What time do you have tea?

[Schroeder]

Now I'm sure this has been done to death and I also expect some people will take exception to my calling our evening meal 'tea'.

But, please I'm just wondering if we're unusual; we eat at about 5.30pm mostly.

If you eat much later in the evening, how does that effect your children's bed times?

Absolutely no 'set' time - in an ideal world we would all eat together at 6.30pm but it seems to vary every day according to activities/whether DH is around or not (works away from home a lot)/if I want to go to the gym - not very often ! Last night I was a very disorganised mummy and DS (9) and I didn't eat until 8.45pm.

about 5.30, all eat together generally as me & dh both work from home in the evenings so prefer to have already eaten before dc's go to bed. if dh is late back, i eat with the kids and leave his in oven to dry out keep warm.

We have a similar pattern to a lot of you on the thread. :)

dds tend to eat around 5.30. The contents of this meal depends on what they have done in the day, whether they have been at nursery/wraparound etc. e.g. last night they only had a tub of rice pudding each. dd1 had had a hot tea/snack at wraparound; dd2 had had a large hot lunch at nursery, and a sandwich type snack around 4 at nursery.

Other nights I will give them a more "proper" meal.

5.30 is too early for dh and me; some nights I am not even on my way home by then! So dh and I tend to eat together around 7.30-8pm. There has to be some flexibility e.g. if one of us is going out. dh finishes off the bed/bath routine while I prepare our meal and drink wine

Then we go through phases of trying to eat together but I do find it more stressful in the evening tbh. We do eat together several times per week (not just dinner/tea, other meals as well)

Around 8 o'clock, all together.

When dd was younger we ate at around half 6.

If I ate my evening meal at 5 o clock I would be raiding the cupboards again at 10.