Suppertime Sucks: 6 Reasons Why Dinner Is the Worst

It doesn’t matter if you live in Medicine Hat, Alberta, or Grand Falls, New Brunswick. It doesn’t matter if it’s four o’clock or six o’clock or seven o’clock at night. If you are serving a meal to your young children and call it dinner, it’s yucky.

It doesn’t matter if it’s chicken or ham or spaghetti with sauce (their favourite). If it’s served anywhere near the dinner hour, it’s gross.

This can be pretty infuriating. But you’re not alone in your frustration! And you’re not alone when: 

You Make Five Different Dinners

Even though you know you shouldn’t. Even though you said you wouldn’t.

You end up offering your child another option for dinner when they refuse your first attempt. And then your second. And third. Surely you can’t send your child to bed hungry, right?

You Scratch Your Head And Wonder...

“Will my child develop scurvy if he eats plain pasta with parmesan for the 216th day in a row?”

You remind yourself he ate half a piece of broccoli for lunch and figure that’s probably enough vitamins for one day.

And you use all your self-control to stop yourself from Googling, “How do you get scurvy?”

You Don’t Bother Making Yourself A Plate Of Food

You’ll just end up eating whatever the kids don’t eat—which will be the whole serving, minus half of a bite—so you just eat straight from their plates.

You'll Also Love: 9 Parenting Apps That Don't Exist (But Should)

You Use Dessert As A Reward 

You’ve read all the articles by nutritionists about getting children to eat their dinner.

You know you shouldn’t use food as a reward.

But desperate times call for desperate measures. “If you eat one more bite, you can have dessert.”

Pro Tip: Reduce your own feelings of guilt by making dessert something healthy. “Kale-sicles anyone?” 

You Do Ridiculous Things

You make the food talk. You dance. You pretend the food has superpowers. You try reverse psychology. You make it a game.

Remember when you thought you’d never have to do these things? Well. Now you’re doing them.

You Throw In The Towel

Sometimes, after particularly challenging parenting days, you don’t really care about dinner.

“Sure, you can have cereal.”

Or you thaw something that looks like food. You don’t care if it’s neon or sugary or how long it’s been in the freezer.

You just need to get through “dinnertime” so you can make it to “bedtime” and then collapse on the floor. Right?

Dear parent-friend: you are not alone in this dinnertime battle.

Look up at the clock, and know that there are millions of other parents going through the exact same thing, right now.

In just a few short hours, your kiddos will be in bed and you can rest.

You just need to make it through the bedtime battle.

Photos by oksun70, shalamov, stockbroker / 123RF Stock Photo