HOW do you manage to all eat together, as a family?!?!

[tryingforbaba]

Me & DP have 1 x 18 month old daughter and another baby on the way.

One of my intentions as a parent is to all sit down together for family dinners. I think it's an important bonding time and important for building a healthy relationship with food.

Ideally I'd like to start this as early as now but it just doesn't seem to work out.

DD goes to bed at 7 and so has food around 530/6. Partner isn't home from work by then and if he is, he's not hungry.

I'm not either really but I try to sometimes sit down and eat with her.

Also DP likes to cooks for himself (very picky) and I don't always like the stuff he has.... it all just feels discombobulated. I also take work calls in the evening from 7-9 so reality of me cooking for everyone later (even if he'd eat it) would be unrealistic.

I am just wondering how your family makes it work .... when did you all start eating as a family? Do you think it's important at baby: toddler age?

Ps- I will generally cook at weekend something we all like and make sure that we have a family meal on a Sunday.

It is really hard when one person gets home later.

But to me there are so many implications here, mostly unintentional, things like cooking different food for the kids and adults, which doesn't encourage kids to explore and eat lots of things.
Things like eating being a social activity - most kids eat much better at a family table than on their own.
Things like bonding as a family, not just mum plus kids.

But t is also really hard becuase your dh doesn't eat with you anyway.

We ate dinner at 6 - 6:30. Sometimes that was pretty close to bed time, but it was better than me eating with kids at 5.
But we also put our kids down at 7:30-8, rather than 7, for the simple reason that we did not want to start the day at 6.

In the end you have to find somethign that works for you.
I love the idea from a PP that breakfats together becomes your thing instead of dinner together.

Breakfast is our family meal. We always sit down together for breakfast.

Some days I eat with the kids (5 and 2) around 5.30, some days my partner does too, other days the kids eat together and the grownups eat later. It just kinda works.

I tend to agree with this as mum to preschooler DC. We eat together at the table at weekends, in restaurants and at home, but during the week DC get their table time at nursery and when they get home at 5.30/6pm they have picky plates / bedtime snacks.

I imagine there will be an age where the timings work out for weekday dinners. For now we focus on weekends.

This wasn't something we did with pre schoolers, they needed to eat earlier (usually ate at childcare) so family mealtimes were just weekend. We eat dinner together every night and the table now though, pre teens, and have done since primary school.

At that age, for dinner, I think it probably doesn't matter that much, but try to do it whenever you do have time for a sit down meal - breakfast, lunch, weekend dinners, even if you just sit down at the table with a cup of tea or something.

Personally, we have always been late eaters. So eat sometime between 7-8pm and have at least since our youngest was a baby. We didn't finish work/get home until 5:30pm so eating before 7 just has never been realistic. We eat later as a family and have later bedtimes.

Same here

My husband leaves before 7 and gets home about 5.30 so no chance of all 3 of us eating any meals all together in the week.

My son and I (he's 3) have breakfast and lunch together at the table and I sit and chat to him while he eats his tea at 5ish and then my husband joins us when he gets home. We then eat dinner together at about 7 once our son is in bed.

We'll all have dinner together once he's old enough to be awake and eat at about 6.30/7!

At the weekend we all have breakfast and lunch together and stick to usual routine for evening meal as neither my husband and I want to eat at 5pm!

I think everyone has to be flexible to make family activities like this work. We have had dinner at 5pm every day for the last 7 years and have eaten huge numbers of fish fingers. If everyone tries to rigidly stick to their own preferences it won’t happen.

I don't understand how people manage it either. I have 20 mins to see DS (primary age) between getting home from work and getting him to bed so eating dinner together is impossible. It would also be far too early! We eat at 7-8ish usually so if I ate at 5pm I'd end up having two dinners.

We make sure we all eat together on a Sunday and eat earlier that day (and yes, I'll have a second dinner later!)

We only do a couple of times a week. I always imagined we'd do it but in reality I feed the kids early because they're starving after school and I don't want them to fill up on snacks. I do intermittent fasting fasting so eat at strange times. DH often eats late because of work.

We just do it at the weekend. Our child is at nursery and doesn’t want a full dinner as they have two cooked meals there. We don’t want to eat at 1800 as we have all only just got in and aren’t hungry. We still sit at the table, the toddler has apple/cheese/cucumber, we usually just have a drink and chat. My husband then does bath/bed whilst I cook and we eat around 2100.

Kids eat at 5.30-6pm. If DH is wfh he will break and join if he can. Otherwise, he eats later when he can. When he has been in the office he eats around 7.30-8pm.

I tend to eat with the kids, I have a bigger breakfast and a very minimal lunch to ensure I’m hungry!

I’m now a pro at meals which can be extremely flexible around my dh’s timetable but i prioritise kids having regular mealtime.

Our family dining is more successful at weekends tbh

The early bedtime is the problem for you. I generally aim for 6-6.30pm for dinner but depends when I finish work and do nursery pick up.

Even when youngest was a baby bath time time was usually after dinner maybe about 7pm and then down to bed about 7.30-8pm.

We all eat together at least 5 nights out of 7. On Mondays I have a group I go to, so the kids eat early and then me and DH eat later on, and then occasionally there will be another day in the week we don't eat together but it's rare. It helps that we mostly WFH, and DCs don't need to be up until 8am so can go to bed a bit later if our work day overruns. We also don't always all eat the same thing but I don't think it matters necessarily.

As someone who worked in early years, you can tell at lunchtimes and snack times which children eat together as a family and the ones who don't sit at a table and are on iPads etc. It also makes eating out at restaurants etc easier as the kids are used to sitting with adults and having a conversation over a meal etc, whereas the kids I know who don't do this aren't the best behaved when out ime.

Mine are grown now, from the time the oldest was 8 and the youngest 2, but we always had a later dinner time 7:30pm and bedtime 9pm for the DC, who got a substantial snack after school, to accommodate this. Before that, our nanny would feed them earlier but they still had later bedtimes so we could spend time with them in the evenings before bed.

I wouldn't call eating without a screen a "skill"!

We’ve always had mealtimes together from when the kids were in high chairs, and even when they had ‘tea’ at nursery/after school club. One of us would pick them up at 6pm and the other would get home and start cooking to eat at about 6.30. There was one night a week that we couldn’t make this work due to DH regular later meeting so I’d get the kids and we’d all meet at the local, good value Italian restaurant and just get a main course every Monday.

They’re tween & teen now and we still eat together - its the only time we’re together on weekday evenings these days (activities, homework, gaming etc) and I’m always so glad that family mealtimes are our habit

We compromise at about 6.30pm. Gradually you stretch the toddler meal times until thats acceptable. On nursery days we were getting home at 6pm anyway so that made sense. We prioritised the eating together ahead of lots of other factors.

There's lots of research that it isnt good for adults to be eating a big meal after 7pm anyway and too near to bed time so it works out well.

We do breakfast as our meal together, and our main meal of the day. Dinner tends to be snacky bits for the kids after school/work/when you're hungry. Works for us :)

Dinner between 6&6.30 since old enough to sit in a high chair. We prioritised eating together and despite lots of changes (I'm divorced and soon to remarry) we still eat dinner at 6.30, adult dc eat together if home too.

We all eat together at about 5.30. It’s more important to me that we all eat together rather than eating a bit later. I’m used to it now - I like my tea at that time! I just have a small lunch.
we started when they started eating meals and still do it now.

DH would get home about 5:30-6pm so we would eat at 6-6:30pm.

That has worked for us all the way through to now when the 3 kids are teenagers. Obviously there have been times when someone is stuck at work or has an evening commitment etc but whoever is in the house now sits down and eats.
We always did the same food (with some adaptation for spice etc) from when they were babies. It meant the kids were exposed to a wide range of foods from the very beginning rather than me making them 'kids food' and adults having something different. The kids have always seemed much less fussy than their friends, especially the ones that had a separate meal time and were given sausages and pasta all the time as that is what they liked and would eat quietly.

All of the kids teachers over the years have said how knowledgeable the kids are and how they can debate and discuss things like politics or current affairs and I think that it is partly down to the fact that we all sit down together with no electronics (unless someone needs to google something to prove a point!) and we do chat about stuff. We did used to allow 'The Week Junior' at the table as a means to discuss different topics.

Now that they are teenagers often mealtimes are the only time in a day during the week that I can guarantee all 5 of us sit down together in between being squirreled away in rooms revising for GCSEs and A Levels, extra curriculars and DH and I being out volunteering etc. I think because we always did it, it has been easier to keep it going (as opposed to a friends who teens eat alone in their room!)

Every family is different and I can only go off my experience and what I have observed from friends/family.

We eat dinner together around 6.30/7. Youngest is now 2 but have done so since eldest was a toddler. Will push back as they get a bit older. 2 year old in bed by 8/8.30 normally.

We made it work, because it was a priority for us.

DD goes to bed at 7 and so has food around 530/6

Our dc were rarely in bed that early

Partner isn't home from work by then

We prioritised getting home as soon as we could, and then both did work in the evening, after dc were in bed.

and if he is, he's not hungry.

That is habit. We all get used to eating when we usually eat. Gradually, as the dc got older and now we are child free again, we eat later, but, 20 years ago, I'd have been starving if I hadn't eaten by 6.30 - because that's what our bodies got used to.

Also DP likes to cooks for himself (very picky) and I don't always like the stuff he has....

That's a different issue. If you are both fussy, then that is something you need to work out together, perhaps being more open to trying different things and willing to accept it isn't your favourite tonight, but you'll eat it as someone has cooked for you.

I also take work calls in the evening from 7-9 so reality of me cooking for everyone later (even if he'd eat it) would be unrealistic.

So factor that in, and eat at an earlier time. If your dp genuinely can't be back in time, then he gets his warmed through later.