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Infants, Toddlers, & Preschoolers
Family Dinner together EVERY Night? Really?
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Anonymous
Just curious -- how many kids do you have? What ages? |
Anonymous
You know, I doubt you really are in the minority. My guess is a lot of the people who say they are eating as a family, especially the ones who get home later, later than 6:30 and are eating at 7 -- have just one child. My guess it that people with three kids, as young as yours, eat as a family only if they have parents who come home fairly early. I really doubt many poeple with 3 kids are sitting down as a family to dinner at 7 PM -- not until the kids are at least school aged. Just a hunch, though. |
Anonymous
| Also, some people think eating as a family means eating with just one adult (in the case of a two-parent family), when in my book eating with the family would mean eating with both parents. That is not the case for us because DH comes home at 8. I eat with DC every night, but DH only makes it on the weekends. |
Anonymous
I have one who is 3 1/2. For serious health reasons I can only have one child. |
Anonymous
That confirms my hypothesis -- I'm the person who suspects that a lot of people who manage to eat dinner together as a family each night, plus do all the bath and stories plus bed -- all after 6:30 -- are maneuvering around just 1 child. |
Anonymous
| We would love to start doing family dinners with our 8 month old, but he completely melts down if he goes to bed later than 6:45-7, which means the bedtime routine can start no later than 6:15-6:30 (and he needs the bedtime routine, including a bath, every night, or he won't go to sleep). Given that we don't get home till 5:30 at the earliest, it is all I can do to throw together a quick dinner for him (he is eating pretty basic things at this point) and DH and I eat after he goes to bed. I know it doesn't matter so much now whether we eat together, but can I expect him to be able to stay up a little later as he gets older so that we can try for family dinners next year? Did people whose toddlers go to bed at 8 work toward that later bedtime? |
Anonymous
For us it has just happened naturally as she gets older, needs less sleep, consolidates naps, etc. DD is just over 2, and bedtime is now in the 7:30-8 range. It pushed back from 7-7:30 in just the last month or so, along with her getting up a bit later (7-7:30 instead of 6:30-7), and we are quite happy with the shift. But honestly I can't say we really 'worked' at it - while we have encouraged shifts in sleep times, I don't feel like it's very effective, and that we're much better off when we just pay attention to the cues our child gives out. *But* I do think the natural shift to a later bedtime is pretty common in toddlers. |
Anonymous
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I have a 4 yo and 2 yo. DH is home by 6:15 pm every night. I'm home by 6:30-7 pm most nights. We have dinner by around 7:15-7:30 pm. Admittedly, my kids go to bed later than most, but they also take late afternoon naps and really aren't overtired at all (they get a good 10-11 hours at night plus 2 hour naps).
We don't necessarily have dinner as a family unit EVERY night, but almost every night unless I'm working late. I like it, and would find it weird to rarely have dinner as a family unit, but I don't think it is any magic formula to bringing the family together. People do the best they can given their circumstances. There is no one size fits all approach to parenting, so OP - I would just go with what works. |
Anonymous
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We have a 5 yo and a toddler. Dinners are absolutely atrocious if we eat a meal later than usual.
The 20 mo is thowing food. The 5 yo, poor thing, just wants to talk about her day, but - unfortunately - gets an earful from me as I'm trying to get the toddler under control. So if I know it's going to be a late one, I feed the kids, bathe them, and allow them to play before bedtime while my husband and I eat. I'm sure it will get better as they become older . . . |
Anonymous
I wouldn't sweat it now. At 8 months, it really doesn't matter. The whole dinner thing really only has meaning when your kids gets older and can feed himself/talk about his day/etc. I'm a PP whose family now eats dinner together almost every night, but that wasn't the case when the kids were super young (e.g., when DS#1 was under 2 - he ate before us). |
Anonymous
Not sure if your post was meant to be a dig at me or not, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Some weekdays I can have breakfast with my kids, depending on how early everyone is up. Weeknights it is rare for us to have dinner with them, but if I can get home early enough, I sit down and eat with my boys. On weekends we eat our meals together. Yes, I absolutely foresee a time when we will eat dinner together (at least one parent, not certain it will always be two) - but it will have to be a time when my children are going to bed later (when it's developmentally appropriate for THEM, not to fit my idea of a family dinner schedule), so I'm guessing it will be at least a couple of years before all members in our family can hold out until 6:15 or 6:30 for dinner and still have time to get bathed and ready for bed at what is a reasonable hour for the kids. I would love to have dinner with my kids every night, but at this point it would be something I'd be doing for me and not for them. I think it's more important for them to be well rested and happy than to have dinner with me, later than what is appropriate for them. We get a lot of talking and bonding time during bath and story time - but I can tell you that if dinner is late and bedtime gets stretched too late, talking and bonding turns into meltdowns and shouting, so I'm sticking with the kids eating without me but being happy and well rested. |
Anonymous
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"6 pm might as well be 3 pm when you work for a law firm, as I do. Even dh who works at doj doesn't get home till 7:30 and we live inside the beltway"
You guys are fools, wasting your life away working like donkeys. What sort of life is that? There are plenty of attorney positions out there with much beter hours. All the money in the world isn't worth it. But I guess the money is worth it to you. That's the live to work mentality I guess...definitely not my thing. I hope you are happy at least. |
Anonymous
Yes, that's my thought exactly. There isn't enough money in the world to compensate me for that lost time. |
Anonymous
| Yes, I am sure there are zillions of attorney positions with better hours...in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the great depression...when law firms are laying off scores of attorneys...when there will likely be a govt spending freeze in the coming days. |
Anonymous
| I'm a PP who does have family dinners, though admittedly we only have one child at the moment (#2 is due in a few months). Just wanted to say that while most people talk about how they sacrifice home size for shorter commutes, we partly sacrifice jobs b/c we have a longer commute. DH is about to turn down a lateral move b/c the office isn't family-friendly or flexible, i.e., no AWS, set hours that are later than what he works now, etc. We are fortunate that he's a non-supervisory GS-14 and I'm a GS-13, but the 2 of us being home by 6pm is important to us. |