Do you eat the same food at the same time as your children - everyday?

[McDreamyGonagall]

This has got me thinking after reading another thread.

I really want to increase the amount of times we do this. DH prefers to eat later as he has quite a late lunch but I feel we are missing out on enjoying time with the children, teaching them manners etc.

We do eat with them 2 or 3 times a week, just not every night. Also I tend to cook something different on the nights we don't eat with them. What do you do?

Hurricane, my son eats anything, literally. I do appreciate that some children are very fussy. For some, food is an issue, because some children are naturally fussy.
We must appreciate that we are the lucky ones. I don't mean to sound smug. I sympathise with those who have fussy eaters.

hurricane
I know what you mean about fussy kids coming to eat at your house and how you must feel, but, some kids are just incredibly fussy. Dispite all my efforts my dd1 will only eat certain things. If she doesnt finish her meal for whatever reason i DO NOT allow to have anything else until the next meal. Not one thing! But she remains defiant and will go hungry - if she doesnt like something ive put on her plate (cabbage for example).
The way i see it, the fod is there, i have provided her with a meal (kidie type or adult type) and if she doesnt eat it (regardless of whether we sit together or not) she will be hungry until the next mealtime.
Also, my dh gets soo cross with her and mealtimes can be very unpleasant if she is grumbling and making a fuss over her food. So sometimes its nicer to eat seperately because i know she will make a fuss about what she been given. My sister cooks 3 seperate meals a day! Just so the 2 kids get what they like/want and then the parents eat seperately. Sod that though, i cook once and they like it or lump it!

Tis just semantics bigmouth. We all 'train'/ teach/ set an example for our kids all the time sometimes explicity and sometimes without even knowing it. I'm quite happy to admit that I very consciously train my kids how to cross a road nearly every time we go out by saying things like, 'Now we're at the curb so we stop and listen. Look to your left dds can you see anything coming? Do you think it's safe to cross?' Again, it winds me up when parents think that kids will somehow find their own way in life. They'll learn how to cross roads; they'll learn how to sit at the table; they'll learn how to eat a range of foods; they'll learn to cook; they'll learn to read etc. It is our job to teach them/train them/ show them these things or how will they learn?

DH is out very early on weekdays so the boys and I all eat breakfast together.

Ds2 and I have lunch together, DH and Ds1 have theirs at school and work.

All of us eat together in the evening. We all eat the same - I flatly refuse to muck about cooking 2 or 3 different meals.

I'd always thought that my children were picky eaters until we went on holiday with some friends last year. I couldn't believe how well my children ate compared with the other family's children, who only ate fishfingers, beans and chips the whole time we were away. Ours will eat pretty much everything we eat with just a few exceptions.

'I cannot stand it when people come to my house for dinner and I have to do some kind of crap food for their kids because the parents have not trained them to eat decently.'

Wow, what an accommodating hostess you are! I'm glad I'm not a guest at your house!

We eat out quite regularly I'd say - so obviously we eat with them then. On a week night, I quite like that dh can enjoy a meal in peace actually.

Have 3 boys of 6, 4 and 2.

We always eat together at the table everyday.
Dh works shifts so he will be with us for at least one meal a day.

We just about always eat the same thing too.
Far too much faff doing seperate meals.

And if your partner is in for 5 or 6pm then your damn lucky for 101 reasons, never mind eating dinner. Doing tea, bath, sorting book bags, clothes for next day, hoovering up, washing up etc etc is hectic stuff at a time of night when you've just had enough. If you've got an extra pair of hands then you are very lucky.

I agree with Hurricane, kids will only be fussy if you let them get away with it. My DD eats a good variety of home cooked food at nursery and through peer influence has learned to like things she initially refused at home, such as tomatoes, which she'll now happily eat anywhere. Interestingly, she seems to prefer their roasted fennel to mine . She does get things like pizza if I'm feeling lazy (but then we do live in Italy), but on the whole eats fairly varied and what I call grown up foods and would quite happily polish off a plate of Turkish mezes with pitta.

I'm quite looking forward to her eating with us when I finally get it together as I'd like to get her used to even more variety flavour-wise. At the mo' she gets a lot of freezable stuff either from our leftovers or cooked in batches especially for her, but it does tend to be a bit more samey than I'd like.

If I do a dinner party

food thread +cod=

you need to eat your greens cod, were you not trained?

tsk

Brangelina
"kids will only be fussy if you let them get away with it"
I disagree. I do not allow my daughter to be fussy but she is. As i said if she doesnt eat a meal, she will NOT be allowed anything else AT ALL until the next mealtime. So how do you explain that she continues to dislike certain things? There must be some things you do not like? I cant make her like stuff just because i said so.

dya knwo ther arelaods of hting si woudlnt eat till i was an adult nad lOVE Now

dd1 has refused broccoli for about 2 years or more, used to love it

dd2 eats it

for now

they all go through fussy stages and I have washed my hands of it all tbh

I don't think there's anything saintly about the way I'm bringing up my kids oliveoil. And don't get the wrong impression it's not all organic homemade butternut squash in my house. We even eat the odd ready meal but I don't feel guilty about the odd treat or fish and chips meal because I know my kids have a healthy attitude to food. They eat a range. They love fruit and vegetables. They know when they've had enough. To be honest I find it quite worrying that the idea of eating a reasonably healthy family meal together whenever possible (and preferably every night) is now considered to be unusual or angelic.

As for the being born fussy argument. Well, yes my kids didn't come out of the womb eating tomatoes and grated carrots (although as said they were exposed to a range of tastes in the womb and then through my breastmilk) and sometimes they do that thing where they say 'yuk' just because I've put something new on their plate. But we've provided role models to them and shown them that you need to try and keep trying new things and so on.

Babies are also born crying and born shitting in their pants and born unable to show empathy for otehrs and so on but these are not things that parents just accept as the way their kids are. So why is it different when it comes to food??

Accommodating for a dinner party maybe, but every day?

My stepson only ever ate one dish and my DP expected me to cook only that for him. I said bog off, it's not a restaurant and certainly no example to DD, explained the concept to DSS (which he accepted) and he now williingly eats a much more varied diet, including a lot of veg and a few spices. This apparently was an impossible sceanrio according to my DP.

I did beans on toast for my bestfriends son last week. I had prepared pasta for all of us. Then my ds said he wanted b-on-t aswell, even though he loves pasta. No real hardship is it.
I like to think of myself as atleast welcoming and accomodating.

how old are your children hurricane?

you do sound holier than thou tbh

all children are different, some eat, some don't

I would pander to a child at a playdate, absolutely, they are a guest in my house, same as anyone else

In the main, yes.

Breakfasts - one of us eats with ds's while the other one gets a shower.

Lunch - all eat sandwiches together at the weekend.

Tea - all eat tea together at 6pm (except Mon - Weds when dp works and I have the pleasure of looking after them on my own...). Ds's are 5 and 3 and get what we eat, apart from Wednesday which is their nominated day of the week where they get to choose and it's fishfingers EVERY WEEK. I can't eat fishfingers so I get to have something different. Other than that they eat what we eat and they either eat it or don't, but no stropping/fuss/eating anything else is allowed. Rules is rules...

ds & I nearly always eat the same food (dh chooses to eat crap)
ds will eat/try anything so it's never been a problem
thankfully eating out is easy too

So if you'd spent time and effort cooking a really lovely meal for adults and they said to you, 'Oh I don't like chicken with a sauce and I can't stand any kind of vegetable and where's the tomato sauce to put on the potatoes and can I have some ice cream now,' you'd run out and get the fishfingers on would you? I would think these adults were ignorant and rude. I don't see why it should be different for kids within reason.

Anyone with more than one child will probably tell you that how adventurous they are with food is nothing to do with how you approach it - I've got 3 and they are all different despite being weaned in exactly the same way and having the same food, in the same environment, put in front of them.

I'm with OO all the way here.

no I would check beforehand what they liked and cook accordingly

OR if they turned up and I had done meat and they were veggie, I would make something else

same with children

and mine do not like fishfingers, mores the pity, they are so quick

samehere
three boys
all weirdos

In answer to the op

unfortunately yes, drives us to distractions on the occasions we don't it is heaven!