Dinner time - with or without kids?

[Peachy92]

Do you prefer to have dinner with your kids or have yours after they've gone to bed?...

I agree with Ttfoot, I don’t want to be tied into strict “patterns” about food and meal times, I appreciate it’s difficult if you are a large family but although meals together are great, sometimes one of you might just not be hungry, or prefer a light meal or (before lockdown) someone might have a meeting to go to, a sports activity or club etc so it is hard to be ‘rigid’ about meal times. My DS (teenager) is now playing golf every evening & for his well being I think that is more important than insisting he eats with DH & I.

We usually don't have a great deal of choice during the week, dp doesn't get home until 7 so we eat after the kids . Now dp is at home we eat together some days, others we eat later. It depends on when we want to go out for a walk, what we're having, zoom chats etc. As with Tfoot we love having some flexibility and that's much easier now the he kids are just a bit older (4 and 6), when they were titchy they needed more routine. My parents working patterns meant we only ever ate all together at weekends and we've turned out okay!

General consensus says it's dictated by time restraints. As it was with us pre-lockdown. Now we can, we have tried dinner all together. In laws keep telling me how nice it must be to be able to enjoy a meal together... I disagree! I used to have fun feeding my son his dinner and then I would enjoy mine with DH after he had gone to bed. Trying to eat all at the same seems stressful, makes more mess and I'm sure my son eats LESS. I keep thinking I must be a bad mum to not want to eat as a family but it's not a flipping True Movie moment, it's a long winded pain in the backside IMO🤷🏼‍♀️

Always had it with kids. That was how I grew up. If my dad hadn't been able to make it home in time, mum would have eaten with us. Before we started school she sat down and had lunch with us every day. To her (and to me) it was about modelling social behaviour around the table. And though I do remember times when we argued or got told off, I also remember a lot of fun around the family dinner table; I remember it as a safe place, a focus for the whole family.

We ate with both 4 and 14 month old yesterday (at about 5! So early!) and it definitely helps them both eat better, especially the baby. He's obsessed with our food and as soon as he sees we've got something different to what he's got, he's desperate for it. So yesterday when we all had the same, it worked really well and he ate a good portion of something I don't think he would've bothered with had we just been sat with him feeding him.

DH works long hours so we often don't have dinner until 7.30pm/8pm plus DS has his at 5pm which is too early for us anyway. At the moment we all have lunch together. But once DH returns to the office we'll be back to only eating together for lunch at weekends.

DS is 13 months, eats before 5pm and goes to bed at 6.30. I’m not eating at 5pm as I’ll be wanting another meal at 9pm.
So we put him to bed and eat afterwards in peace at about 7ish.
I generally have my breakfast with him and we eat together for lunch on weekends and during the week sometimes at the moment, work permitting.
My family only ever ate together on Sundays when I was growing up and I’m not a barbarian.

In principle, I really like the idea of us all eating together but it just doesn't work for our schedules. Both kids are early birds and we don't want to eat dinner at 5pm. When working and commuting, only one of us is at home by then anyway