My kids have four legs, a tail, are covered with fur and eat from a bowl on the floor. I feed them, but don’t eat with them.
As a kid we always at as a family at 5pm (Central), no TV, no phone calls and the dog couldn’t be in the kitchen begging. But usually Mr Dog managed to sneak under the table anyway.
We weren’t forced to eat food, my mum was like, “If you don’t like it, make something else yourself.” Which suited me fine as there was always peanut butter and jelly which I ate a lot of growing up 
I voted every night, but that’s allowing for things like sports and my husband’s bowling night and such. In other words, we worked around the activities and everyone in the family who was home was at the table. Dinner was dinner. You ate it with the family. Sometimes we did a bit of accomodating, like taking some of the meat and tomato out for my youngest before we put in the whole chili spices and such, but there was only one meal prepared.
Depends.
Sometimes irishbaby just can’t wait until the dinner I’m making will be ready, in which case she’ll get fish fingers and potato waffles, toast and peanut butter, cheese on toast, peas and carrots, a bacon sandwich or something along those lines- and we’ll have ours after she goes to bed.
Sometimes what we want to eat- fajitas, chinese takeaway, a spicy curry- just isn’t suitable for a toddler, in which case I’ll make her something different or deconstruct the dish to make it baby friendly.
Most days, however we all eat together at about 7pm and she gets what we get.
Because I get home from work between 6pm and 630pm most dinners are simple and easy affairs- it is on those days when I want something a little fancier and more complicated that she gets the earlier meal.
We usually eat together, and Miss 3 usually eats the same meals that we do. Some nights she needs to be fed earlier than we’re ready to eat so on those nights she gets an easy meal and we eat once she’s in bed.
I voted sometimes. In general, he eats with us, and his preference is to eat at the table, but there are some nights when we aren’t able to or where he wants to eat in his room. Usually, he eats some at the table and then a pudding in his room later for a snack, which had worked out fine. We used to eat together, but in the living room, because we didn’t have a kitchen table. Now we do, so it works out okay.
Brendon
We eat most of the same food and sit in the same room but we don’t have a table for dining together. I sit at my desk and she has a small table. Her father usually doesn’t get home in time to eat with us.
I have to cook her extra sometimes because she doesn’t eat everything we like due to spices/textures she hasn’t grown to appreciate yet.
Since my daughter is in Chicago and we’re not, we don’t eat with her.
We did when she lived with us, though, just about every day.
Generally, the kids eat first. We tend to play every day by ear. On Sundays, we eat dinner together (and have something like pasta night, taco night, etc).
They eat 90% of their meals at the kitchen island sitting on the counter stools. My wife and I rarely ever sit down to eat. We usually stand to eat, because we are pretty hyperactive and wouldn’t enjoy up/down through the whole meal.
We eat to live, if that makes any sense to you.
I eat later. I have four little kids (the oldest is 5) and administering dinner to a 6 month old, a 2 year old, a 3 year old and a 5 year old is stressful enough without me trying to feed myself at the same time! Mr. Bellum keeps odd hours with work and is rarely available to eat dinner with us, so it’s usually all on me to fix and serve the crew. I’m better off eating a hour or so later when I get the kids in bed. Sometimes I’ll reheat some of what I fed the kids, but more frequently I’ll make myself something I like. Toddler-friendly fare can get old pretty quick.
Unless someone’s got a meeting or a sporting event, we all eat together. I find it incredible that other families don’t.
I totally get not sitting down to eat with your young children (who either can’t feed themselves or need different food due to allergy concerns) but I still don’t get not sitting down as a family otherwise. It is probably the only time each day when we are all in the same room and can converse as a family.
As for making different food, I find cooking one meal enough of a hassle. The idea of having to make one for the kids and then one for us is exhausting (twice the cleanup, too).
Granted, my kids didn’t have a very long fussy phase (not sure if it is part of their personalities or my unyielding insistance that they can eat what we do) and my husband and I get home at about the same time so it is pretty easy to make this work.
There is no time to sit down in our case. After work, it’s the Y, the gym, kid sports, etc. To actually sit down would mean everyone in the kitchen at once. That ain’t gonna happen for us. What are we gonna do? Sit down and eat dinner, clean and find out the kids aren’t clean, we aren’t showered, they aren’t showered and homework is pending and we’re screwed because it’s about bed time. Family multi-tasking is the only way to survive each day.
One kid is eating, another finishing school work, I might be in the shower, and my wife is waiting for me to get done for her shower, then I finish the kitchen, scuttle one kid off, etc. Someone might have to run out to pick up one kid who is in a sport or school activity at ‘dinner time’.
Mrs Cleaver ain’t around to watch Wally and Beaver after school.
What most have said- eat together- tha’t’s family time.
Usually she eats the majority of what we make, and always takes a bite-
she usually opts out of anything spicy, however, and at times has ended up eating plain rice instead of what was made…
Or sometimes I will make her a quesedilla, or some such, which takes nearly no time, if she doesn’t like what we have.
Family time is not eating together. That’s a way to spend family time.
Family time can be something else.
I am flexible about family eating arrangements, there are no hard and fast rules about the dining schedule at my house.
Just last night we decided to dine in our Quinzhee hut that the kids had been working on for days(it’s something like an igloo snowcave). I made up baked potatoes and toasted cheese subs, and we went outside in the freezing cold and crawled inside the hut. We sat on a tarp and rolled up beach towels and dined by lamplight. There was all of us except for one, who decided it was too cold and she ate inside by herself and we were all fine with it…just as well as it was a little tight in the quinzhee with 3 people.
I wish I did.
My daughter breast feeds.