Tips on Making Family Dinner Work, #1

I know that making family dinner happen is not easy. I understand the challenges; I've been there. Here are some of my random thoughts on how to face one of the most typical challenges.

Challenge: Kids need to eat early; partner comes home too late for full family dinner

Suggestion: Let the kids have an early dinner, but make it a "real dinner" too.

Make it a "real dinner" with either the food or the tone (or both). Don't just serve out mac and cheese and stand over them while they eat it. Or clean up the kitchen, or the house, while they eat "kid dinner". Sit down with your kids. Talk to them. Eat some of what they are eating or a have a snack when they eat. You can have a "second dinner" with your partner later, or skip the later dinner and just sit to keep company with your spouse.

Of course, parenting is all about multi-tasking and it is "efficient" to clean up while they eat. But family dinner is not about efficient; it's about spending time together and paying attention to one another. Your kids being "picky" or refusing to eat what's served may be rooted in wanting more attention. Refusing to eat brings you to the table, doesn't it? Give them attention without focusing on the food. Try to think of "attention" as preventive medicine to avoid unwanted behaviors.

Ideally, you are only making one dinner (that's time efficient). So perhaps you are serving the kids from the communal pot and you'll eat the same with your partner when he or she comes home. Or you cook one sauce that goes over two separately cooked pots of pasta. (Get a hand-held pasta strainer, so that you can remove the pasta and save the hot water for another round of cooking.) If you must serve two dinners because of the time crunch, find ways to streamline the process.

One mom friend of mine told me that her kids eat early, but then they have dessert and talk with Dad once he gets home. They make that their time for all sitting together for a few minutes before bedtime. Another friend, whose partner can never make it to dinner because of work, told me that she tries to make dinner with her son special by lighting a small tea light candle when they are eating together. It sets a mood, and gets their attention that this is "family time." Anything can work: the idea is to create a family dinner ritual, be it with one parent or two, and to enjoy that time together every night.

Tip #8, Ten Tips Continued

8. It’s OK to Eat Late.
I call this “European-style” dining. Given work schedules and afterschool commitments, it’s often hard to have dinner at the “normal hour” of 6 pm or even 7 pm. So what? Eat later. If you are eating a real meal together with your family, eating at 8 pm is preferable to not eating together at all.

An important corollary to this rule is that it’s OK for the kids to snack early. Eating late assumes that everyone’s had a healthy snack afterschool and are not completely starving. It also assumes that really little ones (under 3 years old) eat their dinner early and are perhaps even in bed. (No one else in the family is going to enjoy dinner if there’s a toddler in a puddle on the floor.) Balancing reasonable bedtimes and dinner is a challenge, but you can do it.

This is what works most nights in my family: I feed my 2 year old dinner at about 6 pm, then she stays up to see her Dad when he gets home from work at 6:30 pm or 7 pm. She’ll usually go to bed right after that. My husband starts (or finishes) dinner while I finish bedtime. Then we sit down with my older kids, ages 8 and 12, some time between 7:30 and 8 pm, occasionally as late as 8:30 pm. Yes, it’s bedtime for them right after this, but the homework is done (usually) and there’s time to chat.

I spent many years grumbling about late dinners and late bedtimes. But we kept it up because my husband wanted to spend time with the kids at night, and we figured having dinner together was the best way to ensure this. My kids now like to eat late and want to wait until we are all home to eat together, even if one of us has a late meeting. It’s just better when we are together.