Reply to I make my kids separate meals from us for pretty much every meal and I think it's better

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Oh my gosh, OP I am exactly the same! Our children (preschool and ES ages) literally eat a different meal from us every day. They eat at 6 pm, DH and I eat when they go to bed. It started early on when we discovered it really sucks to rush dinner that the kids don’t enjoy so they can be in bed at a reasonable hour. They like simple, plain food and we like very spicy, seasoned dishes. Now they eat their meal together and we chat with them about their day, and an hour later they go to bed and we eat alone together. Our marriage improved from solo dinners every night too.[/quote]

Same. The issue is a combination of our kids liking much more simple food than we do, and also the fact that they get hungry at like 5:30pm and go to bed by 8pm. If we do dinner at 6, the kids are ravenous and we're barely hungry at all (even if we don't snack during the day and eat lunch during a normal time -- we just do not get hungry that early), and then DH and I get hungry again after the kids go to ged and wind up snacking then, which doesn't work either.

So I feed the kids at 5:30 before DH gets home, simple but healthy meals with plenty of variety, lots of veggies and fruits, etc. And then we eat what we want. Sometimes we'll have something that is broadly appealing to the whole family and serve it to everyone, but a lot to times DH and I are eating spicy curries, baked dishes with lots of ingredients, big salads with lots of different ingredients (our kids will eat veggie sides but not just one big salad).

The kids usually get elements from our meal (so like the raw version of the veggies that will go in our stir fry, or some of the chicken that will wind up in our salad, etc.) so I'm not making a whole other meal. Plus they get stuff we don't eat for dinner but they love, and that require no prep, like berries, yogurt, applesauce, etc. It helps me round out their meals and ensures they are getting a good variety.

We eat together on weekends when we will prioritize eating food everyone likes (pizza, simple pasta) and when we have more leeway to make the timing work, but giving kids a late lunch. Plus we're more likely to go out on the weekends which means people will mostly just order what they want anyway. And our kids don't just order off the kids menu, either.

I honestly don't know how people do nightly family dinners if one of you works out of the house and has a regular commute. We tried it for a while but it meant that I was going crazy trying to get a universally pleasing meal ready by 6pm on the dot so we could eat the second DH got home, all while the kids were going crazy with hunger and asking me for a snack every 3 minutes, and then DH and I would barely eat because it was stressful and we weren't really that hungry. And the kids would complain about anything that was remotely unusual, whether it was olives in a pasta dish or asparagus instead of green beans or whatever random food aversion they had that week. It was not quality family time.[/quote]

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