anything wrong with clearing the plates of those that are and making a start on the probably extensive washing up. I think it's really demanding and ungrateful to have an issue with that.

I think its fine but not when you have a little one.

@Pallisers

yes people do act like this in their own homes. They wait till everyone is finished before clearing the table. It is a thing. most people consider it good manners.

As for your drama of "a verbal warning " like it was a police warning and " "complaining about her on a public forum" as if it was naming and shaming on twitter. get a grip. Do you realise you did the same when you were talking shit about the OP just now?

I think you're wrong that "most people" do this tbh. Maybe once, but MN is filled with a certain type of demographic. Out in the real world I've never known anyone below middle age (and non middle class) have any kind of strong belief in these rules.

The "rules" are different when you have young children around. They have to learn how to eat "nicely". Once they can and can understand different rules for different contexts then the rules get relaxed again.

We had a big issue with DD (who is very active and quite thin) tending to flit away from the table and still have issues with remaining sitting properly on her seat rather than hassling her brother or messing around so much she falls off. So we tend to be strict about sitting and remaining sat down until we have fewer risks of concussion... We did consider the "leave table, no more food" option but given weight concerns and that she actually likes plain bread more than most dinners🙈 we decided this was counter productive.

Other families might have other mealtime concerns - all children are different.

We also expect DC to not spend the entire mealtime chatting (and therefore not eating) because we don't want ridiculously slow eating either.

Yep, we are middle class and take the view that knowing "fancy" table manners is a useful life skill, as is eating standing up or at a picnic without wearing most of the food!

It also depends why the girl is slow. Girl twin picks tiny mouthfuls. Sits and holds the next mouthful, looking at it for an eternity until the 200 times she's chewed the previous one is over. It's the pace she goes at when we're all sat there. It's almost like she's people watching, she likes watching us eat, and is far more engaged by being at the table, as opposed to eating at the the table. I continually prompt her. However, the moment we get boy twin down (because he's 1.5yrs and can't sit there indefinitely watching her eat, without getting upset that he's got no food left) suddenly the girl twin has the miraculous power to eat properly, in order to finish her food and be let down to play as well.

This isn't acceptable. If I allowed her to eat how she pleased, we'd all be sitting there for an hour every lunch as she picked over an omelette that boy twin would have finished 50 minutes prior.

It's so unbelievably irritating, and I find far worse manners to hold people up ( unless an occasion meal where it's expected to be an extended affair, Christmas, Easter) because "that's the speed I like to eat, so you can all sit and watch me take as long as I like"

All this suggesting that the only alternative to eating so slowly it's rude and inconsiderate, is ramming food in at such a rate that it's just pig like gobbling, in silence, frankly sounds a bit stupid. That's obviously not what people mean.

If you're always the last to finish, by some time, and (yes someone has to be first and last, clearly again that's not the point) everyone else finished around the same time, then you need to accept you are holding everyone up, and look at how you can address that. Because they're eating at a normal speed, they're not gannets, they're normal. It's like being stuck behind a slow walker with no way to get round them.

@TwinsandTrifle

If it's a few extra minutes OP, then of course MIL is being unreasonable.

We're not talking big social occasions though, or even the big family sit down dinner of the day. Which is what a lot of posters are acting as if it is.

We all know the rules for an adult dinner. Wait for everyone to be served. Eat. Clear away only when everyone finished. But then adults know that if they're the only person still nursing their starter at a table ten minutes after everyone has finished, then they are equally rude in holding the whole table up from their next course. So it doesn't tend to happen. Maybe uniquely at Christmas, but we're not talking about that.

DH eats quickly. He's always finished a couple of minutes earlier. Elder DS bangs on and on and on, and would take an hour to clear his plate if we didn't literally tell him, stop talking and eat your food (he has ADHD). DTwin boy eats about the same rate as me. DTwin girl will eat one pea at a time. She is careful, considered, examines her food, chews at an excruciatingly slow pace. Our family does not have time to sit and wait for her to behave like this.

We will sometimes get up and leave her to eat. Funnily enough she then does speed up, because she needs to understand (and not learn) that she can't control 4 other people doing nothing for an hour because she's mousing her way through a cheese sandwich and we can't move in the name of manners. She also learns that finishing food in a timely manner means being allowed to get down from the table and back to colouring. Hence we allow her brother to do this, to try and speed her up with incentive.

Again though, OP, if this is four or five minutes, your MIL can wait.

Absolutely agree . We had friend's kids round and they didn't actually really eat when everyone else did. One mouthful then put down fork for 5 minutes. Usually you should wait but in this instance the slow water was being rude. They were kids so I don't hold it against them but they do need to learn to actually eat at dinner.

I would be very annoyed if anyone tried to talk to me while I was eating. I can talk to someone, or concentrate on tasting my food. If my brain is forced to focus on conversation, my food will pass through my mouth without being tasted.

It's not a solution to switch between the two every 30 seconds, a break in concentration in either activity means my brain is not in the same state when I return to it.

@RandomLondoner sorry but I think it is you who is a bit unusual in this case. For most people I think mealtimes are seen as social gatherings where conversation while eating is enjoyable and to be expected.