DD's friends staying over mealtimes when not eating with us

[fessmess]

Just want to check what you guys think of this. My dd (15) thinks it's perfectly fine for friends who aren't staying for dinner (either we don't have enough or they're having dinner at home) to sit in our lounge or even at the table with us whilst we eat. Now, to me this is the height of bad manners and this would NEVER have happened when I was a kid. My dd says "nowadays people don't worry about this."

Am I alone in this? To clarify I am not about to change my rules and non-dinner guests will have to leave.

I would hate that too OP. I would always leave at meal times unless invited in advance.

I often slow cook dinner whilst I am at work, if my kids start inviting extras then there won't be enough to go round. What if it is something with a specific portion like chicken breasts wrapped in bacon, do you start cutting them in half?
I have a friend who calls in after school often with her son and doesn't leave so I have to offer to cook for her child too. This is once a week, twice sometimes. Recently I had just enough to go round and had to go to the local shop to get more just not to be rude and not offer them a meal. I had said, oh I better cook some dinnner for my poor kids and she still didn't take the hint and offer to get going.

I think also that even if you are a go with the flow, open house type person, guests should at least be polite.

DD has a friend round at the moment so I have invited her to stay and eat. I have now changed what I was planning to cook and will do a vegetable pasta dish instead. If she hadn't wanted to eat with us, I would have just given DD her meal for eat in the other room with her friend and excused her from eating at the dining table. They are revising though!
We are quite relaxed about mealtime rules and don't always eat together - partly because DH works shifts and partly because the DC do have busy lives (different activities at different times etc.).

My Mum was always like you OP. Friends either ate with us or went home. She did make an exception once for a friend who was supposed to eat with us but decided he didn't like the look of her lasagne and refused anything else so was allowed to watch neighbours while we ate.

It wasn't the norm though, other people's parents were more relaxed about that type of thing.

It is really interesting to see everyone's different ways of doing things. Agree with the Kate Fox remark...

Im in my 20's op and i agree with you. I personally would excuse my self if someone started cooking a meal and i wasn't invited.
a) because id hate to be an imposition and make the host feel awkward if they couldn't afford the extra food.
b) id find it awkward to sit and watch people eat.
C) id find it even more awkward to sit and watch tv whilst others are having food.
I cant offer any advice as to how to deal with the situation at hand as my daughters 8 weeks old.
I think the

I think it would be good manners for these teenagers to see that a meal was being served and they would leave. If invited to stay then fine although hanging about a friend's house a lot around tea time hoping for a meal isn't really acceptable. So tell your DD her friends are to leave at mealtimes unless invited to stay. I think sitting in the lounge or at the table while the family is eating isn't really the norm.

Can't they just sit at the table and have a drink and join in the chat? That's what my kids friends would do.

I would find it very awkward to eat and not feed everyone in the house. We rarely have people over though. I think the issue of your daughter refusing to do what you ask is out of order though. Headstrong usually means rude and defiant in my book.

Yes, I don't know about the food thing, but any teenager who refused to leave when I asked them to would not be coming back.

Sometimes DS2's mate who lives a few doors down goes and gets his dinner and brings it back to eat with us.

That's really sweet Sparkling, shows he enjoys the company and atmosphere in your house.

My son has often gone round to a friends house after eating at home and found friend hadn't eaten yet. When meal time came he would sit and chat with family. Although I wouldn't put it past him to eat a second dinner! Slightly older than yours though. They would be going out later.

He is a bit like my third child year. His Mum is a very good cook so I don't blame him.

The thing is, who made the rules when it comes to this??

A pp said 'it's bad manners to do such and such' and reeled of a few examples. But who says? Who is going to tell you off if you don't do the right thing?

There is no law/code/rule book when it comes to this kind of stuff. Nobody should tell another person it's 'bad manners' when it isn't necessarily bad manners in someone else's house.

Anyway, I know which kind of house I would prefer.

Rude, sullen teenagers on the other hand are very annoying, but afaic a different problem, unrelated to whether they eat with you or not.

You have to not care what others think and do what you want. As always.

OP I am wondering why the girls are sullen to you. Have you got to know them at all? Yes they should have left when you sent them away, but I don't see why you had to send them away. Homework is for your DD to organise- at 15 she can sort herself out. DD could have eaten later when her friends had gone.

Why the insistence on every meal being a formal sit down one with all the family? You do sound inflexible and inhospitable. I would rather have a happy house and some dirty plates upstairs than one full of seething resentment.

Exactly.

You don't have to do the sit round the table and talk about your day seven days a week. Your family won't fall apart if you don't do this occasionally you know.

It really, really won't.

But the point really isn't whether OP's preferences or rules in her own house are right or not. This is how she prefers things done.

OP This is your house and your dc, and if this is the way you want things, fine. But you need to find a way that works and not allow your DDs friends to overstep your boundaries.

I'm with you op. Very rude of the girls to stay whilst the family is eating.

It's just a meal, it's just eating. I can't get all het up.

I'm over 50, too, and my DCs are now adults. When they were living with us, if they had friends who were still there at dinner time, we would ask them to join us. But if they didn't want to eat, we did not expect them to leave. They would either sit with us or wait in another room watching TV. This actually happened fairly often because we tended to eat a bit later than other families. Also I am in the US South, and it's not really the done thing to ask visitors to leave your house.

Just to add, I can completely understand being so cross at the rudeness of the girls that you couldn't speak for fear of what you might say! But, for that reason you need to decide where your line is and what you are going to say or do if someone crosses it. I cannot remember if I have already recommended a book called WHERE TO DRAW THE LINE - setting healthy boundaries in everyday life (or something) by Anne Katherine. I've just read it (twice in a row to make sure I retained some of it!) and it helped me feel confident that I won't let people overstep again. If you can feel confident in that, then you will not get so cross because your brain keeps calmer as it knows you're not going to be allowing people to tramp over your boundaries. Don't know if that makes sense or not, but do try that book.