My DS aged 16 won't eat at table with us any more

[grownupbabes]

We have always eaten together at the table for every meal. In fact, food has always been a key part of our family life - cooking it, talking about it, sharing it. But now DS is not wanting to eat with us anymore. He says he just wants to "graze" or as he puts it, "go ad hoc", helping himself to random bits and left overs, and refusing to sit at the table for meals.

I've heard some families don't eat together, but for me it is just an incomprehensible lifestyle change. I am really worried.
Is this normal for a 16yo. Should I leave him alone and hope it will change after a while, or should I insist that he sit down with us and be sociable and engage with the family and share our food together?

Ivykaty44 on Thu 26-Feb-09 21:23:43
"Yes living together and give and take, compromising to get on together - is far better way to go than - you pay the bills they do it your way!!"

It's not about control freakery, Ivykaty, it's about two things:

Money in this family is limited. We cannot afford to provide separate meals, when cooking one batch is so much more economical. If my children want to do something more expensive, then the funding is going to have to come from somewhere. Atm they are too young to hold down a job, so I just tell them we can't afford it. When they get older, they have the option of taking a weekend job to fund it.

Secondly. The work. I think it is fair that if you are living in a family and are nearly adult, you try to either help out with the work (cooking etc) or if you still expect to be waited on hand and foot, you try to create as little work as possible.
I have limited energy. If I have to cook several meals, or carry home large amounts of extra food from the shops (no car) I would get very tired. If teens want something extra, then it seems reasonable that they should help with it.

Of course while they are small, I have control over the money: an 8yo can't budget, we'd be on the street. When they are older, I can't see us getting any richer, and more money will be needed to supply teenage needs, so the budgetting will need to get tighter.

It's not control freakery- it's known as real life.

ivykat - atr you being deliberately obtuse or just selective with your passive aggressive little . She usedthe wrong word but your comments imply criticism of everyone who thinks that to insist that a teenager occasionally beexpected to sit in on a family meal is perfectly reasonable. You called it a dictatorship in fact.
And then you get all sniffy and superior about how "its a shame that you have a DC who would laugh at other peoples comment though"
Picesmoon didn't say her children would laugh at your comments. She said they would laugh at how ridiculous your interpretation of their home life was. Which I think is far enough.

If dh is kind enough to shop and cook a meal, I will sit down when it's served and eat it, making apprecative comments. This isn't called a dictatorship, it's manners. Not just a way of controlling teenagers, it's how we all behave. Showing appreciation for someone who works for you.

I realise that teenagers will be rather less forthcoming on the appreciative comments, and that one shouldn't take offence at normal teen grumpiness, but that is no reason for them to treat their parents like unpaid skivvies.

Why would anyone want to eat when they weren't hungry? Surely we all eat when we want to not just because it's "served" at a set time? My parents weren't controlling over what I ate or at what time, from the age of about 13 I made my own meals when I was hungry. Mostly that was soon after school, before my dad was home from work and he would eat later on. Strangely enough it didn't make us less close or adversely affect us at all. I think the opposite would be true actually.

I agree with Coldtits.

Why is there an seeming obsession to force "family" meals onto people that don't want them? Surely the whole point is that it's voluntary and not forced? Defeats the object otherwise no?

Family meals are incredibly important to the family as a unit. They facilitate bonding and discussion - they encourage empathy and communication. They also teach huge lessons in terms of social skills and relationships.They allow issues to be raised and aired in a non confrontational setting. They are also an oppertunity to encourage sensible healthy eating in the form of balanced meals eaten atthe table allowing digestion and preventing really bad habits like eating without concentrating which messes up the brains signals to the gut to produce the correct digestive enzymes to allow the gut to function properly.Actually ideally having your teenager in the room as food is prepared sets the digestive juices in the mouth going which is very good for healthy digestion too. Settingthe table and clearing away encourage shared responsibilty. To say nothing of table manners. And developing the ability to converse socially
Thats all.

Can someone explain why saying to a child - luch is at 1.00 and expecting them to be there is "forced".
Actually I quite like this - labelling everything that our children have to do as acts of terrible assault on the fragile little disempowered form.
My son is forced to get up in the morning. With venom I insist that he eats his breakfast, viciously insist that he gets dressed before leavingthe house and with not a care for his humanitarian rights I expect him to have brushed his teeeth.
Stalinesque me .
I am off now to weep for the terrible life my boy is leading

Mine too, pag, mine too

**Picesmoon didn't say her children would laugh at your comments She said they would laugh at how ridiculous your interpretation of their home life was. Which I think is far enough.

would be very surprised if they do any differently when they hav DCs. The are not opressed!! I think they would laugh if I was to show them Ivykaty's comments!

I was tbh being difficult but you are balntantly also being difficult and fair is fair if you are going to try to belittle me by saying my comments would be laughed at then dont say you didn't say it.

Half the time dh does the cooking: then I sit down and eat when it's ready. If I never bothered to turn up, he would soon feel it wasn't worth cooking. And that would make it harder to provide cheap and nutritious food for the family. Because it is far more economical to cook in larger batches. Saves gas/electricity and helps you use up the more economical cuts of meat etc. Cooking three batches of spuds in the same evening is very uneconomical.

Half the week I cook, and then I have control over mealtimes etc.

When dcs grow older I shall expect them to cook once or twice a week and then they will have control. They will still need to stick to the budget (unless they can generate extra income), but I shall certainly be there to praise their efforts.

So much for the practical side.

I have to add that I still remember family mealtimes as the great moment of the day. As a teenager, if I ever got into a sticky situation, I would whisper to myself "this won't last forever, soon it will be over and you will be at home sitting at the dinner table with the others, and you are safe there, there can't be anywhere safer".

I hope my own children will enjoy them as much when they grow older as they do now (at 8 and 12). It's the time when we joke and laugh and make plans and everybody gets the chance to offload about their day.

Thank you for your support everyone-I am glad that people understood my point.

'Surely we all eat when we want to not just because it's "served" at a set time? My parents weren't controlling over what I ate or at what time, from the age of about 13 I made my own meals when I was hungry. Mostly that was soon after school, before my dad was home from work and he would eat later on'

I think that this is absolutely unworkable unless you have pots of money! My shopping is already done. For example I have a chicken to roast for Sunday and then on Monday I will use what is left over, probably with a risotto and the bones will then be boiled up for stock and made into soup. If they come in hungry and want to cook their own meal JodieO I fail to see what they could eat, unless they have bought it, I need the cold chicken (there won't be a lot and it will possibly need to be stretched out with some bacon). I am making a quiche tonight with baked potato and salad-I suppose they could use the eggs and make an omelette earlier but I don't see the point and it is using more gas than necessary.
I am not forcing anyone to eat-DS2 has already said that he is eating out tonight.
It can only possibly work if you have a fridge and freezer stuffed full of convenience foods-I don't buy any and I am not going to buy any. If the DCs are so individual that they can't eat with the family they can buy their own! This is not controlling it is sheer common sense from someone on a budget who wants to eat in a healthy way!

Maybe I didn't phrase it very well Ivykate-perhaps I should have said 'I think that they would laugh about Ivykates comments about their mother being a controlling dictator'.

She said they would laugh at your comments about their home. She did not say that they would

"laugh at other people views or different ways"

which is what you turned her comments into and which is very very different.

It is very different! I think that a family live and compromise together. Having a pleasant home cooked meal tonight, at the end of the week, is not 'being forced to eat like a dog'!! Anyone who thinks that way must have a lot of other underlying issues.

Ivykate i like a family to be a family

if asking children to sit and eat with you is so 'controlling' then so be it

I would far rather we have this family time than all eat separately

positively 'unfriendly' IMO however it is dressed up!

My ds [16] does not eat at the table with us ..in fact we very rarely eat together as a family ...we are still a family tho and do our bonding over futurama and kerrang usually

I really don't know why I got drawn into this thread. The one thing that would really, really upset my DSs would be for me to say that I was going to stock the freezer and fridge with food but from now on they would have to get their own meals!!
I would be very interested to know, from those of you who eat different foods at different times, your menu for a week and how much food you end up throwing away?
I am at a loss to know what my DSs would cook unless they gave me a list a week in advance. For example if they decided they didn't want my meal they wanted to make a pizza, it would take them one and a half hours to make the dough before they started-I really can't see them getting very far with it. (and no I am not wasting money on a ready made one with too much salt, fat and additives-controlling or not they would have to buy their own!).

Hello everyone and thank you for your thoughts and very interesting points. I started this thread but have been away for a while for various reasons. So to update you:
My DS is now happily eating with us every meal.
Just in case it is relevant to anyone, the reason is that he is now HAPPY. This actually has nothing to do with me, the food, or the family. As it turns out he was really unhappy at school (which I didn't know) and it has taken a while to unravel this and resolve it. I think it is very interesting that in a family-meal orientated environment he chose this as a mode of silently expressing something else. I think there is probably something we can all learn here - which is that we mustn't get hung up on attributing our own hangups on our children's mental and family health, but look at what lies underneath.
Obviously, I think, if a child has a problem they will probably find it easiest to express in a context that has meaning to them - whatever that is, whether sport, school, food ... that is, by standing out against something that is either the norm/favourite, then it really SHOWS if they are suddenly against. As opposed to lets say, refusing to walk the dog, when you already know they don't like walking the dog...
So that is the end result for me. Thank you all for your help, and hope these comments might help you at some other time or in some other way.

ds learnt to use microwave to reheat his dinner up mind he also learnt to cook to roast spuds to die for but then do have younger dc as well ,but they eat dinner at 4pm so not always posssiale eat as family ,butwe are close as family i just acept he likes his own space and respect itohand ds is nearly 15,

I just had a peep at this thread and I'm so pleased that you have found out what was going on for your son And more than that, that he's happy again.

I don't know why anyone would think this was ok - although of course it might be normal!

One meal a day in our house where we all sit down together and chat including 15 yr old ds. Only real time we get him to spk without grunting. Its their talk time (him and his ds) and we all talk about our day. long may it continue.

My son is exactly the game..he grazes and runs!
We have decided on a simple compromise.. Sunday dinner is sacrosanct..he HAS to be there, the rest is optional. Several nights a week we don't do family meals anyway (usually 4/6 of us eat together) because of other commitments and I would far rather chat to him other times than have him glowering over the dinner table

That said I do refuse to let him out until I've SEEN him eat some fruit LOL. He thinks I'm nuts.. but in a friendly way

I think every family has different priorities but I think to say 'my rules til they leave home' is pretty strong.. compromise is essential with teens!

(I have 3 plus an autistic 11 yr old!)