I don't eat with my daughter (4) as she is hungry and eats at 5.30pm, so I wait til my DH gets home at 7.30pm and eat with him On weekends we all eat together.
DH gets home at around 7pm and is the cook in our house.
I always sit with DD at 5:30pm to eat and will often eat a snack with her.
At the moment a 'family dinner' wouldn't happen until 8pm and that is waaay too late for a little one.
I also cherish the time with DH after DD has gone to bed (and when I say gone to bed, I mean have a little nap before she comes to be with me, so it is actually the only time in the day I am not with her). I think having dinner with an adult is more important to me at the moment, and i figure we have years of family dinners ahead.
As children, my sisters and I used to have our own dinner at our own table and chairs, and mum and dad would eat later. We loved it!
During the week, DH eats brekkie with DD, I tend to eat lunch with her (depending on nap times etc) and then I'll sit and have a cup of tea whilst she has her dinner at 5.30. I then wait till DD is in bed by 7 before I think about cooking dinner for us. DH doesn't generally get home from work till 7.30 so we won't eat till 8 or so. DD will generally have what we have the next night, so I'm not cooking 2 dinners. If I am off to work (which may be 1 or 2 nights a week), I will generally sit and eat with DD. TBH, atm, I like saving dinner for when DH comes home - because of his work and mine, we don't get alot of quality time together, so sitting down to an evening meal is our way of catching up - otherwise, I'd be busy working and quite often he has to bring work home to. Quality time with DH is just important to me as modelling 'family meal times'. DD has family meal times 2x a day, so she's getting this then, plus the routine is generally out the window on the weekend and she will stay up later and eat with us as a family. There's a lot of other 'family' things that need to me modelled, one of which is a healthy and happy relationship between the parents - and I find our relationship suffers if we don't have this quality time.
I would find it really difficult to have dinner ready on time for us all to eat as a family. Theoretically it is possible as DH gets home around 5 which is when ds has his dinner roughly (usually between 4:30 and 5 depending on mood) but ds is grumpy from around 4pm which would mean i would need to make dinner around 2-3pm which just wouldn't work. Plus DH is the main cook around here so i cant expect that he jump in the kitchen as soon as he gets home and whip something up in 5 minutes. dh also drives long distances to and from work so it is quite likely that he will get stuck in traffic and it just doesn't work. I eat breakfast and lunch with ds and when he is older and eating later we will have family dinners but for now it just isn't possible. Plus DH and i need time together alone as we dont get out much together so this is our time to catch up etc.
There is no way I am ready for dinner at that time and DH isn't home.
However, a couple of nights a week DH tries to get away from work early and we have a family meal at 5.00pm, basically I dish up the minute DH walks through the door. It is absolute hell though, because DD is screaming for her food from about 4.20pm and I have to hold her off with snacks while I'm trying to prepare dinner and DS is complaining he is hungry and asking for milk (which I won't give him because then he will be full and won't eat).
This is the only way we can get DS to even consider something vaguely different - when we are all sitting together...although he does protest when he knows it is "family meal" night because it means it is going to be something different on the table. The other reason I have instigated this is because DD is a fabulous eater and insists on having what DS is having so I don't want her becoming limited in her food by default.
The kids are then in bed asleep by 6pm. Yes, it's a very early bedtime and we've tried to push it (and dinner) later but it's just not happening. They wake up between 5.00-6.00am so it just seems to be their natural cycle. We figure it won't last forever, so we are just going with it now.
We make an effort to go out for lunch on weekends and they are both very good in a restaurant so they are still learning their table manners etc.
It's family meal night tonight actually, and I am bracing myself already.
On weekends we all eat together.
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