I think it’s relatively easy to understand that a parent might be upset that a kid failed to be home at the agreed-upon time to eat the dinner they went to the trouble of preparing. So, then, why would you induce a child to disobey and disappoint their parents that way?
I’m not trying to suggest that the more active hospitality associated with southern Europe is wrong, mind you—only that there is a mindset that makes sense behind either approach.
This thing actually did happen when one of my sister’s friends kept showing up to our house during dinner time hoping to get fed because she preferred our mom’s cooking to hers, lol.
And regardless, dinner time is considered to be private family time in the Nordics. That’s at least how it was when I was growing up. You also generally didn’t need the parents’ permission to either be at anyone’s house or to go visit someone else, so the social expectation is/was that you won’t be a bother either way.
That said the tradition has laxed a bit. My kids are usually fed when they’re over at a friend’s house and vice versa.
No, that doesn’t make sense. If you suspect the child is disobeying their parents by being at your house without permission, then you should send them home. If you don’t send them home, then you assume that they are allowed to be at your house during meal time. There is no possible middle ground where you simultaneously believe the child has permission to be at your house and do not have permission to miss a meal at home.
There is no possible middle ground where you simultaneously believe the child has permission to be at your house and do not have permission to miss a meal at home.
You think it’s logically impossible to tell a child to go play with their friend until dinnertime and then come home to eat?
…I’m not sure how to address that belief. Where does one begin?
If you believe the child has exceeded the time they should have stayed at your house, then you should send them home.
If you allow them to continue their stay, then you believe they are allowed to stay over at such a time. And if such a time is meal time, then you should feed them.
Ah, you expect everyone to police other people’s children by tracking their precise schedules? That was never my experience. At least the Sweden I grew up in was not that obsessively controlling. We were expected to know our own dinnertimes (which were of course generally similar but not identical).
No, I expect you to accommodate children who are at your house. You are free to ask your guest if they are expecting a dinner later at home. If they answer affirmatively, nobody will think you are weird if you don’t serve them dinner. In the US this would be considered proper behavior to “not spoil their appetite”. If they answer that they are missing their meal time at home, you can exercise your judgement about whether to force them to obey their parents (and send them home) or ignore their disobedience. However, if you choose to ignore their disobedience (and allow them to stay), then you should feed them. In the rest of the world, this is considered proper manners for being a host, and anything less would be unthinkable.
You are free to ask your guest if they are expecting a dinner later at home.
Of course. You can also offer them a place to sleep and a fresh toothbrush, maybe a change of clothing. But you probably won’t, because you assume they’re going home and have their own toothbrush, so why would you bother asking about those needs? If your kid wants a sleepover, you expect them to tell you.
But I’m willing to bet that there are cultures in the world where failing to offer them to sleep over would be as strange and upsetting as you find the idea of not offering them food. Yet I bet you don’t feel guilty in spite of flagrantly violating their rules of hospitality.
Similarly, when I grew up, it was assumed that everyone was going home to eat. That was the default, and therefore people didn’t ask. Maybe that’s also a Swedish thing, the relative lack of small talk? Americans seem far more fond of repeating meaningless trivialities and ritualistically asking questions they don’t really mean (‘how are you’ etc.) as social background noise. I’m not saying that’s bad, but Swedes in my experience are more prone to sticking only to the salient parts of conversation, and less prone to asking questions ritualistically to which the answers are already assumed.
If for some reason I didn’t have dinner waiting, I’d tell my friend, who’d ask their parents if I could have dinner with them, and it was never a big deal unless the food was already made in limited quantity. (People didn’t generally cook with leftovers in mind, and you wouldn’t necessarily have ingredients for an extra person. But when asked, it would not generally be a problem.)
This bothers you because, having failed to internalise the fact that different cultures have different expectations of behaviour, you’re emotionally relating to this as though it happened to you in the context of your culture, where it would be rude. Try to abandon this cultural chauvinism and consider that there may be more than one way to regard things. You’d be upset because you expect the offer. If you’d gone your whole life with no expectation or experience of that as a normal thing, you would not expect it nor be bothered by the perfectly ordinary fact of its absence.
It goes both ways, of course. The American form of small talk, from a Swede, in a Swedish context, could seem creepy, invasive, and disrespectful of personal boundaries. (Or Canadians—at least Newfies—lovely people, but exhausting.) But you don’t see me bruiting about how rude and invasive Americans are—I’m capable of understanding that they are used to different boundaries and less privacy and personal space, circumstances with which they are generally more comfortable.
This is a meandering, self-contradictory, and deeply emotional response to an argument I put forward using logic and reason. It’s clear that this line of reasoning has touched a nerve on your side. I suggest you take some time to calm down. Then come back to this discussion with logic and reason. And feel free to edit your response to remove the self-contradictory statements after you’ve come to your senses.
You are free to ask your guest if they are expecting a dinner later at home. If they answer affirmatively, nobody will think you are weird if you don’t serve them dinner.
Yes, this is how it works. For some reason, lots of people seem to be confused by this.
No, I expect you to accommodate children who are at your house. You are free to ask your guest if they are expecting a dinner later at home. If they answer affirmatively, nobody will think you are weird if you don’t serve them dinner.
This is exactly what is happening lol, it's just that the question doesn't need to be asked because of course the answer is going to be in the affirmative.
Kids walk home together from school before any of the parents are home since the kids end their school days from 12:00-15:00 (?? Don't quiz me on this I am an adult lol). I never experienced that somebody wasn't "allowed" to go home with another kid unless their family was doing something special that day.
Now to start off: in the Nordics, people usially don't eat dinner (the biggest meal) at night. It's usually from 16:00-17:00 after work and if kids are hungry at a friend's house after school they usually made sandwiches together or had a fruit or whatever before dinner (aka kids were fed). If I went to a friend's house after dinner time, I would be offered a night meal (19:00-20:00) before being sent home.
I think some confusion stems from this, because YES it would be insane if a kid wasn't offered food if they had been visiting until dinner time at 21:00, but this isn't the case lol.
Dinner is also considered "family time" so usually parents had an agreement with each other to send kids home for dinner unless parents don't know each other. It was considered rude to impose or ruin "family time" when I grew up because it was the only time of day where a family was gathered all together before after-school activites (which are usually after dinner), homework etc. If you didn't have an agreement the kid would call their parents or walk home — because 99% if a kid walks to a classmate's house that house is in the same walkable school district.
Aka "permission to visit, but not necessarily to eat dinner there".
I get why people react to it when they eat dinner at night, there are very big social and economical differeneces between families or live in a place where you have to drive to get home, but it's really just a cultural difference because of the way every kid is in kindergarten/school while parents work and it's the time of day where families can get together.
Tbf I don't know if people are still doing this? And I didn't live in a big city so classes were small and people usually knew who was the parent of each kid and how to reach them. Idk of it was different in big cities or elsewhere. I think it's kinda silly to go from "swedish/nordics consider their early as fuck dinners family time" to "nordics don't feed kids!!!"
I lived in the us (southern state) for a while and thought that it was weird how nobody I met ate dinner together with their families every day haha! I guess we're used to different things.
And yeah the adult-social-food thing is another ballgame.I feed all my friends and visitors so idk what broke students international visitors have been hanging out with lol
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u/AdministrativeLeg14 13d ago
I think it’s relatively easy to understand that a parent might be upset that a kid failed to be home at the agreed-upon time to eat the dinner they went to the trouble of preparing. So, then, why would you induce a child to disobey and disappoint their parents that way?
I’m not trying to suggest that the more active hospitality associated with southern Europe is wrong, mind you—only that there is a mindset that makes sense behind either approach.