Eating dinner with toddlers -how important is it?
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Anonymous
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Mine are 5 and 18 months. We have always eaten together once the oldest could sit up at her high chair. We eat at 5:45 or 6. I don't have it in me to do two meals and two cleanups and my kids eat better when we are all eating the same things. My girls also like to play together for a little bit before the littlest goes to bed and sometimes they get a joint bath early. Oldest doesn't go to bed until 8:30 so no way would i want to eat after that Im in bed by 10 every night.
If its working for your family and you are having other meals together then its fine. We dont eat breakfast or lunch together except weekends. |
Anonymous
Why would you think kids spending time with their parents isn’t important? Are you also too busy to read to them? |
Anonymous
| I think it’s important to spend time together as a family. If you do this at other times then dinner is not that important. If you both work though and your kids are with a caregiver then it’s important. My kid is 8 now and had a friend over for dinner last week. The friend said it was so nice to have family dinner at a table with us because she never had family meals at her house. Broke my heart. |
Anonymous
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For years, we fed the kids first (generally leftovers), put them to bed, and then cooked and had a nice, relaxing dinner. It was glorious, and I highly recommend it. When they got into a school schedule (they were 4 and 5) we started doing family dinners. We did eat breakfast and lunch together on the weekends.
I know many, many people that have done it that way. |
Anonymous
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We made the switch shortly after our son turned one because we wanted to get in the habit of it. We usually eat dinner around 6 (though he does go to bed on the later side, 8ish). I would not call dinner relaxing necessarily, but as someone else said, it is WAY less work to just prep the one dinner. So in that sense, post-bedtime is more relaxing - and I say this as someone who enjoys cooking! We still occasionally do adult only dinners for special occasions and whatnot.
For me personally it was about setting up the routine for when he’s older. Not sure how much it matters now, but it helps me to have gotten the rhythm down a little bit. But I don’t think it’s bad that you don’t! Just a matter of when/if you want to make the switch. |
Anonymous
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You don’t have to do two meal preps if you eat separately. Our kid eats what we eat, with a few child-friendly fixes (we like our food very spicy). Generally we meal plan so that she can eat her food at 6 or 6:15, and then we just eat the same food an hour later after she’s in bed. So like I’m make spaghetti and meatballs, serve her and set a bit aside for her leftovers, and then finish seasoning the sauce to our taste as DH puts her to bed. Then we eat, and there’s only one cleanup. And the next day we all eat leftovers and it’s even easier.
Also, whenever possible she held us cook. She’s only 3.5 so her help is largely fir her benefit, but we have her add ingredients, help measure, stir things that are not hot, etc. I feel like that time together is more valuable than us all trying to sit at a table together at this stage, because she’s directly interacting with us and also learning a lot about how food is made, what us in her food, some math, some fine motor skills. We also bake together often. There are of course times when she just won’t eat what we are eating because her palate is so different, and we have to make two meals. But we’d have to do that even if we ate together. And I don’t understand why anyone is doing two cleanups? You just leave the dishes from kid’s dinner until you are also done eating, and do it once. |
Anonymous
Eating isn’t the only time you can spend with your toddler, PP. |
Anonymous
| Not important. Everyone has kid dinner at that age. Usually one parent isn't even home yet. |
Anonymous
We're talking about TODDLERS. Not seven year olds. |
jsmith123
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My kids are 3 and 6 and we've always done family dinners. We do it because it works for our schedule. Also, I wanted the kids to get used to eating what we eat, even if it's modified a bit for them at that age.
But if our lives / schedules had been different (1 parent working late or whatever), I would probably do what you're doing. I don't think there's any problem with it at all. That said, I would aim to start family dinners around when the kids start preschool. Both my kids wanted to be "big" at around 3-ish and it would have been a good time to transition. |
Anonymous
Of course it's important to have dinner with your children. When you become a part then you put aside your selfish desires. |
Anonymous
| We have eaten dinner as a family- first at 5:30, now around 6 since they were toddlers. The only time we dont is if there’s a sports practice during that time. |
Anonymous
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Ignore the people who claim it’s selfish to not have a family meal every single night.
Our 4 year old goes to bed at 7:30/8pm. DH works until at least 7pm as an exec at a large CPG company. I eat something small with DD. DH breaks from work in time to help with bedtime, and then DH and I have dinner together. On the weekends, we eat together as a family. My dad was rarely home for dinner during the week when my sister and I were little. He worked long hours as a lawyer. I never felt like he wasn’t present because when he spent time with us—mostly on the weekends—he wasn’t distracted. He was there. That’s what matters. |
Anonymous
| Family dinner is only important so you can teach your kids table manners and spend structured family time together. Family dinner is the easiest way to do this for most people, but there are lots of ways to make sure it happens. |
Anonymous
| So what are the kids eating if not the same food as you?! I think it’s super important for toddlers to see adults eat vegetables and everyone eats the same. |