Eating Together as a Family - Not everyday...

I'm mum to three little girls aged 5,4,1. I also work as an in-house PR for a large Craft company docrafts and I'm married to a Tax Manager. As working parents, we juggle a lot and we beat ourselves up about working too. (I know many working parents do the same)

The biggest thing we feel blessed with currently is that we get to eat as a family two days of the week. Dinner time has become a special and exciting event on weekends.

My husband works about a 45 minute drive away and is away from home apx 12 hours of the day, 5 days a week. He is the main earner and so I am mum who juggles 3 days employment as a PR with school runs, park dates, cooking dinners for the three girls, getting them to their after school activities (and home again!), homework and then bath time and bed time.

Don't worry, I don't class myself as super mum! In fact, I am far from Super Mum. This is just how our family has to work.

I don't eat with my daughters. I chose to eat with my husband at about 8pm once all the kids are in bed asleep and for us, it's valuable time together catching up. Not much is said on a morning as it's (almost organised) chaos as you would expect. Our meal times together feel almost like a little date. After that comes loading the dishwasher, tidying up, catching up on a programme or some emails, grabbing a bath or shower and bed.

Believe me, I have beaten myself up about our crazy life and not eating together for a long time. I felt like a rubbish mum. I felt hard done by running around like a headless chicken without a helping hand but I stopped and thought about it and realised that it's silly.

Thankfully my kids are well mannered and well trained at dinner time. I make sure I sit with them and it's my opportunity to talk to them about their day. It's our special chit chat time. They eat all of their dinner and pudding and ask to leave the table when they have finished. It's not chaos and they haven't turned into animals because daddy isn't there. The cleaning up afterwards is a stressful task though.

Written by our regular contributor Emma.

Website: http://theprmummy.com Twitter: @theprmummy

All views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Room To Grow.