Do you eat dinner with your toddlers/as a family?

[Anonymous]

Just curious. Do you eat dinner with your small children or feed them, do bedtime, then cook for yourselves? I currently feed my 17 mo at 5, start bedtime at 6:30, then cook for me and my husband around 7. But thinking about doing dinner for everyone around 6 instead, before bedtime.

Just wondering what is common for people. Also realize it will likely change when another child or two enters the mix.

[Anonymous]

I used to do that aka eat separately or we would add a small part of his dish to ours to snack (so it felt like we were eating dinner together) but now my 2.5 eats way too late like 7 so we have to eat dinner together as I can’t wait to eat until his bed time.

As for your current situation you can add plates for you and your husband and add something that’s on his plate too as a snack but it feels like dinner together for him.

[Anonymous]

We always had dinner as a family.

[Anonymous]

The vast majority of the time we eat together as a family, toddlers and all. Occasionally my husband or I will eat alone after the kids' bedtime if we get home late for work reasons. But the norm is for us to eat together.

[Anonymous]

We have dinner at 6:15 with our 17 month old. Bedtime is at 8 though.

[Anonymous]

Kids just turned 2 and 4. We eat dinner together every single night at 5:30/6. It's painful some nights but gets better every month. They now sit well, eat their vegetables, don't throw food (like 1 year olds) and we now have discussions about what we did during the day. DH and I both ate dinner with our parents every single night growing up. And I know that all our grandparents did as well. I think nuclear family dinner and reading books before bed together are the two most important times of the day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Kids just turned 2 and 4. We eat dinner together every single night at 5:30/6. It's painful some nights but gets better every month. They now sit well, eat their vegetables, don't throw food (like 1 year olds) and we now have discussions about what we did during the day. DH and I both ate dinner with our parents every single night growing up. And I know that all our grandparents did as well. I think nuclear family dinner and reading books before bed together are the two most important times of the day.

DH and I are sometimes wistful about eating on the couch watching TV together like we did before kids.

[Anonymous]

Kids are 3 and 5 and we always have dinner as a family at around 6:15.

[Anonymous]

I eat with my 2 4 and 5 year kids a late lunch /dinner. My kids refuse to eat anything except alight snack after 4 pm and go to bed at 6. So we eat a big meal at 2 and snack and milk at bedtime.
My husband likes to eat late at night so he eats separately. I stay up to sit and chat with him while he eats (he would say to talk his ear off lol) and then go to sleep. I usually don't eat w him cuz 8pm is too late for a mommy who is up at 5 with the kids. I'm in bed by 930.

[Anonymous]

Yes. Covid and DH being home has definitely made it easier! No commute and we all eat dinner together at 5:30. We actually eat breakfast together too! Nanny eats her lunch with him so my kid never eats alone!!

[Anonymous]

We always have dinner with my 2.5 year old (and 2.5 month old). We eat around 6, although sometimes at 5:30 with being home during the pandemic. We go upstairs for bath and bed after. Lights out around 7:30.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We always had dinner as a family.

+1 at 6pm. Even when my kids were tiny infants, they participated in dinner.

[Anonymous]

We eat dinner with our 17 month old every night. KNOCK ON WOOD, he eats much of what we eat (some of it ends up going over the tray and sometimes we have to supplement with yogurt and cheerios, but he is exposed to everything... dreading if/when he'll only touch chicken nuggets). He seems to enjoy sitting at the table with adults and I am frequently shocked by the "adult" foods he can't get enough of.

[Anonymous]

Dinner together (me,DH, 5 y/o and 1.5 y/o) at 6:45 or 7 ish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We always had dinner as a family.

+1 at 6pm. Even when my kids were tiny infants, they participated in dinner.

NP. Same here. We've always eaten together unless DH or I were traveling for work, then it would just be one of us and the two kids eating dinner together.