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?

they are children, not adults

oh piss off

and it's you're

because i want to eat with my dh! why should he eat alone??

i do sit down with the children, have a chat, maybe have a small amount of what they're having (usually too tasty to leave alone!)

As I've said before. If you choose not to eat together as a family, if you let your kids eat on a sofa in front of the telly, if you do not encourage your kids to eat a range of foods, if you pander to your kids' requests and allow them alternatives and snacks instead of the healthy meal you have prepared for them, if you have separate food for your kids and the adults etc etc that's fine but don't be surprised if your kids do not develop a healthy attitude to food, end up overweight or malnourished, embarrass you at other people's houses etc. I'm not directing this at anyone in particular just amazed by how many parents complain that their kids don't eat fruit and vegetables (or anything) or eat properly just look at the other threads if you don't believe me and then do all of the things above.

If I did all of the things above then my kids certainly wouldn't eat the way they do.

OK so in some families the mother chooses to eat with her dh when the kids have gone to bed rather than with her dcs. Each to their own and if you're all happy with this and the kids eat well then great.

This is just not what I would want to happen in my own house for all sorts of reasons and that's up to me.

Research suggests that it is better for children if families eat together for all kinds of social and health reasons.

there's also an approach called 'being relaxed around food' where your children get to grow up without connecting food with control issues

besides, as many others have said on here, you can have a brother and sister who are brought up the same way and one will be a fabulous eater and the other incredibly picky and difficult. Tis the way.

i have 3 children coming over to play anyminute - wish i had a webcam at dinner time.

2 are twins. 1 eats anything and everything. the other is a fussy mite.

1 is their older sister. she eats very well but nothing with cheese on.

then there are my two. one will eat meat and leave the rest if let, the other will eat everything but the meat.

evidence in itself.

Foxy - you are sooooo right

Well thanks for all your honest replies and opinions. I think I will timetale in some family meals. We can't do it everynight, DH's job and DD early school start don't allow it to happen but we can certainly increase what we are currently doing.

This sparked off much more of a debate than I expected and alot of views have made really interesting reading.

If DH is late in he either finds a plated up meal in the microwave or a full blown uncleared up mess, with his meal still in the pans. Obviously he prefers the former, but clearing up is his job.

foxinsocks you've got it totally wrong if you think I'm controlling with food. What I'm saying is that the kinds of parents who worry about what their kids are eating, who prepare separate food for kids and adults, who give different food to different children etc are the ones who have issues with food and are likely to be creating a generation of faddy eaters with an unhealthy attitude to food. In my house food is not an issue. It's put on the table and the kids almost always eat it. They eat brilliantly actually and love fruit and vegetables. When they don't eat something or what's on their plate I take it away. We don't worry about it or criticise or make an issue of it because we don't need to. In my house meal times are usually pleasurable (give or take the odd normal family squabble) and food certainly is. My kids are not faddy at all and in my view this is mainly because we've set them a good example and made meal times fun.

amidaiwish - case proven

I think there is a sensible, well-mannered route that most people would take...but I suppose you can only judge on how you have been brought up and what is 'normal' for you. If my dd refused to eat food that was perfectly acceptable i.e she is not allergic to/its not gone of/horrifically burned etc, then she won't get anything else. All children will have some things that they don't like...I expect them to try everything before saying 'no thank you'....the idea of my dd saying yuk at someone elses table, or someone child doing that at mine makes my blood pressure rise. That isn't about being overly controlling...its about having good manners and realising that you cant always just open your mouth and say anything you want. People who don't learn that at home will learn it the hard way at school, or in the workplace when they discover (shock!) that sometimes you have to do things you are not that keen on because someone else wrote the rules......

hurricane - I think the food you've said you offer would be acceptable to virtually every child anyway.

I just think you have to be careful connecting the way you have dealt with food with the way your children have turned out.

I have done exactly the same with both my children - one is a brilliant eater who really will eat any meal given to him and the other one is VERY difficult and has great trouble eating the same food as the rest of us (though she always makes an effort).

It is just not as clear cut as some people think.

Agre notyummy but my worry is that increasingly (with the decline of family meal times, the rise of television watching etc) there are some children who will turn into adults and never develop a healthy relationship with food or good manners at the table.

Increasingly schools report not only that children don't know that their breakfast cereal is actually derived from crops but also don't know how to use knives and forks and are increasingly unable to sit down for a meal or have a conversation. This on top of the rise in obesity and children lacking in vitamins and minerals because they're not eating a suitable diet. How sad.

I don't know why everyone is so worried about breeding children who will eat every food put in front of them.

I certainly don't eat everything.

Yes, it's important to be polite. Yes, they will learn (eventually) that, on some occasions, it is better to eat the food, even if you don't like it, so as to not hurt your host's feelings.

Yes, I agree, it is very important to get them to TRY the food put in front of them and try new foods and different things.

One of my sister was a dreadfully fussy eater who now eats a better variety of food than me. I ate everything as a child but as an adult dislike quite a few foods. You cannot predict how they will turn out!

You'd be surprised foxinsocks. You'd think that foods like bread and pasta sauce would be acceptable to anyone but I've had children at my house who will only eat white bread (and have never even tried brown bread so automatically refuse it), not eat a pasta sauce (because it has mushrooms/ aubergines/ courgettes in it and they don't like these/ have never tried them), will not eat fruit salad because it has blueberries. In most cases that I've encountered children who won't eat sometimt it's actually because they've never tried it and are resistant to it because it's unfamiliar. Obviously there are some foods with very strong tastes that people either love or hate (marmite, broccoli ...) but this is not what we're talkinga bout here.

mine probably wouldn't eat a pasta sauce with courgettes/aubergines, thinking about it (and I wouldn't expect a child to eat a new food at my house).

I normally give visiting children familiar food like sausages or fish fingers (and chips and a few vegetables). It's just easier that way and you don't have to be conerned about them not eating your food!

Blimey, I wouldn't eat pasta sauce with aubergines or courgettes in it - I hate them both!

(have only skimmed the thread but agree with everything FIS and Oliveoil have probably said)

But this is what makes me despair suggesting that a tomato sauce with small chopped up courgettes/ mushrooms should be seen as unusual and 'new' to children is awful. And if children are not exposed to what I consider pretty basic food (you don't get more basic and important than tomatoes and vegetables) then how will they ever get used to it?

Sounds like, as I suspected, the problem is not fussy children so much as fussy adults who assume that their children will be as fussy as they are.

In families where parents give kids what they enjoy eating themselves then kids usually just eat it. Promise.

I usually eat the same food (different cereal to them as I can't stand Weetabix though - and different sandwich fillings at lunchtime) but dinner is almost always NOT at the same time as them - as I like to wait until DH is home from work and eat with him.

yes - if they are not actually in the house at tea time - hard shit. the dog gets it