screens in this case refer to any electronics - tv, phones, tablets. if you take your calls for a short while, it doesn’t count. if you spend the entire dinner texting, it does. just wondering how common is that picture of a family dinner with no distractions.
We sit at the table and usually she’ll have something going on online, some kids’ game. I don’t mind since she doesn’t seem to have any food issues. We talk too and sometimes we’ll play Songpop together.
I am ashamed to admit that we usually have the TV on – I’d say during about 70% of dinners. Mom, Dad, 2-year-old child.
Well, I currently eat alone due to having moved out but when I was still living with my parents and when I visit, dinner is eaten at the table with real plates, silverware and glasses, nothing disposable, and we talk and chat. No reading, no tv, no music except for perhaps some light piano from the stereo. When I was younger, if one of us had returned from a school trip or an errand where dinner was eaten before we arrived home, we were to sit at the table and participate in the conversation. I loved it. Except when I turned 10 and was worked into the dishwashing rota.
Our kids are gone now, but we always ate as a family with no computers, phones, TVs, or even books. For dinner - books are allowed at lunch. My wife and I still eat that way. We can take a tray in if there is something really urgent on TV, but that happens only once every few years.
We only eat in front of the tv if it’s pizza and movie night. We always had family sit-down dinners when I was growing up and it’s very important to me. We are two adults and an 8 yo child.
I can’t even remember a time when we had dinner all sitting at a table without anything else to do, even all the way back to when I was as young as I can recall. Other than when there were guests or something ‘fancy’ was going on. At all other times it was pretty much on/near the couch in front of the TV, or wherever else we happened to feel like it. Quite often not in the same room. Take dinner, go to room to eat was perhaps a tad more common than sitting in front of the TV eating together.
Never once growing up.
We always sat at the table raising our kids. I have been divorced for over 2 years my children are 6 and 13 both me and my ex wife still sit the kids at a table to eat without electronics, so it is the same at both homes. It is nice and the kids don’t mind. They may hurry a bit if there is something pressing but it is good times overall and will stop for dinner without a fuss. Occasionally one or the other will ask if we can sit in front of the tv. Sometimes I allow it.
We sit in front of the TV, usually with something pretty brainless on (Judge Judy is a current favourite).
However, breakfast is always together at the breakfast table, with the radio on in the background. Breakfast is a more important meal in our household than dinner.
At the table mostly, where there are certainly no screens or devices, that’s just rude. I can’t stand it when I see people playing on their phones at the dinner table. Pay attention to the people you are with, people!
When each kid was small - until about school age - it was at the table with no distractions most nights, so they could be trained in formal/semi-formal table manners. Some nights we’d practice our “restaurant manners” and sometimes “home manners”.
When each little savage was appropriately domesticated and no longer an embarrassment in social situations, we moved to mostly living room with screens. I used to feel really guilty about it, but I don’t any more. Here’s why: I realized that we were rushing to get away from the table and disappear into our separate rooms when we ate at the table. When I tried to slow things down and fix it, conversation was minimal and strained. When we eat with The Daily Show or MAS*H or The Cosby Show, we talk. We talk about what’s on the show, we talk about unrelated things, we take our time and enjoy each other as much as what’s on the screen. Phones have never been specifically forbidden, but they don’t happen. Then again, we’re not a smart phone family, although my son can text like a champion. He’s just not one to do it during dinner.
Since I feel like the point of eating together at a table is to reconnect the family bonds, and that happens for us better with the television, I use the television as a tool. Works for us.
If my mom or a guest comes over for dinner, we use the table and no screens, though. The other person serves the role the television usually does, I guess!
We sit together at the kitchen table every night at 6:30-ish, unless something out of the ordinary is going on (I’m working late; wife and I go out to dinner on a date and kids have babysitter, etc.) No screens, no TV, and we don’t answer any phones. We talk to each other. It’s nice.
Although we usually have music playing in the background. There’s usually music on in the house.
My parents were really big on the rule that at least one meal a day, we all sat at the table. TV had to be turned off, radio off, no books, no games or toys or anything at the table. We weren’t allowed to get up from the table until Dad decided he was mostly finished waxing poetic about whatever racist, overly self-righteous religious glurge he was spouting off about.
When I went off to college, I used to get a little upset when my friends and I would go to the dining hall, eat together, and then as soon as everyone was finished, they all wanted to jump up from the table and take off. I had grown accustomed to sitting around and talking for a few minutes before getting up to go do something else. I’d ask everyone, “Is anyone in a hurry to get to class or anything? Can’t we all just hang out a minute?” They accommodated me because I wasn’t asking to sit there for four hours or anything, just maybe 10-15 minutes.
Now I live alone, and I used to always eat in front of the TV on TV trays. Then I bought a bar-height dining room table with bar stools and I really like it. So I’ve gotten in the habit of turning on the satellite radio and sitting at the table watching birds and squirrels out the window while I eat. There is almost always a critter or two (I have a dog and a cat) sitting politely at my feet, waiting for bits of chicken to drop to the floor. Sometimes, if I’m involved in a really great book, I’ll read while I eat, but mostly that tends to be lunch. I rarely eat standing over the kitchen sink anymore, although I do from time to time. Often, dessert (if there is dessert) is taken into the living room to eat in front of the TV.
I like that decompression time of turning off all stimuli (except maybe some mellow music) and focusing on the food. You eat more mindfully that way and tend to overeat less often. I eat less garbage that way because when the only thing I have to focus on is the food, if it happens to be a frozen block o’ dinner, I will actually notice how awful it tastes if I’m not reading or watching TV.
I will only answer the phone if it’s one of my parents and I know they’ve been trying to reach me for a couple of days. It’s hard to catch me sitting still, so I cut them a break when I am.
No screens (my gf’s #1 pet peeve). Candlelight.
If we’re together, then the dinnertime rule is no screens. We’re also working on no nagging, but it’s taking my husband a little longer on that one. Since my kids are teens, we all only get to eat together about 2 or 3 times a week, though.
Most nights we sit around the table, turn music off, and light candles. We try to keep the toddler calm as long as possible, but sometimes she’s just gotta get down before we’re done eating.
Lounging around the living room with plates on our laps, usually together because I don’t cook more than once a day and I expect it to be eaten hot. When the kids were very little we would usually eat at the table, because they were little pigs. As they got older we got used to eating in the living room with the TV on. Looking back, I am surprised we never had any major spillage issues. Maybe they weren’t pigs after all.
half of 56 families chose to eat without screens. though it’s too small a sample size to say either way, i wonder if it’s sad that so few eat together like that or pleasantly surprising that so many do so in this Age of Screens?
We eat separately, mostly because my husband and I are both picky eaters but in very different ways. He fixes his dinner when he’s hungry, I fix my dinner when I’m hungry, and one of us will put something together for the kids. Screens don’t have anything to do with it.
Honestly, though, I don’t much enjoy eating as a communal activity, so I don’t really feel like we’re missing out.
We almost always eat together, no screens. Kids are 18 and almost 15. We don’t have really long meals, but we talk and check in together.