dinner time at your place

[Aurora]

So, do you all eat dinner together at the table? Or does everyone serve themselves at eat at their own pace, at different areas of the house? Is the way your family eats different or the same to how you ate as a child? Just curious!

[Blossomtime]

We eat together at the table every night. Some nights if the girls are really tired, they eat before DH gets home but its rare. Growing up, my family always ate together at the table, although when I was really young my sister and I ate dinner early and Mum & Dad ate when we were in bed. When DH was growing up they ate where and when they wanted to, usually in front of TV. We started doing the same when we left home as it was a hard habit to break. We got rid of the telly so that fixed things :lol Its lovely eating together each night and catching up on the day :)

[Ayla]

We don't have a meal time ritual yet, but I hope to have one one day!

[Chameleon]

normally infront to the comp watching a show, We can't eat at our dinning romm table as it's covered in clean clothes that need to be put away :lol The comp room has the only other tables

[~*heket*~]

Sometimes we eat together, sometimes we don't. We started making more effort to eat together in the last year, so more often than not we do ;)

[Ceres]

Eating dinner at the table was one of those things I always imagined I would do when I had kids, and yet don't do very often.
My son and I almost always have different meals, and it's just the 2 of us, so most often I make his dinner first and he eats at his kid sized table while I make my dinner. Sometimes we both sit on the couch and eat in front of the TV. Probably encouraging all sorts of bad habits there huh.
I do really enjoy it when we sit together and eat but sometimes I just can't be bothered with it. His concentration span is a lot shorter than a meal time for one thing so he doesn't just sit and eat, he's getting up and down from the table which I find intensely annoying. Plus because it's just the 2 of us it doesn't really feel like a family dinner.
It's the complete opposite of how I grew up - large family, always a formal mealtime at the table, set with placemats etc, we even said grace!! Soooo different to now.

[~*heket*~]

We all sat at the table to eat ... but weren't allowed to talk coz ABC radio news was on :imateapot

When I was a single mama Stylish and I used to watch the Simsons and eat dinner, and that seemed like such a treat to me! Eating without silence or formality ykwim? But now we do family eating we don't do formality it's an all in mess up so it's quite different ;)

[Aurora]

Yeah we had the formal dinner at the table thing too when I was growing up, I hated it. We weren't allowed to start eating until my stepfather was seated, and dinner was always what he wanted to eat. Eg we all loved spaghetti, but we never ate that, because stepdad didn't like anything ''exotic''. It was meat and 3 veg almost every night. Most of dinnertime was silent, with the occasional commentary or dictating from stepdad eg ''That's enough drink now, have some more dinner''. Yucko.

I am glad now I don't have anything formal when it comes to dinner. I don't mind the idea of us all eating together as long as it's joyous and relaxed, which it seems to be so far. I think keeping silly rules away will help that! But sometimes we all eat at different times, due to work or depending on our days events and that's ok too. It's probably half and half, and I expect things to change as our family grows and as our children get older.

[~*heket*~]

This is quite an interesting subject I think!

[Ceres]

Bumping this one just for interest! How does it work at your house?

[Echo]

We all eat together with something on the TV. Very different to what I had growing up - family prayer with holding hands (urgh!), then we all ate together at the dining room table, then Dad read something from the Bible, then another prayer. *shudder*

[Ceres]

Horrid! We had the holding hands to say grace thing at our house too. I thought we were the only family in the world who did that!

[zenifa]

The four of us sit down to have breakfast and dinner each day, lunches can be more flexible to fit around activities, kids' rest/sleep periods etc. Its not formal but we don't have tv on, music sometimes and there is no grace/prayers but it is a nice time to talk about our day (plans for the day at breakfast and what happened that day at dinner) and we are trying to teach table manners, correct use of cutlery, conversational skills etc but all of it in gentle calm loving relaxed way led by the girls and their interest/ independence. This works for us.

[shaestar]

We tend to sit down to one meal a day together-with no pressure to eat lol.
Whether it's dinner or lunch depends on what shift DH is on.

[Echo]

I thought we were the only family in the world who did that!

So did I!

[mummy2boys]

We try to eat dinner together most of them time, but it doesn't always work out. Sometimes "dinner" is at lunch time, and we just have sandwiches or something simple for dinner at random times.

[trust]

We usually sit together for breakfast (minus DH as he has already left for work) to plan out our day and if DH isn't going to be late then we all eat dinner together---with no tv so we can all converse, especially DH and the kids as they don't see him for many hours.

Usually DS1 is the centre of the conversation with some entertaining story although sometimes other family members get a turn:rofl

[Kris]

I liked the blessing over the meal, we still do something similar now - but along the lines of giving thanks to mother earth for the food. Makes a pause and separates the day from the dinner, reminds us to be thankful for the bounty.

We always ate together as a family until I became a teenager and then it got rather random.

We always eat dinner together now. Most nights we have a blessing and then after we've tucked in and are feeling relaxed and continuing on with the meal we have what our four year old calls "telling our day" and we take turns sharing what happened to us, what we liked, what we didn't like.

We've been toying with the sit down till everyone is finished idea. Sometime it works, other times it doesn't. I don't mind finishing my dinner on my own but none of the kids do.

No, tv is in another room, the radio or the cd player get turned off unless we have a need for something quiet and instrumental.

[Beatrice]

We almost always sit down for dinner. My family always did it too. I would hate to feel like I was dishing up to a bunch of transients who all go off to do their own things. I like the ritual of calling people to the table and nourishing them. I don't just love cooking, I love feeding and nurturing people. I would feel very sad and almost exploited if people just wanted the food without the ritual.

We don't do anything formal like a blessing and I've only just started insisting that people (including DH :lol) learn to say "Please may I leave the table" when they are finished, partly because I think it's rude to just get up and leave, and partly as training for eating at grandparents' houses ;) I don't insist on anyone eating anything they don't want to or staying if they don't want to, but because it's Just The Way Things Are Done, the kids tend to hang around and chat even if they've declared that the food is horrible :lol

[Sarasvati]

Oh geez Beatrice I used to HATE asking to leave the table! I found it one of those pointless hoops adults make children jump through ;).

We generally eat at the table, maybe some music if it's still on from me making dinner, no TV though as it's in the other room. If the table is covered with my sewing paraphernalia we eat in front of the TV. No blessing is said, I would like to but I feel self conscious about it... yes even in my own family. *sigh*

[Kris]

Blessings on the blossoms, blessings on the fruit, blessings on the leaves and stems, blessings on the roots. Blessings on our (insert meal name) and blessings on you and me.

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