<p>“I don’t really understand how people don’t eat dinner together, unless kids are at ECs – when dinner is ready, I call everyone and we eat. How else would it work?”</p>
<p>Man! I almost want to say I don’t see how people DO eat together, although a few of you here are testimony that it can happen. It seems very challenging to me. It started when the kids were very young and it seemed unreasonable to have them wait until mom and dad could cook and eat; around 8. The babysitter fed them, we ate later. Then various clubs/sports/youth groups/theatre groups/community college classes/meetings conspired to distract us even after the sitter was gone.I don’t really understand how people don’t eat dinner together, unless kids are at ECs – when dinner is ready, I call everyone and we eat. How else would it work?tings, contrived to lots of "snacking/fast food, and rare cooked meals. I also have to say i am a pretty good cook, and used to enjoy cooking until I realized my family was spoiled and picky and i got fed up catering to whhat they each liked, and fielding complaints about what they didn’t like during the occasional family meals. So I think it’s really challenging to work during the day, come home and start cooking a meal I know my family will like…at 8:00 when we are all home. And of course each of us eats something while we are waiting, and no one is hungry …Still, I think it says something about the valuse and committment of a family when you make it happen.</p>
<p>Our rule is no TV at dinner. Broken for special events only.
My mom took the family dinner a step further.
As we all started getting married and/or leaving home she had pasta night once a week (usually Wed). She cooks pasta, lasagna, Italian sausage and meatballs. We take turns eating in shifts in her kitchen. My parents home is small but we all squeeze in. She kept it up through six added in-laws and 17 grandchildren. It was only in the last couple of years that she has now made it once a month.
My family is very close. My kids are close to their aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins. My mom is convinced pasta night is the glue that holds us together. We are all lucky enough to live in the same town.
Pasta night is famous with my friends and now my kids friends. If you get invited to a pasta night it is truly an honor.
There is alot of love to be shared during a meal together.</p>
<p>I grew up eating very, very late - it was often eight before my Dad came home and we always waited for him. Not only that I think he always read the afternoon paper and had a Martini first! Visiting friends were starved, but we were used to it, and generally had some sort of snack after school to tide us over. It helps that my kids really aren’t over extended, they have various school activities, but are always home by five.</p>
<p>I believe there are studies that show correlations between SAT scores and family dinners.</p>
<p>I believe that eating while watching TV is evil, so we do it whenever dh is out of town. :)</p>
<p>My H and I grew up eating dinner with our families and we enjoy doing so with our kids to this day.</p>
<p>Growing up we all ate lunch together too!! Dad was an MD: hospital rounds and actual house calls in morning, then home for lunch with the children of elementary school age, then afternoon office hours till 5:30ish followed by dinner avec la famille. At 6 it was back to the office for him and homework for us until 8:30. A little TV and off to bed!</p>
<p>PS Reading this you might think we were out in some farm community but it was right in NYC.</p>
<p>OK, we generally didn’t wait until H got home from work, cause even if he was in town, we never knew when that would be. 7? 8? That would make for very cranky kids.</p>
<p>So we would eat together without Dad, and when he got home I would sit down with him and debrief. And if he was traveling, it was moot anyway.</p>
<p>You do the best you can. I just think besides the conversation, it’s important that kids learn to eat well and a variety of foods. I wasn’t about to make pasta for one and chicken for another and veggie for a third. And frozen dinners arent’ that healthy, IMO, and kids should learn what food looks like before it’s processed </p>
<p>(not that my computer-loving boys would come into the kitchen to watch OR help after about age 7, but that’s another story…)</p>
<p>I freely admit I was lucky to be a musician with a flexible schedule to hold the fort and cook while DH traveled.</p>
<p>Er, we used to watch Jeopardy together… does that count?</p>
<p>My ex moved out when my son was age 12, daughter 7 – after that it was only the 3 of us. At about the same time my son decided to become a vegetarian. D. is an unapologetic carnivore. I would eat whatever they left. D. had dance classes almost every afternoon and evening. Son would come home on his own and fend for himself for dinner – as I was usually arriving home with sis around 8. The house was always well-supplied with frozen dinners. D. and I often ate fast food together in the car --we had a long drive back home from the ballet studio. </p>
<p>My poor neglected self-feeding son had really great SAT scores… so I don’t know about any correlation. (Any studies of the effect of Jeopardy-watching and SAT scores?) </p>
<p>I think family time together is important; I’m not sure it really matters whether it takes place over a meal or some other shared activity.</p>
<p>We eat dinner everyday between 6-7P.M and no TV watching at dinner time. When I get home I usually prepare food and have dinner ready in 30 minutes. Always fresh food and veg, no frozen dinner. The trick is I do plan my meals well ahead. Nothing that takes forever, kids start snacking which would make them gain weight.
In the summer, I get up early before going to work and make them hot lunch not sandwiches.
ECs are either on weekend or before dinner. When D1 was younger she had 5 ECs, one activity per day.
I also don’t go to sleep until everybody’s home. DD works late till 11:00 sometimes and I wait for her.</p>
<p>Some portion of the family eats together, but it’s very rare that it’s all six of us in the traditional sit around the table together way. We still manage to have great conversations, just not over food.</p>
<p>for my family of 6 ppl. its impossible to all eat dinner at the same time. we all have sports or various activities each night and my mom doesnt get home till around 715, after most have eaten so it jst doesnt happen. yet i think im a pretty successful student. but my dad is a chef so we do get good meals. no mickey d’s with the big fish brown</p>
<p>If we didn’t eat together almost every night I’d never see my kids! Once dinner is over, they’re off to their computers for several hours of homework and whatever else they do alongside the homework. They’re usually doing something with friends on weekends, but we all eat together unless a soccer practice interferes for DD. The kids also eat a hot breakfast every morning, cooked by DH, which they tell me is very rare among their school friends.</p>
<p>What time do your kids who eat a hot breakfast leave for h.s? My kids had to catch a bus at 6:25 am or if we drove them, had to leave by about 6:45 am.</p>
<p>My job gets me home by dinner time, and I’m a good and fast cook, love and believe in vegetables like a religion. So I always cook, at least on weekdays, kids help or not. Fast food, or ordering a pizza isn’t as fast as I am in the kitchen, or as healthy. When the kids had ECs, we ate whenever they came home. They disappeared into rooms or music practice aside from meal times, so I felt was essential to have that time together. </p>
<p>Now that the one in this country is in college, seems she has quite a few dinner dates with friends when home…so miss that time.</p>
<p>I don’t know that it made them especially sucessful or not, just seemed the best way to keep everyone fed and keep track of what was going on. Play practice raised havoc on occasional weeks, sports was usually over in time for a late dinner.</p>
<p>Kids and I usually eat together during the week. H gets home very late (around 10), so there is no waiting for him. Our whole family usually eats together twice a week, unless one of the kids is at a party or something. D usually goes out with friends on weekends. Also, on occasion, D will have a game or meet that goes really late, and then S and I might eat without her. I agree with great lakes mom about cooking rather than ordering food being the norm - it’s much healthier - but I confess that I do order pizza once a week when my S has his group of friends over. They are a picky bunch, and feeding them pizza works.</p>
<p>My husband cooks, a very good cook. We all love coming home to his meals. Kids complain when they go to subpar restaurants. We set the table, with all silverwares and linen napkins. We usually eat together 4-5 times a week because kids have ballet until 9pm sometimes. We catch up with each over dinner. We have some pretty heated discussion about current events at our dinner table. Now our oldest daughter is in college, we miss her very much at our dinner table.</p>
<p>In one town we bought a house a mile from H’s work so when he had to work until 6 p.m., then return to work for a 7-9 p.m. meeting (most weekdays), we could still squeak in those 40 mins. of dinnertime together, before h.w. and bedtime for kids supervised by me.
Because of all the evening meetings, he insisted he not be expected in to his office until 9:30 a.m., which let him see everyone at breakfast-time. </p>
<p>In one community, when they were infants, his tiny 12-15 minute commute each way killed those dinnertimes too often, because he only had that hour break. So we corrected it by buying closer to his work the next time. </p>
<p>He had been raised to wait until 7 p.m. for his Dad to get home from work. I grew up with Dad inquiring around the table, “And how was YOUR day?” </p>
<p>There did come a point, however, in each kid’s h.s. life when they’d miss these dinners for play performances or the intensive rehearsal week before showtime. None did organized sports, choosing theater instead, so that helped. We pulled the plug on Little League and Soccer specifically because it cut too much into family dinnertime.
Each kid had a year of it, and then we were out. None of them has a great relationship with sports today. I wish there was a middle ground. I had to work until 5 or 6 p.m., so couldn’t drive them to community soccer clubs, so finally gave up on all of it. </p>
<p>I know lots of moms who use the in-car time to convese actively with their kids today, which I find admirable.</p>
<p>They all eat at the same time? How do you manage that?</p>
<p>When I had kids in different schools, one often got up, dressed, grabbed something to eat, and left before the other one even got out of bed. I cannot imagine asking an elementary school child whose bus leaves at 8:25 to get up to share a family breakfast with Dad who leaves at 7:00 and the middle-schooler who leaves at 7:15.</p>
<p>My kids eat a hot breakfast but not all at the same time! :eek:</p>
<p>I was raised that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and passed that on to my kids. Even when they had to catch a bus at 6:25, they ate breakfast. Sometimes I would bake muffins the night before, or they would have eggs & toast, or cereal, fruit, & yogurt…anyway, a pretty good meal.</p>
<p>Son #2 was the MASTER at rolling out of bed, throwing on jeans and a t-shirt, eating breakfast, and catching the bus, which stopped right in front of our house, fortunately. :)</p>
<p>Now they try to arrange their college schedules so they don’t have to be anywhere until 10, and I doubt if a good breakfast is on their list of important things to do. When they’re home and sleeping until noon I remind them to eat a “third meal” at midnight or whenever. “What’s a mother to do?”</p>
LOL, wait for the live-in girlfriends/boyfriends!!</p>
<p>Lately the best influences on my kids’ morning eating is their latest partner. Those people can say the SAME THINGS and suddenly it’s true wisdom :)</p>
<p>Yes! Hot breakfast together at 6 AM every morning. Dinner, well, maybe twice a week. Everyone has to leave the house at 7:15, so we eat breakfast, read the paper, share news, plan the rest of the afternoon/evening plan (usually a head count for who WILL be home for dinner, and who needs to plan to grab something on the way to something else.) </p>