Do you eat dinner with your children?

[Gillian76]

Until now we normally feed the children around 5 and have our own dinner later. I have been reading a really interesting book about children's eating habits and the author is quite adamant that children should eat with their parents if they are to learn good eating habits.

Do you do this? How do you manage?

And I'd hate to eat my dinner at 5.30 - I'd feel a real hick

aloha, same here. The only exception is Sunday when we do all eat Sunday dinner together and family members come round. Occasionally Saturday if we are out for the day but usually only Sundays. My dh isn't even home before 7pm most nights and the children are fed, bathed and ready for bed by then!

heh heh Aloha, you'd have to have a pile of bread and butter on the side and wash it down with a mug of sweet tea too.

Mmmmm...bread and butter....
(trouble with eating fashionably late...the grazing...)

Try snacking on some thing healthy at the kids tea time then eating later with dh/dp. I do it if i am desperate for quality time with dh once dd has gone to bed.

I always eat with the kids at about 6 at the table. My DH does not get back until after 7 so his goes into the oven for him. At the weekends we always eat together except when DH and I have a chinese takeaway which is left for the occasions when the kids are in bed early. Not very often! I am an early bird for food and could never wait until later. I always eat my lunch at 12 even if at work.

oh aloha, I couldn't have put it better, oh but the guilt, the guilt. They'll grow up to be delinquents don't you know....

Yes,then I eat dinner agian later with DP, that s why I weigh 11 stone, dop

I know KR, they'll be hanging round the chippy looking like Vicky Pollard & her male equivalent.

yeah but no but yeah well never mind.

hm... I eat with dd all meals and continue snacking in the evening! (8ish, 12ish & 5ish). I'm a single mum so can't really have "family meals" but I do think it's important to at least sit with her - esp as she's going through a phase of just being bored in the high chair & wanting to get down asap, ie if I wasn't sitting with her it would be even harder to keep her there!

I have a boyf though, and so far, when he comes over mid week (it's usually after dd's in bed) I'll eat less at dd's teatime and then eat with him when he gets here (usually a takeaway - i agree with whoever it was who said she wants everything done & dusted so you can just relax in the evenings)! If he's here at the weekend he eats with us - except breakfast because he's still in bed!
Interested though that so many of you see eating with your dh/dp as being important quality time together. I find it a bit of a pain tbh, would rather get on with doing other stuff together. (Recently boyf is trying to eat before he gets to mine because he's starving & grumpy by the time he gets here, so dinner isn't always a happy affair anyway!)
But then he is just my boyf who I see 2 or 3 times a week rather than a dh/dp who needs dinner every day!

Lizita you and your dd are a family, it doesn't need to have a dp/dh to make it so! Please don't sell yourself short.

DH works shifts so we eat together as often as that allows us to. When dst were younger (they are 3 1/2) they obviously ate separately as dinner was too late at 6/6.30 for them. But I have noticed, in the past year or so that we have been eating together at the table dst will eat more varied things that they wouldn't touch previously. They do go through picky stages, particularly dst2 but this lessens when we are together so I choose meals on those days that I want them to eat in full. If you get my meaning by that!

Dst2 wouldn't touch fish until he saw us all eating it and now he loves it.

Twoifbysea, i know we're a family, i wasn't really thinking of a dp/dh making us a family, more that there's just 2 of us instead of a few. There were 5 in my family (inc my parents) growing up so me and dd's meals feel very small in comparison!

I now give my dd (33 mths) a snack at 4pm and delay her dinner( and infact her bedtime prev 7pm now 7.45pm) so we can all enjoy dinner together
I prepare her a slightly different meal some nights, but what I've noticed is she now eats salad items which she never would, since we've had an open table.
We all chat and giggle and the whole experience is much more of a family occasion.
Wholly recommend
Disclaimer have only read 1st few msgs on this thread

Dd has started to eat a wider selection of food since i have started to sit and eat with her.

Lizita, I completely understand.
I think it was aloha, who was one of the first to say that she found it a chore, sometimes.
And that she loved them being in bed, and time with her dh, for some wine.

And I completely understood her.
We sometimes put ds to bed early & eat on our own, with wine. But not very often.

But often, even though I LOVE mealtimes, I also hate them in that I just want to eat my dinner in peace, without feeding ds.
Infact, (moaning old min, that I am) I often complain to my mum about not wanting to actually feed ds.

Yeah, i used to always eat in front of the tv on my own (or with flat mates) after i left home and I really miss that. I hate eating at the table, (I've always had anxieties going to someone's house for dinner for some reason, and although I don't feel anxious when eating at home, i prefer to have something other than my dinner to focus on...sounds pathetic...) but as i said, i think it is good for dd - and i don't want her to get into the habit of wanting to eat in front of the tv herself!

When my parents are here my favourite time is everyone around our enormous solid wood dining table (with crappy unmatching chairs!) eating my mum's dreadful cooking all talking at once, with ds sitting in his booster seat at the head of the table and eating his own weight in food.

we dont eat with ds becasue he goes to bed at 6pm and we dont get hungry untill about 7-8pm but when hes older we will

Perfect solution! - eat twice - once with kids at 5pm and again with DH after 8pm. So I'm a bit tubbier than I used to be.....

We had dinner together at 6; I found with a snack mid-afternoon dc could just manage this.

And then dh and I had a quiet cup of tea in the evening for that adult winding down moment.