<p>Family dinners around the kitchen counter has always been a priority in this house. One of my relatives has a buffet dinner laid out every day about 4pm until the last person decides to eat (which can be 6pm or later). The kids are used to eating or grazing and walking around to wherever they want. When they get to a restaurant or elsewhere and are expected to engage in conversation they are lost. They are getting older now, but it has been very difficult for the kids to acquire social skills for meals. They use electronic toys & their smart phones to keep amused at larger family gatherings, but feel awkward sitting down to an elegant meal even though their in their mid-teens and early 20s. It saddens me & my other sibs.</p>
<p>My SIL always fed her kids earlier and then she and her H ate later. The kids are super picky eater and her H does not come home until later. I am lucky that my H gets home around the same time every day (he can work from home if needed and he will exercise after dinner most nights) and my kids eat most everything. Not everyone has set hours.</p>
<p>I think I was extremely lucky to be able to have a family dinner time. I also feel lucky that we had a small home and everyone didn’t have a corner to escape to. I find that when visiting relatives that everyone is in their own space and no one spends time together. It’s very sad. I loved that when the kids were growing up, we had one computer for all of us to share and one tv and one room. It made us very close.</p>
<p>Boy that sounded like little house on the prairie! Lol! We did have a nice house, just not the behemoth that some of my relatives have.</p>
<p>“Closeness” is an interesting thing. One of my relatives has a 4000+ square foot house, but for years, all 4 kids and the mom slept in ONE room with mattresses and futons on the floor (never understood it), while the dad slept in his own king-sized bed in his own bedroom. Fast forward to now, they all sleep in their own bedrooms and the H&W share the king-sized bed. The kids are not all that close.</p>
<p>We have several rooms but the computers were in ONE largish family room–mine and each of the kids, so we could and did communicate with one another, even while on the computer while having a modicum of space and SOME privacy. I do consider my kids fairly close, even tho S lives in VA and D lives in CA, while we live in HI.</p>
<p>An organization in our town is sponsoring M.E.A.L.—Meet, Eat And Listen. Can you believe that there needs to be a week set aside for it? What color should the rubber bracelet be?</p>
<p>My husband and I have always worked alternating hours, so very rare meals for the entire family, unfortunately. But we are still close and the kids do have good table manners and know how to conduct themselves in public.</p>
<p>Everyone has to do what works. I admire folks who can make alternating hours work for them and their family. H & I tried it briefly but had to give it up after 6 weeks. It was very tough and we were relieved it was just a short-lived experiment (that H’s employer didn’t want us to extend).</p>
<p>Since I’ve lived in Seattle I’ve never lived in an apartment or house that had an eat-in kitchen. The only place I had one was in New England, where the rooms are very large, even in the smaller apartments. So out here we have “dining nooks”. I hate them. But we do eat at the table, as close as we can to having everyone actually eat together-H works late sometimes and sometimes D has places to be so we eat in shifts. We go out only on weekends.</p>
<p>As long as your kids are learning manners, how to get along with others and so on, where and how you eat really shouldn’t matter.</p>
<p>I’ve been in this situation before - as a waitress. Frankly, it’s dangerous for the kids as much as anything, because I have had kids come very close to running into me whilst I have been carrying hot soup, or even a plate with a steak knife on. </p>
<p>Why have I never talked to the parents about it? Because it’s only going to result in confrontation, and frankly when I worked in that particular pub, I invariably had better things to do than offer parenting advice, so I came over somewhat philosophical and decided that if a child did end up covered in tomato soup, they would probably learn a valuable lesson.</p>
<p>I see the “playground” situation in restaurants, department stores, malls, and the grocery store. It’s distressing to think some folks are letting their children be completely undisciplined. I got hit in the head with a soccer ball at the Nike store the other day and *I spoke to the girls myself. Sadly, they were old enough to know better, looked to be about 11 or 12. I said “please stop that, this is not a playground” right in front of the adult with them.</p>
<p>They probably thought “what’s a playground?”</p>
<p>Sent from my DROID BIONIC using CC</p>
<p>After reading my way through this thread, I went back and re-read Ransom of Red Chief. Now, that was a bad kid!</p>