Family Dinners

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well i know how you feel. i havent seen one of my sisters in almost two years because she got mad at my mother for something that happend to her when she was a kid and now she doesnt speak to any of us. my other sister who lives in the same town i do has a nice house she just bought with her husband so i hope they host any family get togethers now

I hate family dinners. In fact, my ideal dinner is spent with a computer, newspaper, book, magazine, or sporting event/game show on TV.

It's not about the people, it's just about the whole order thing (passing dishes, etc) and the bickering that goes on between other family members. Listening to them argue amongst themselves makes me want to get up and leave.

Also, I have stomach problems and cannot always eat what others want to.

My son's father is away visiting clients 3-4 days on average every week, so for most of the week it's just two of us, and often we eat at different times, though i still cook/prepare most of our meals. When the papa is there we usually eat lunch at table together, 2-3 times a week.
It's not sacred but the papa gets a bit miserable if we don't eat together at least at lunchtime on weekends.
I was brought up eating weekday breakfasts and tea/suppers, and all weekend meals together. And it was a purgatory of boredom and tension. We don't do that.

This is an interesting thread, because my family has tried hard to keep up the "family dinner" tradition. My husband has a wicked sense of humor and so many nights we are eating and laughing ...

But I know that my husband's tolerance is also very thin for the difficulties that can come with it. Basically, he can't deal with being in a situation of conflict. When the children were younger, he considered dinner time to basically be hell time. Eating in a restaurant he felt wasn't worth the money. But I held on, because with little ones you are setting precedents and expectations, and it is all about later, never now. I think the practice has paid off.

Still, we try not to be rigid about it. If it isn't going to be fun, what is the point? It should be a happy memory, something our children will want to continue and look forward to. So, we have reached a general understanding of when the practice slides, and when we will stick to it. The most common protest comes from my NT daughter, who is often watching a movie when dinner starts, but the rest of us don't want the TV background noise, so we've stuck to the "put it on pause" concept most nights, unless my husband is working late, in which case all rules are abolished, lol. My Aspie son much prefers the quiet, so this is a rule that benefits him most of the time.

As for food issues, I learned long ago what to feed the different picky eaters in my family. I don't vary from that much, or experiment. Sometimes my husband gets inspired to cook something new, but it rarely lasts long, because our kids are not easy to please. Less stress is more important than variety, in my book.