Family Dinner. Almost legendary for its promise to bring your family together for bonding that cannot be replaced, right? Not to mention the guilt we feel when it doesn’t happen.
I strive for a family dinner every night at 6pm. If I have a simple meal planned and can get the children in front of their 25 minutes of PBS kids’ shows by 5:30, I can often achieve it. Kinda. Alec gets home at 6:22 if he and his bus are running on time.
Yesterday was one of those evenings when the stars didn’t quite align. The dinner I had chosen to prepare (from the One Dish Dinners cookbook) was American-style chicken biryani with about 1:15 in prep and cooking time. And I plopped them in front of the TV at 5:45 (with only time for “one chunk of Curious George”). Oops.
I punted on the real dinner for the kids and made one of my fastest meals (at the same time, because I’m magic like that): chicken quesadillas, sliced apple, and frozen peas. Milo also finished the hard-boiled egg and cashews from his lunch. When I brought them milk to drink, I sat down with them to chat while the adult dinner biryani’d.
After other chitchat about our days, I asked Holden if he preferred when we all four sat down together or when the boys ate together and I ate later with Daddy. I expected him to give the right answer. The magazine answer.
Ha ha.
Holden told me that he prefers it when I cook for just Milo and him rather than when we eat together as a family because then I can get up and down (over and over and over) without interrupting my own eating. How thoughtful. Milo agreed.
Now what? I guess I’ll keep aiming for that elusive family dinner that we all share, but skip my guilt trip when it doesn’t happen.
What do you think about the real and imagined family dinner?
The hardest part of the mythical “family dinner” for me is getting the dirty socks, pet lizard and bbs and silly bands off the table
Really good blog. Diana
I love this post. I teach a Second Time Moms group and I always have this discussion with the moms. Even though they’re trying to juggle the needs/timeframes of an infant, a toddler and their spouse, they feel guilty about not having a “family dinner”. Family dinners are great, but IMO they’re not always realistic during the early years!
Cindy
Isis Parenting
The getting up and down to service the children during a meal really bugs me, so I’ve been trying out ways to avoid it. Both by keeping the whole carton of milk on the table and by saying, “I’m eating right now, but when I’m done, I can do that.” So… I’m not going to vote for Holden’s rationale.
Sometimes our dinner runs later and the kids do a show for us while we eat or do a puzzle on the living room floor. Or we eat on the floor in the bathroom while they take a bath. CLASSY!
Are you a mind reader? Because I was just thinking about this today. Family dinner for me means:
1) I overeat because I munch while cooking and then scarf too much food as fast as I can while getting up and down to get my girls food, napkin, chocolatier milk, etc.
2) I don’t get quality time with anyone because of all the getting up and down stuff.
3) We wait for my hubby and eat too late for the girls. So they are either starving and cranky, or full from too many snacks and then whine the whole time I am trying to get them to eat dinner.
I much prefer giving the girls their kid food, sitting down with them, and having a glass of wine while they eat. Then hubby gets home and joins in. We eat later. So we’re still having family time, just not all eating at the same time.
The family dinner is something i really strive for too. Before I started staying home with the kids it felt impossible because the kids were starving the minute we walked through the door. So, they got fed, then I started the real meal.
Now that I’m home, we usually eat between 4:00 and 5:00, as a family. That doesn’t mean that the kids don’t start first, but we all eat together.
Not to be a hater or anything, but I have 4 kids under the age of 8 and up til 2 months ago was a career mom as well, running a succesful non-profit. We have always had family dinners. It doesn’t always get done on time, sometimes it has to be fast and yes there is almost always a huge mess or pile I have to throw from table to floor before we can eat. But we still do it! In my opinion it consistently teaches children that family is never perfect but is always a priority- which is one of life’s most important lessons.
Now that the baby is eating solids, we actually eat together every night at a table for the first time in our 8 years of marriage. So for us, it seems quite doable. But, she’s still at a totally different stage than your family.
I guess I don’t understand why family dinners seem to be seen as the only time and place that a family can sit down and talk together. My daughter is 18 months so I feed her and then my husband and I eat, sometimes together and sometimes in shifts to keep her occupied while the other eats. But we usually take the time to sit on the floor with her, all three of us and we play. At this age her level of conversation isn’t really effecting us yet, so I don’t think it’s important for her to sit and eat at the same time as us. Especially since often I’m still spoon feeding her or stabbing her food with her fork for her; I don’t get a single bite in my mouth usually while she’s eating.
Sundays we eat at my in-laws and we all sit together so she is still learning the concept of being with us at the table. Other than the fact that the meal corresponds with her naptime she is usually very well behaved.
I think family dinners are something to aim for when the kids are older (upper middle school to teenagers) and they don’t require “care” or assistance with their meals anymore.
I feel like the focus shouldn’t be about getting everyone to the table at the same time but rather to get everyone spending time together and communicating. Set aside time after or before dinner to communicate together. My husband gives our daughter her bath every other night and that gives them one on one time together.
We only do family dinner on weekends. While I agree with sarah that the family dinner is a good idea that establishes family time as a priority, it’s just not realistic for us. We have staggered our work schedules so that our child spends less time in daycare, which also means we get less time all together as a family. For us, the tradeoff is worth it and we enjoy our whole-family time together on weekends.
my husband is from a country/culture where it’s not just family dinners, but family breakfast and lunch. it’s just a different attitude over there towards family and meals. family meals are important to us, therefore we arrange other priorities to make it work. it doesn’t mean that it ALWAYS happen. sometimes our family meal is the adults drinking tea while watching our daughter eat. sometimes our family meal is just me whipping together a bunch of stuff out of the freezer. however, in our family we really do desire to have that time to come together.
disclaimer: just because it’s a priority in our family, doesn’t mean it has to be in yours.
I think sitting down for family dinner works great for some families and not so well for others. In a perfect world, I would eat dinner with my husband and kids every night, but that doesn’t work out for us most of the time. My husband’s schedule varies a lot from day to day. Some days he works at home and we can eat right at 6, other days he doesn’t get home from work until 7:30 or 8:00.
The real challenge for me is figuring out how to split dinner into the two shifts without having to prepare two meals and clean the kitchen twice. I don’t mind serving my boys “freezer dinners” (frozen meatballs, frozen peas, etc.) now and then, but I don’t want to do it every night.
@Wendy, one thing we do — that only sometimes works — is serve the kids the dinner from the night before. Now that I write that here, I realize it couldn’t possibly work unless I screw up dinner a few times in a row. Hmm.
My problem with the family dinner is that
1. my 3 yr. old wants to eat hot dogs
2. my 7 year old has declared herself vegetarian
3. my husband has a serious gluten allergy
If I want to eat normal grownup food (preferably something spicy sandwiched between two slabs of delicious gluten), that means preparing 4 separate meals. It doesn’t work to get it all on the table at the same time.
I console myself with the fact that the kids eat in the kitchen and we talk about our day while I putter around making food. That counts for something, right?
This post is so well timed for me. I have been feeling guilty over the lack of family dinner time. But my oldest son is nearly 3 and my youngest is 6 months. So when am I supposed to start attempting it? There’s no way to do it on the weekdays…Husband doesn’t get home until 7 and by that time, everyone is starting to unravel. Anyway, thanks so much for this! I feel absolved of my guilt.
If you haven’t seen it already, you MUST check out the blog “Dinner, A Love Story”. You will love it.
http://www.dinneralovestory.com/about/
Click the “About” tab and you will see that this is someone who supports the idea of a family dinner while still being realistic and dealing with the challenges of her own real family.
As for my family, it is a priority. It ain’t always pretty, but we try. And in my book, your description kind of would count as a family dinner b/c you were all there. At least you scored 90 out of 100 I think. : ) I try to make everyone eat the same thing just so I don’t have to cook multiple meals or play short order chef, but there are other nights (like tonight) where the kids got leftovers and went to bed, while we (the adults) are ordering takeout for ourselves.
I get it that nightly family dinners can’t work for everyone, but the research is there to back up the importance of it. Now, I don’t think that means a 15 month old only child must dine with both of its parents nightly as much as it means older children need to have an established pattern of family dinners before entering those all important teen and tween years. But I think part of the point is that if you start working on establishing the pattern earlier, it will become more routine by the time your children are older.
One question that’s never really addressed by the research I’ve seen: does it count if people instead have family breakfasts?