Do you talk at the dinner table?

yes

other (with whom?)

awww, I would talk with you!

I assume this means as opposed to watching TV (or everyone being on their phones). I voted "other" because we definitely do watch shows sometimes with dinner, but there are also times we don't -- especially if we haven't had a chance to catch up with each other that day. We have our kids every other week, and it's pretty much the same with them, sometimes we let them pick an acceptable show to watch — Community is a favorite, or we've been watching Andor recently. Other times we just sit at the table and chat.

would kick it at the dinner table with all of y'all

I live alone, so unless I’m talking to myself (which can happen!): no.

A pet peeve is eating dinner when someone is over or I’m at another person’s house, but that person isn’t eating then, and that person is emphatically telling me something in a way that demands my attention, because it distracts me from the food, and how satisfying it is.

The best shared meals (out) are ones were we stop taking for a bit, and just focus on the enjoyment of eating in silence, where it’s understood that this should happen without anyone having to say that.

Xp to tipsy mothra yeah basically! When I am in my parents house, all ofus moved out so they pretty much only use the dining room for things when we’re all there, but otherwise we will eat in the sitting room with TV on and yeah we’ll talk about whatever’s on or such. When we bought this house, it was the most space we had because our flat at the time had like three rooms and we didn’t have a table. It’s still kind of a novelty for us to have a dinner table, and we always eat there, never in the room with the TV.

Voted 'other': we talk while having dinner, but don't have dinner at a table (and usually have background telly on at the same time).

staunch silence. no shows. no talking

To our dog, yes

Seriously, tho, we usually watch some junk food YouTube makeup influencer drama thing or trashy top ten lists

staunch silence. no shows. no talking

Mostly eat alone, but recently went to big family dinner and, funnily enough, everybody was just talking about what shows they watch. Except me, who just sat at the end of the table and spent all afternoon pondering where the heck I recognized the waiter from.

eat mainly at dinner table, if evening meal is a half decent effort (usually is tbf) phones would be away and we'd probably more concentrate on the food than chat- chat's for lingering at the table after perhaps

no tv in room but even if there was it would be off. similar for lunch if we are home together.

breakfast/brunch all bets are off tho

wait

What was the deal with our dinner then?!

well it wasnt at my dinner table for a start was it

I "talk" at the dinner table only to answer questions on Jeopardy.

yes but minimally

My wife and I eat together every night (unless she's working) and with my daughter 3 out of 7 nights (my other kid is complicated). No phones or telly. We just talk shit, really. I'd happily noodle about on the internet or read, tbh, but it's a thing for my wife, who grew up with a family that ate together every night, and I'm good with that.

-At home, we make time to talk before dinner every night, but then watch a show together while we're eating (partially because my partner has some, uh, misophonia and related sensitivities and would prefer to not watch me eating, although it's mostly fine when we go out)

-We also have friends over for a potluck once a week that's been a standing thing for over 13 years

-Talking during/about the show requires pausing

it doesn't always work out, but my preference is to talk during dinner

we try and talk with our kids at dinner. a typical conversation:

what was your favourite thing today?
when I did a poo on your head.

Hahaha.

Typical conversation with my daughter:

Wife: who did you have for English today?
Daughter: Ms Munday.
Me: Is she called that if she teaches on a Thursday?
D (to my wife): why haven't you left him yet?

Daughter otm, obviously.

My son Theo (8) never stops talking at the dinner table (mostly about football) - he barely has time to eat.

he barely has time to breathe

I don't have a dinner nor any other formal kitchen table :(

I miss it a lot tbh - but our apt is very small and kinda cramped

We have a table we never use. Its taking up room, too, I dont know why the other half bothered to get it out and reassemble it, he had this idea we'd eat at table, then we did it exactly once, in awkward silence, then went back to dinner on the couch with TV.

we eat in 3 separate rooms between 2 floors and I'm the chef and the waiter and the dog police, because he's always plotting to steal food. I've never had a dining room and I don't really care for the idea. It's like violence to me when someone talks with a mouthful of food. Lol, what a fun sociopath I am!

lol I have gotten weirdly sensitive about people talking with their mouths full lately, even though I catch myself doing it occasionally

We've gone back and forth on this. Years ago when my partner and I were both working full time we decided to make a point of eating/talking at the dinner table as we realized we weren't otherwise communicating much. But me going to grad school and both of us working more from home (even before covid but especially since) means we actually see each other, and talk, quite a lot during the day most days. So we've gravitated back to dinner while we watch something, most of the time with the odd exceptional day. Maybe also relevant is that we eat pretty late, usually after 8pm, sometimes 9, so we may have already spent a couple hours chatting & cooking before then

Oh yeah, that's the other thing, everyone thinks we're crazy for this but since a typical evening goes exercise > happy hour conversation time > cooking > dinner & a show, we often don't eat until 9:30 or 10.

My family only ate around the table regularly until my sister went to college, then from my age 12 or 13 on we just ate on our own or made our own dinner. But before then, we always had the TV on and pretty much never said anything. Those "how was school today Junior" dinner scenes in shows were pretty foreign to me.

Nowadays if we're getting together it's 50/50 between talking in the dining room and watching Netflix around the TV. Usually depending on if there are guests and whether the food was home cooked or taken out.

Partner and I pretty much always eat our food in separate locations unless stoned

Do people who eat in separate locations cook together, and then scatter?

My wife and I are old-fashioned enough that we make a weekly menu, alternate cooking duty and cleanup duty, eat dinner together every night sitting together at a table, and almost never have the television on as we eat. We frequently play music, but quietly, and we converse as we eat. It's been a good set of habits for us. It keeps us abreast of one another's lives. We try hard not to do problem solving at the table though.

This is peak ILX, folks.

i don't even own a table

We split things in thirds: eating solo doing what we like (typical her with the TV, me gaming), eating at the table while we play a board game, or eating at the table to half an old-fashioned “chat”. Not dogmatic about it, just see where the wind takes us each night

In the having to feed little kids phase where you spend all your energy feeding them and are then too exhausted to cook for yourself. Honestly beer is usually my dinner. Not a healthy place

we typically discuss who made the most of their mystery basket ingredients. Take bites with eye contact.

My son Theo (8) never stops talking at the dinner table (mostly about football) - he barely has time to eat.

my partner cooks a lot of dinners, thank god, and we usually talk about the food while we're eating it. we have a round table with four chairs and our cat likes to sit on one of them in between us, watching us and occasionally sniffing things.

wife, me, both kids (teens) at table, talking, it's almost the only time all four of us are EVER in the same place

I'd love it if we could all sit at table together and eat, but every single person in this household has different dietary requirements. We got 2 vegetarians, and one of them is also coeliac and possibly has AFID (will eat about 4 kinds of food total) so has to have a VERY specific meal (if you get even the brand wrong, they wont eat it, its incredibly frustrating).

My partner's basically the opposite - wont eat anything but meat and plain vegetables/bread. To split the diff I'm trying to learn to cook vegetarian and japanese curries and katsus. But either way every night its 3 sets of seperate cooking and cleaning up and it is EXHAUSTING.

M-Thu, talk (a little) while watching TV. F-Sun, talk while eating dinner and listening to jazz.

I've been driven crazy trying to cook for people with conflicting food restrictions, I don't care, I just want them to get together to work out the menu for themselves

regarding misophonia, I am repulsed by people who eat with their mouth open, I can’t abide it

but snoring, labored breathing, or annoyingly vocalized yawning - those get to me sometimes but don’t really bother me that much

Yeah I'm misphonic too, I cant bear eating/slurping noises, or utensils clinking on plates, basically anything in those fucking ASMR videos.Its kind of hilarious though because I have sinus probs so I am also a noisy eater. I cant help it :(

haven't eaten food at an actual table since I was maybe 8 or 9 years old except for less than 5 visits to a restaurant in the mean time. sit with food on a tray in my lap watching tv. when I was without a working tv for a couple of days last year it felt really really weird to just sit there eating food with nothing to look at.

"it is EXHAUSTING."

otm. I go through burnout phases where not only my enjoyment of cooking, but also living is severely challenged! And I'm only cooking for two others, one who is underweight and baulks at anything with half a teaspoon of cayenne in it and the other an overweight young adult autist with complex and constantly challenging dietary issues. That's enough to keep me too busy and stressed for relaxed easy conversation at mealtimes.

We don't even own a TV

I was thinking the other day how much of a crucial part of my education was the time spent around the table, as a half-sacred moment of family togetherness that I'm now just replicating. Interestingly, my partner is from a culture / background where everyone ate at their preferred time, dispersed and ate in their corners, sitting or standing. I'm for regularity and prepared to cook twice a day, she's Queen of Snacks and will go for four weeks without touching the stove if she can (although she's a great cook). If the food's cooked and there's wine, she's there.

Oh and we're on talking grounds yes.

The idea of eating dinner while sitting on a couch drives me crazy! I would feel like I was always about to drop food on myself or on the couch or whatever.. And where do I put my drink? it's just.... messy. What if you have a steak, or something you need a knife for? Do you bear down on it, on your lap? Where do you put the knife? Perhaps these questions would be easier to answer if I had a coffee table lol but my living room is basically too small for one. I dunno, eating at a table just feels 10000% more comfortable and convenient. The butter's there, the bread's there, the bottle of wine's there, extra coleslaw's there. It's all within reach! My kids do drive me crazy with their terrible manners, their singing and chanting, their secret language, their arguing.. so I guess it just proves how much I value eating at a table that I'm willing to put up with that

Husband gets fed in work, so eats dinner at lunchtime, usually, and doesn't get home till 9pm. I eat dinner alone (or as alone as you can be when you have a dog snuggled under your left elbow, a cat on your lap, another dog snuggled under your right elbow, and another dog on the back of the sofa just behind your head), at about 7pm, in front of the telly, on the nights he's at the office. When he's at home we might eat dinner together, and about once a month we have friends over and eat like civilised people at the actual table with matching napkins and a bottle of wine and the whole deal. On Sundays I eat at my parents' house, and we eat like civilised people with the telly off and a bottle of fizzy water and dessert and everything. During the week, though, my parents have the telly on at dinnertime. My dad is too deaf to hear conversation AND the telly, and my mam makes him choose conversation on a Sunday.

The idea of eating dinner while sitting on a couch drives me crazy! I would feel like I was always about to drop food on myself or on the couch or whatever.. And where do I put my drink? it's just.... messy. What if you have a steak, or something you need a knife for? Do you bear down on it, on your lap? Where do you put the knife?

Tray tables!!!

eating solo doing what we like (typical her with the TV, me gaming

Now for my turn to be incredulous -- how do you play video games while eating?

Tray tables! I forgot about those things. Big 70s energy in my mind.

Not much, too busy eating.

Ha for sure, and yet they're essential to our lifestyle. Also a sheet for the couch that we refer to as the Giant Napkin.

Truly enjoying all these glimpses into people's daily routines, and obviously everyone is doing what works best for them and it's best not to judge, but couples not eating together at all feels bleak to me.

(also trayce that sounds very difficult, my sympathies)

xp

I lived alone or practically alone from 2015 - 2020, now that I'm with my folks mom and I banter at the table. While Jeopardy is on in the background

My wife and I eat breakfast and lunch together every day, but she doesn’t always eat dinner - when she does, that’s another shared meal. Sometimes the TV will be on, showing local news, but we’re moving soon and won’t have cable there, so that will change. Maybe we’ll put on one of those videos of train journeys through Norway or something. Anyway, she cooks, and we talk about whatever - political news, goofy shit one of us has run across online, things that need to get taken care of, etc.

I live alone, so unless I’m talking to myself (which can happen!): no.

― The Triumphant Return of Bernard & Stubbs (Raymond Cummings), Thursday, March 9, 2023 1:06 PM (two days ago)

same

mr veg & I eat dinner at the table every night

for a long time we watched tv while we ate dinner which was a nice compromise & didn’t feel quite so uh formal is not the word, official? but mum used to bang on abt no tv at dinnertime so i liked being a pathetic grownup rebel haha look mum tv at dinner wooo

we bought a new sofa at christmas time that is significantly taller than our old one so now we can’t see the tv over it :(

so we pick some music to listen to & maybe chat a bit during dinner which is nice & does feel civilized

but we are FAST eaters so it’s not like there’s long philosophical conversations being had lol

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My weekly dinners with Mom nowadays consist of talk, TV in the background (usually news or Jeopardy--if there's nothing on, then we watch live feeds of kittens on YouTube), and playing Scrabble Go against each other on our phones.

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