Does your family eat dinner in front of the TV?

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I was talking to my friend the other day, she said they have gotten so busy that they eat in front of the TV with their kids, mostly to kill two birds with one stone and watch a movie together as a family, and still get the kids to bed on time. I’ve always had a rule against meals in front of the TV. What do you do?
 
whoops I just clicked on the wrong one, I goofed up sorry. I meant rarely
 
Well the only time we eat on the dinner table together is for Thanksgiving and Christmas. So yeah pretty much every day in front of the TV, computer or wherever.
 
When we are now all together as a family we don’t eat in front of the t.v. We are all so happy to be together that it gets turned off and we enjoy each others company.

When they weren’t adults though, we would eat in front of the t.v. about once every other week, we would put out a big blanket on the floor of the living room, order pizza and get a movie.

Dinner was a time for us all to reconnect from the day away from each other (work or school). That is probably why now that my girls are adults we like to eat without the distraction of the t.v. when our schedules all actually mesh to do that.

Of course if I am alone when the dinner hour rolls around, you will find me here on the computer, generally at CAF eating my dinner, the t.v. might be on, it might not be.

Brenda V.
 
We make it a point to eat together at the table. My hubby is adamant about that. He wants us to be able to talk to each other, not zone out in front of the tv. That said, once every few months we will watch a movie and eat pizza or nachos there, but it is few and far between, so the kids see it as a treat, not the norm.
 
Very rarely do we ever eat dinner in front of the TV. The only times we do that is if there’s a hockey or football game on during normal dinner time, and then we all eat at the coffee table together and watch the game. 👍
 
We can’t escape our 62" HDTV in our open concept home…😃
 
My husband and I eat every meal in front of the tv…but i’m hoping that once I have kids that habit will change. Think of it this way, at least you guys eat together…many families don’t sit down together to eat a meal with each other anymore:(
 
We hardly ever turn the tv on except to watch a movie, occasionly we’ll eat dinner while we watch.
 
You didn’t have my answer that is never. We have two televisions in our home, one in the tiny family room and one in our bedroom (which is a fairly recent addition in our house). We can’t see the television unless we are in the family room and we only eat in the kitchen so it would be difficult to watch the television and eat. Most things on television would make me lose my appetite anyway.
Now if the question is does your family read while eating, I have to admit that is one habit I am forever trying to break around here.
 
3-5 days per week. That’s good for us — in the house where I grew up, it was 7 days per week. My wife and I make a point of eating as a family in the dining room about 2-3 times per week despite our two year old’s resistance.
 
I voted rarely, but it’s really never. Our tv (for movie/video viewing only) is not near the living room or kitchen. We do have family movie night with popcorn, though.

Jennifer
 
I voted rarely but the answer is really never. I don’t see anything wrong with putting in a movie and eating pizza together, that would be kind of a special treat, I just never thought of it. I wouldn’t think it was a good idea to do it often, though.
 
We never eat dinner in front of the TV. We never watch TV shows.

We will watch movies on the weekend (mostly on the Winter) and then we do have popcorn.
 
Growing up, our TV was always positioned so that it could be seen from the dinner table. It was really sad. You couldn’t talk, because Dad would complain he couldn’t hear his show (and he HAD TO see EVERY show. And they wondered why I avoided staying downstairs in the evenings; the TV was constantly prattling about junk!

Now, as a parent myself, we always eat dinner together. Sometimes at the table (which is across the house and out of sight of the TV), sometimes around the coffee table. So, we eat dinner or whatever while discussing the show with our kids (5 and 3.5 years). TV watching at our house is constantly interrupted by discussions of why, what, where, etc. (TiVo is great for this; you pause the program whenever there’s a question, discuss, then continue. Plus, you can fast-forward through commercials!)

The latest favorite was the 11-part “Planet Earth” series on Discovery Channel; they LOVED talking about the animals and why they did what they did. Today (July 4), it was the History Channel and a series on the American Revolution. Occasionally, it will be football or baseball (with a discussion of the rules or why the player got a penalty (“That wasn’t nice, was it? He could hurt someone by doing that. You should always play fair.”) ) “Dogfights” on the Military Channel and anything about dinosaurs are also big favorites with the kids. (DH was bragging at the office that DD properly identified a MiG at the Smithsonian last week. “Hey, that’s a MiG! We saw that on ‘Dogfights’!”)

Lots of history, science, and EWTN. No sitcoms, nothing trashy, no news. (We read the paper… and the kids don’t get worked up over being subjected to endless shots of the burning SUV that rammed Glasgow Airport.)
 
We have two different lifestyles. When DH is home we might eat watching TV anywhere from once every couple of weeks to twice each week. When is is deployed (which he is right now–I answered for that), we usually eat dinner in front of the TV. I’d feel badly about it if, DD and I didn’t get plenty of time together. We eat every other meal together at the table and we homeschool, so we don’t need that time, too.
 
This may sound weird to people but i dont watch t.v with my family at all. Theres so much smut and sextalk that i get really uncomfortable watching tv when im around my parents. They watch shows like bigbrother, if the contestants on the show arent using all three of their brain cells to talk about sex then their usually asleep.
This is a real promblem for me because most of my friends dont mind talking to their parents about girls or sexual topics, but for some reason i just think its really wrong.
 
I voted rarely because there wasn’t a never option. There is nothing on TV that has to be watched. We do watch DVDs as a family but that is usually either after dinner or on a weekend afternoon.
 
I didn’t like the choices for this poll. I let the kids pick one night a week to eat in the family room, just to add variety to our days. I’m pretty strict about only once a week. If I let them, they (including DH) would eat out there everyday. The choice I’d have to fill in is 1-3 times per week. Our one time per week is far from almost half the week (3 times). I dunno. Maybe I am just too sensitive. I just felt like there should be more choices in the poll.
 
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