Do you cook separate meals for you/dh and the kids?

[pinkwhistle]

Just wondering how many mumsnetters cook something for their children different to what the "grown ups" are having?

I know it is sometimes necessary to modify meals for very little ones, but ds is a bit fussy and also dd has certain allergies I have to be careful of, so I sometimes make one thing for them and something else for us! Maybe about twice a week...

I have a friend with a 6 yr old dd and 2 teenage ds's, and she regularly cooks 3 different things - one for her, one for dd and one for the boys!

Anyone else?

I was just about to write virtually the same post, www. I'd love it if we could all sit down together and eat at the same time but rarely do we manage it. I try to have lunch with ds, but he has his evening meal (tea? dinner? supper?) at around 5.30 and there's no way I would want to be eating then.

The irony is that if I ate what ds eats, I'd have a far healthier diet! He is fairly picky, but usually in a good way - not keen on the old fishfingers routine (although quite partial to a bite of bacon sandwich ) and loves pasta, veg, fruit, yogurt etc. Last night's dinner was pasta with spinach, tomato and cheese sauce, followed by a bowl of blueberries in yogurt. Three hours later mummy was eating ready-made chicken curry and half a packet of poppadoms...

Mostly we eat together. I might adapt, so if I'm making the spag bol, I'll take kids portions out at some stage because they don't like peppers, and I'll do their version on the next hob-ring - not that much hassle.

I serve them vegetables I know they like, but I also include one I know they won't like and insist they try one bit. DS now accepts this deal, that he'll try one bit of what he's determined to dislike and then have lots of what he likes. I heard somewhere that you have to serve a disliked food 22 times to a child before s/he will accept the taste so I think it's worth persevering.

I do that too Caligula - give them a small piece of what I know they don't like and insist they eat it. But I have to do it 22 times? Over any specific time period? I feel like I have given my ds2 broccoli 222 times and he still hates it!

oh Caligula - I heard the thing about serving disliked food, but I heard it was only 9 times.....22 times will probably take a couple of years

WWW - my ds1 has similarly bland taste - plain pasta, plain veg, mash, plain rice. Absolutely no homemade sauces or gravy.
But then, in contrast, the only meat he will eat unprocessed is chicken and only if cooked with lemon, olive oil and garlic.

Foe Sunday lunch we had roast lamb with garlic and rosemary on it, roast potatoes, carrots, broccoli and creamed leeks.
ds1 ate carrots, broccoli and roast potatoes.
ds2 ate a huge amount of lamb, emptied the gravy jug on it, loads of broccoli smothered in gravy and a few carrots.

My method for eating together in the week is to double/triple cook the other days. Because I only work 3 days that leaves me a day to either eat out or have something that won't readily freeze/reheat. Actually this week I've only frozen two meals because we are having pancakes tonight.

I also insist that DS tries something - because he will automatically say he doesn't like it but will quite often change his mind. I find this especially with seasonal fruit. We've been having lots of different fruit while DD has been weaned and he has said he doesn't like them when I know full well he used to eat them. Over the last few months he has tried and decided he likes blackberries, peaches (loves them), melon, papaya and mango.

LM - I know the feeling - I feel like I've given DS some foods hundreds and hundreds of times and find myself muttering about who the bloody hell made up this magic 22 number!

I think there are two issues here: 1) do you eat your meals with the kids and 2) do you cook the same things for them and you?
We don?t manage 1 very often, mainly because the younger 2 have tea at the childminder 3 days a week while I or DH fetches DS1 from school and he has something simple for his tea. And on days when we have them all at home one of us is working and not home till 6pm. But the kids eat at 4.30/5pm as MI says, way too early for my dinner. Hats off to all of you who do eat together in the week, but I think you must have different schedules from us. By 6.30pm on a weekday the children are usually ready for bed! We do eat together at the weekends tho, esp perhaps a big Sunday lunch.
For 2), emphatically yes, I always try to give us the same, eg stuff I can heat up later for me and DH like shepherd?s pie, lasagne, pasta with sauce, or we quite like sausages and (home-made) chicken nuggets too! (sorry moondog). My kids will eat anything, fruit and veg, spicy stuff etc (I know I?m lucky).
Recall with horror story of a friend of my mum?s who had a celebration where the adults had poached salmon and ?of course the kids had chicken nuggets? why??? My 3 would wolf down that salmon!
But I know a family where the children only seem to eat ?kids food?,diet of processed chicken, tinned spaghetti and potato shapes, foloowed by biscuits. Fine now and then, but every day? I once tried to serve the older son some veg with his chicken goujons I had made. Peas? don?t like em. Brocolli? ugh. Carrots very popular in our house) oh no. Baked beans? (gettign desperate here) won?t eat those. He ate the chicken though!
Don?t mean to sound smug btw, I do count my blessings with three children who eat and sleep so well.... sympathy to all of you with picky eaters, I think that?s a different issue from my processed food people.

we eat together at the weekend (lunches) and we always have breakfast together. We often go out for Sunday lunch en famille which is lovely and both girls have fantastic 'restaurant manners'

No, I rarely make Lottie what we eat.
She has tea at her nans or her grandads in the week as we're at work.
At weekends we have lunch together and that might be the same sort of thing but she has tea at 5 so we don't eat with ehr but do sit with her.
there's no way though that she'd eat steak and spinach and steamed veg, she might have a biut of veg but would be far hgappier with beans on toast, or the the like.

www I am still waiting to hear how anyone manages to eat together in the week...especially if you are both out at work. We have managed it occasionally but it is almost not worth the hassle - we put something to warm up in the oven on the timer, then I have it all ready on the table by 6pm (10 minutes after getting home), then I get stressed out because dh isn't home, start feeding ds2, dh arrives about 10 minutes later, ds1/ds2 are too tired to eat well....its not great!

Re the 'eat what you're given' approach: my ds's are not too bad but I wouldn't deliberately serve food they didn't like and expect them to eat it. I myself was a very fussy eater (very bland stuff only), while my brothers were 'eat anything' types, so while i often just had the bits of a meal I would eat, I also sometimse had a different thing cooked. I have to say from the child's point of view it is very stressful to be forced to eat something that makes you gag or feel sick, and personally I think there is a world of difference between a restricted but healthy diet and a junk food diet. I'd have gone hungry rather than eat something I hated, any day.

Did anyone here eat with their parents? We had 'supper' - which was emphatically NOT adult food (very 'nursery' orientated - spag bol, soups, fish fingers etc) and they most definitely had their own food later.

my memory is that we ate together - although oftne my dad was late (cause of many many rows) - but this was quite late, say 6.30/7pm, and my mum says that this only happened when we were quite a lot older (i.e. school age). She was a teacher and would cook after getting home.

Our schedule for when we are both working is this. Get in with the kids between 5.45 and 6. Get changed and have a meal on the table by 6.15 at the latest. Eat then play. Bath at 7 and in bed by 7.30 pm. So its fairly tight.

I'm convinced that my children would not make it through the night if they did not eat after 4.30 pm.

My first two children will eat most things and are always willing to try new things. So far so good. Child no. 3 is the fussiest, most stubborn eater ever. She's always been served up what we're having but will sit there for the whole meal and not touch a thing (how can you not touch anything out of a roast dinner ffs??). I don't give her anything else because it's perfectly good food, plus I'm a wicked old troll .

So Moondog, whilst I take what you're saying about fussy eaters, sometimes it really is the luck of the draw.

wow bozza that is a quick turnaround - and you get changed too! How do you get something cooked in 15 minutes when you're not even in the kitchen?
Our timetable is similar but we are aiming for 7pm bedtime which usually slips a little. It will be better when we can push it to 7.30 and at least have time to cook something fresh!

We all eat together, we all eat the same thing. (Well, ok, DS2 gets it second-hand, but whatever.)

I find DS1 can happily miss a meal here or there without problem, so if he doesn't feel like eating, he doesn't eat. Yes, he sometimes doesn't eat because what's on offer isn't something he wants. Tough. If he wants yogurt for afters, he has to eat a reasonable portion of the main course.

He's a really really non-fussy eater, at three. He's mad for a few kinds of veg, and will eat most veg, at least a bit. He sometimes says "eww, gross, I don't want to eat that", which is his perogative, but I'm not obliged to make another meal for him.

Often, when he's a bit fussy, it means he's coming down with a tummy bug, and it's best for him to just not eat now anyway.

Oh, DH tries to be home for 6:30. Dinner is on the table sometime between 6:30 and 7 (I'm a SAHM), whether DH is there or not. Bath at 7:30, up to bed at 8, asleep at 8:30. DS1 still naps in the afternoon, so we can run this late at night.

We used to always eat the main meal with my parents. My Dad worked shifts (6-2 and 2-10) and we used to come home from primary school at lunchtime and have the main meal together when he was on 2-10 and otherwise eat in the evening and take packed lunches. Think we had to have special dispensation from school for this.

The only reason I can manage to eat all together as a family is 1. because I work at home and 2. there's no daddy coming back from the office at 8 O'Clock!

Otherwise, I don't see how people manage it either unless Daddy happens to be a builder or in a job like that which finishes early. Unless children are older, of course.

Do kids do that anymore I wonder? I used to go home for lunch as well when I was a kid, but after a while got fed up of it because I missed my lunch hour play with my friends, so stopped doing it.

Well 15 minutes is enough for pasta for example, or for most veg. And getting changed only takes a couple of minutes so I'm there most of the time. And 15 mins is the minimum. Not sure how we'd do things if I worked any more days. I'm not saying its easy but I've been doing it for 3.5 years so am kind of used to it. I feel the kids would need something before bed and I would hate the thought of having to start again at 7.30 and then still have the ironing etc to start on.

It was important to my parents Caligula because otherwise we would not really see our Dad that week. He would collect us from school and walk us home and back again. Probably fairly enlightened for the '70s. I think his work pattern changed when I was older and so we went onto eating at 5.30 ish and stayed at school.

or would mummy have to be a builder too caligula?
seriously though, there's been lots of reference to 'we can manage becuase dh is home by 6 ' on this thread, but when do you lot all get home? Loads of us are at work too, so why this emphasis on when daddy can get home?

hah! bozza you're right about the 7.30 start againon tea and then the ironing... just described my evening!
We have doen the eve meal a few times, eg if I'm at home, no-one round to tea, time slips to 5.30pm and dh appears having made a special effort to be home early, i must say it's nicer not to have to cook again (even reheating food) at 7pm once everyone little is asleep!
But i do get hungry about 9pm then, don't you bozza? impressed with yr turnaround too!

I don't think anyone meant anything by it, elliot, just that people are giving their own experiences [confused emoticon].