Eating as a family??

[Skate]

How many of you out there regularly sit down to eat meals as a family?

Just been discussed on 'Phillip and Fern' and they were saying how awful it is that people don't do it enough anymore.

I agree that it's a great thing to do but it's just not logistically practical in our house. The kids (3.5 and 2) need to eat around 5.30 so I can deal with ds3 (4 weeks) after that then have time to bath the older two and get them into bed by 7.15ish. I certainly don't want to be eating my meal at 5.30 and dh isn't in from work till 6.45ish so we end up waiting till all the kids are in bed before attempting an interrupted meal together - that is valuable for us because it's our time to catch up and talk to each other which is hard to do when you've got 3 kids under 4. I think if we ate separately that would be bad for our relationship and that's not good for the kids either.

We try to eat with them on a Sunday when we have a Sunday lunch and perhaps on Saturday lunchtime we'll all have our sandwiches together. I cant' see it getting easier when kids go to school either because surely they'd need to eat their dinner before 7pm but if we waiting for dh, that's how late it would be.

Every day except weds, when me and dh have a grown up meal and a bottle of wine, and maybe on a weekend if we've got a babysitter or fancy a take-away. I do work, but obsessively plan meals that rely on a slow cooker or my oven timer so its usually cooked by the time we all get home. Thought eating together was really great until dd (1) started being really toddlerish all the time and throwing food and now I just crave a grown up meal-time! Lucky neither of us have a long hours work culture and dh likes eating early - I'd rather eat later but seems an OK sacrifice and stops me snacking...

Skate, you sound very similar to us. During the week we hardly ever eat as a family unfortunately. This is due to DH getting home from work late and the children just not being able hang on until he gets home. I try to get them their tea at around 5pm and they sit at the table together (I will join them with a coffee and have a chat to them while they eat - no telly allowed!!) DH and I will eat later so that we can have our time together too. At the weekend, things are different and we eat all our meals together, having a roast dinner usually on the Sunday.

All I remember about family dinners, which were a rule in our house, were (1) people hounding my brother to eat more (he was finicky) and (2) my dad shouting at me from the time I was 10 for not studying hard enough to get into Harvard. I love Julie Burchill's proclamations about family dinners being a load of cr*p. I'm so surprised to hear about that research, SofiaAmes. I plan to have family dinners, but they'll be discontinued if they turn into the excuse for strife that I remember from childhood.

Spot on Expatkat!

My memories of family meals are similar to those of Expatkat. We weren't allowed to speak at all so there was no discussion of the family's day. It was often a time where we'd be told off for misdemeanours and as we had to be silent we were unable to explain our actions.

Our house is too small for us to all fit around the table together but mealtimes are 1000 times nicer than the ones I remember as a child.

I guess that's what I loved about our family dinners...the conversation about the day. Not just me and my brother, but my parents talking about their day and their work.
We really don't have much strife at our meals because our children eat what we eat and they both eat everything. (well, ds isn't too fond of beer, and dd likes to pick rosemary stalks out of her pasta and hand them to me saying "disgusting")

I will try and track down the studies expatkat...there have been several of them. Ironically, one of them was of students at ivy leagues colleges (supposedly a sign of success) and found that the most commonly shared trait that they had was having grown up in families with family dinners.

If I'd had 2 professors as parents I'd have loved family dinners too, SA. They probably stirred up lots of good debates/discussions, in addition to talking about the day-to-day stuff.

Sometimes I read to the children if I don't want to eat at the same time - if they are a bit argumentative after school it can work quite well as they can't squabble at the same time. When dh is home (rarely) he likes us all sitting eating together but my dream evening would be sitting on the sofa with kids out of the way eating in front of TV! At least they've learnt good table manners so we can take them anywhere without people writing to newspapers to request kids be banned from restaurants!!

I wonder if my new practise of us all sitting down to dinner together is counteracted by the biscuits I give ds to eke him out until his dad gets home? I have noticed an improved eating of vegetables when we all eat together.

We don't regularly sit down to eat meals together. I try to feed DS aroun 5 or 5:30 and I eat with my hubby around 7:30. What we can manage is breakfast and sometimes lunches together on weekends which is v nice. I think as DS gets older and eats more adventurously then it might be more possible.

At weekend we eat lunch and dinner at the table as a family together, hubby does breakfast whilst I do other jobs. During the week I eat with the children at 5.00 pm, its an early meal but im hungry by then so it suits me.........they says its good to eat early anyway because it gives your body time to digest everything before it goes to sleep, hence your body is not working whilst its asleep. Hubby eats his alone when he comes in, either before or after he has said goodnight to the children and read them a story. It works for us. The rule in my house is that I only cook one dinner a night and everyone eats it.

We eat breakfast pretty much together every morning, and definitely at the weekends, I always eat lunch with thte children, and we eat a family meal most evenings - Friday nights dh and and I often have something 'nice' later on but we all sit down at the table together. And if dh has a meeting in 'town' (half an hour away) over kids teatime /bedtime (about once a fortnight) he brings home a take away for us!

When I was a child mealtimes together were a really good chance to catch up with what everyone was up to (there are 6 kids in my family) and we all got to talk about our day. Dh never had family meals except Sunday Lunch at his Grandmas (which his Dad never went to) as his parents never talked, and he is even keener on the idea of family meal times than I am.

We are lucky that he gets home at about 5.30 (but he does work later on in the evening) - the only thing that disturbs family mealtimes is an urgent call out for him, but that happens once in a blue moon.