On my birthday last year, we didn’t bother to organise a dinner out. We were busy and tired, so my husband cooked one of the family’s favourites at home, and for something different we actually cleared the junk off the dining table and sat down to eat together.
The conversation that followed is going to sound made up, but I swear it’s true. As we called the kids to the table, my seven-year-old son excitedly exclaimed, “Wow! We’re having dinner at the table like a family! I wish we could eat dinner like a family every night!”
Yeah, so to say at that moment we felt like total failures as parents would be an understatement.
I mean, we sit down to a meal as a family so seldom that my kids are actually excited about it. What kind of family are we? I gave it a lot of thought before posting about the conversation on Facebook, as I feared others would agree that yes, we’re terrible parents.
Instead, the responses were quite reassuring. Well, as long as you don’t think that the fall of the family dinner is the first horse of the apocalypse.