Family mealtimes when one person eats a third of what they did

Started 27 January 2026 · 13 replies · 99 hearts · read 2k times

BramwellNottingham, UK · 27 January 2026

6 months ago

Family mealtimes when one person eats a third of what they did — putting it in its own thread so it does not get lost in the check-in.

Practical question, and possibly a silly one.

I would rather hear one person's actual arrangement in detail than five general suggestions, if anybody is willing to write theirs out.

The social side of this is harder for me than any of the logistics, and I have not found anywhere else where that is discussed practically.

Every piece of advice I read appears to have been written for somebody with a completely different week from mine, so I am asking people whose weeks look like this.

Thank you. This circle has solved four practical problems for me already and I am hoping for a fifth.

PipBristol, UK

The birthday cake question comes up in this circle every few months, and the answer that works for me is to have a piece and say nothing.

ZenBristol, UK

I did not tell my family for four months and then told them all at once, and I would do it earlier if I could do it again.

OskarWarsaw, PL

Building on what Pip wrote rather than answering the original question.

Something practical: my medication lives somewhere the children cannot reach and everybody in the house knows where and why.

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK

I am pleased with this thread. Practical, kind, no instructions, no comparisons. That is the whole brief.

14me too 9

NemoneLewes, UK

Wren has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.

I have found that eating something at four in the afternoon means I can sit at the table at six and be present rather than negotiating.

6me too 5

MarkCoventry, UK

Somebody suggested keeping something easy in the freezer for the evenings I have nothing, and it has saved me perhaps thirty difficult nights.

OrvalWinnipeg, CA

My weekends are the difficult ones because the structure is gone, and I have had to build a very loose one deliberately.

BexPlymouth, UK

Well said, and thank you for taking the time over it.

SalmaManchester, UK

Gently disagreeing with Bex, or rather adding the other half of it.

What helped was letting standards drop for a season. Three months of very simple food and nobody suffered and I recovered.

NanNeath, UK

#10

I found the exhaustion harder to manage than anything, because there is no version of a school morning that waits for you.

6me too 1

IslaOban, UK

#11

My eldest asked me directly what I was doing and I gave a short, honest, boring answer, and it has never come up again.

8me too 9

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK

#12

Facilitator note: I am leaving this open through the holidays because it will be more relevant then than it is now.

LuPreston, UK

#13

The evening meal was the hard one. Everybody else hungry at six and me not hungry until nine, and it took a year to find a workable shape.