Do you eat meals with your dc?

[CloudAtlas]

Mine are still very small, oldest is 2.2, and I don't normally eat meals with them during the week. I don't fancy what they eat for lunch, and if they're having something like salmon, it seems a bit decadent for me to have the same iykwim. I tend to grab a cheese sandwich or toast when they go down for their sleep. They eat their dinner at 5pm, OH not back from work until much later so we eat together then.
Been thinking about it, and think I should make more of an effort to eat lunch with them.

What do you do?

Actually not all children need 12 hours sleep, in the same way that not all adults need 8 hours (or whatever). They are all very dfferent and have varying needs. And the amount of sleep they need will vary as the child grows older.

If my child was in bed at 6:30pm she would not see her daddy. She'd also be awake by 6am at the latest. Neither of these are things I desire for my child or for us.

Excuse me ???

How did the question
'FGS why did you have children if you want rid of them by 6:30 every day'

Become ..
Do really think people whose children go to bed early should not have had children?
???????????????????

No I don't think they shouldn't have had children. I do think that some of us parents should get a bit less anal about bedtimes, about "grownups-only" times, and realise that a) many fathers would feel much more involved with their little children if the children were not in bed before/immediately after Daddy gets home
b) Children learn by being with their parents, being part of the family dynamic. They learn larger vocabularies, consideration, family participation by being up a LITTLE later in the evenings, when the family are all together.

I do realise that quite a few parents would find it harder to concentrate on 'stenders/corrie/emmerdale or whatever if the LOs were still up, but it depends where your priorities lie, doesn't it?

Thanks Hula, quite.

Yes, of course it's mostly about behaviour. I don't really need that pointed out to me.

And all I'm saying is that the method you have been championing doesn't necessarily work and doesn't necessarily create a fussy eater , and please stop being so insistent that it will given time.

My children go to bed in stages, youngest first she does get 2hrs play with her dad which she wouldn't get if we were sat down eating, at that time. Then so on and so on by 830 they are all in bed, as they get older there bedtimes will be extended to reasonable times not in rush to get them to bed but they are just tired and get irratable if they up to late

OH GOD its all gone a bit nasty hasnt it. The original poster only wondered what everyone else dis at mealtimes!!

Exactly what time families choose to eat and put kids to bed is up to them but I do agree that spending time together as a family eating or otherwise in this country is becoming increasingly rare and that is worrying. Personally when I chose to have children it didn't occur to me that I would be able or wish to carry on living my life the same way that I did before. I wanted to become part of a FAMILY and enjoy being a family. For me eating together is a big part of that. Yes, dp and I still have speical meals together but most of the time is time spent together wiht the dcs. Forget the eating bit, how else do children find out about the adult world? And learn to have conversations? I'm finding that increasingly as I go to other people's houses the children are sent away to watch telly or play computer games or whatever and I think this is really sad. Of course children should play on their own and have some amount of independence as they get older but it's also nice to be with them.

hazy memory coming back

hurricane.... food.... not worth arguing....

I think I have actually said several times MErcy that it doesn't always work and certainly not overnight. But it is a good idea where possible. And it does generally work given enough time.

I think increasingly parents expect instant results a la Gina Ford and Supernanny. It takes years of encouragement for a child to become a good reader or able to play nicely with his or her siblings or to be a competent swimmer. Some children never manage it but there aren't many parents who throw their hands up in despari and say, 'Oh my child can't swim so I'll stop taking him to the pool or oh my child can't play nicely so I won't let him play with other children'.

If you agree that food refusal is largely about control and behaviour then of course it's changeable.

pointydog, shall I give up then?!

It has turned into a bit of amateur psychologist smug-fest tbh.

DH works nights, I work in the day (7-4) so we all eat at 4.30. DH will have picked up DS at 3.15 and dd is at home around the same time. This is the perfect time for us, as the children are hungry and DH goes to work at 8, therefore he doesn't want to eat 10 mins before he leaves.
I am a fussy eater. It is horrible, for the longest time, I would lie to my kids and say I loved X so much I had already eaten it. My kids now know that their mam is useless with food, BUT, they are not allowed to get away with it. I was allowed to leave what I didn't like, and now the phobias are so all consuming that if one of you were to invite my partner and I over for supper, It would be my worst nightmare, and I would have panic attacks for days.

Clumsymummy by posing the question 'why did you have children then?' opens up a potential line of argument that people whose children go to bed early shouldn't have bothered having them.

I'm sure to know that.

And I'm sure you don't really believe that. Which is why it seems such a stupendously stupid thing to say.

I'm sure what you meant was what you explained later about your belief in prioritising family time, and in the evening if necessary.

It may pay you to consider that this is a valid view and way to live your life, but that others prioritse different things for differnt rasons and their families are just as balnaced and as happy as yours albeit differnt, and to challenge their rasond for therefore having children spiteful, unecssary and not terribly intelligent.

Try to express your views without quite such condemnation of those who do differently.

Just a suggestion.

And I didn't mean to patronise you when I was saying that food fussiness and food refusal is very often more about behaviour and control than taste. You may know this but many parents don't. Many, many parents give up on introducing new foods to their kids or re-introducing them because they think their child is naturally fussy and there's nothing they can do about it. Most children are naturally wary of new foods and new tastes but that's not the same thing as being naturally fussy.

I don't think I'm being smug. I'm proud of my kids' eating habits and I'm proud of the way that dp and I have gone about meal times. But its absolutely not that my kids are just naturally great eaters or that we're perfect in any way. We've had difficulties with our kids eating habits and still do but we're quite aware of being almost entirely responsible for our childrens eating habits and that's something we take seriously.

yes, give up now and run like the wind.

"Try to express your views without quite such condemnation of those who do differently"

Yes Miss, Sorry Miss !!

(Just wondering who died and put StillWaters in charge)

As I said, just a suggestion....

StillWaters, you seem to bed the only one affronted by my comment. It was just a comment, why have kids if one doesn't want to spend time with them.

Sorry if I hit a nerve.

Of course, calling me spiteful and unintelligent is fine, isn't it? Perhaps you should be less judgemental.

Just a suggestion.

Off now to have a lovely meal with my family.

dh and i have breakfast with ds (18 months), only because dh goes into work a little later now but ends up leaving a lot later (normally home around 9pm). i also have lunch with ds, but often will sit with him for dinner but not eat as he has dinner at around 6pm and i'm just not hungry then (pg too making me eat at odd times).

i do find that ds eats better when i am eating the same sort of thing as him - ie cereal if he has cereal or sandwich / cheese on toast sort of thing for lunch if he has it. otherwise he just wants whats on my plate and not his (if i am having toast and he is having cereal for instance).

for dinner he generally has the same things as i do although chopped up much smaller , if i cook for myself if dh is stuck at work, otherwise he has a proper meal that i would cook for myself.

at the weekends we all eat breakfast and lunch together and all sit together when ds has dinner, then dh and i enjoy being able to have dinner together on our own later on in the evening - some us time.

i give a snack mid afternoon to get ds through to 6ish for dinner otherwise he has dinner really early and is then hungry yet again before bed at around 730. it's what works for us at the moment tbh

Clumsymum is right even if her wording was probably a fraction too aggressive for some posters.

English parents put children to bed FAR too early (hence the endless threads about children getting up too early...). And it isn't true that "continental" children all have siestas - in my daughter's class of just three year olds, nearly all of them have given up having siestas bar the odd nap in a pushchair, and the very earliest any one of them goes to bed is 8.30 pm (school starts at 9 am). And this is a class of very mixed nationalities, not just French children.

It's incredibly important that children eat their evening meal with both their parents wherever possible.

I too can't help thinking the British 7pm bedtime thing is a bit of an obsession - one that doesn't always work. ds1 is 2.8, wakes/gets up between 7 and 8, has NO nap (occasionally when we are out and about he might have a quick snooze in the pushchair) and getting him to bed before 8pm is invariably futile. We've moved it forward a tiny bit since he started at kindergarten last week, but all it means is he's reliably off to sleep at 8.30 instead of 9. Rather that than a 5am start. It also has the advantage of meaning we can usually fit a family evening meal in (sometimes, e.g. tonight, ds1 has his supper first and we eat once he's in bed). And I do think that's important.

'school starts at 9am'
but it doesn't in this country so an 8.30pm bedtime might mean later getting up
I don't think I'm doing anything outrageous when I put my kids to bed at 7pm because they sleep. They wake up at 6.30am (an ideal time for school and nursery) and so far no sleep problems
So don't European countries have as many sleep problems? There seems an awful lot of literature written by non British writers on the subject....

ah Berolin proves my point 'gets up between 7 and 8' - so how will an 8am wake up work with a school run?

dooley1 - I don't think there is a national school starting time anywhere... my daughter's school starts at 9 am, my younger stepson's at 8.30 am, my elder stepson at 8am... when I was a little girl at school in England we started at 9 am.

My daughter often gets up at 8 am for school at 9 am - what's the problem with that?