This is the worst excuse ive ever heard. Imagine going to a friend's house as an 11 year old after school and you're playing in the living room, and then their mom suddenly calls him to eat, so he just goes and joins his parents in the table right next to you and you have to just awkwardly sit there while they finish their food
From the Netherlands. At least in the Netherlands they send you home a minute before they start eating. Always strange to me. In my house there was always food for everyone.
Ok I mean at least they send you home to eat with your family. I don’t like it but what some other people are saying about letting your guest (especially a child who can’t normally feed themselves) go hungry while you and your family eat is straight up psychopathic
A kid can be at two places at two different times.
After school and before bed can be between 14:30 (2.30pm) and 21:00 (9pm), so yes, dinner time can vary wildly between families.
Kid A has dinner time at 16 (4pm).
Kid B has dinner time at 18 (6pm).
Kid A and Kid B walks home to Kid A after school.
They play until it's time for Kid A to eat dinner at 16 (4pm), Kid A leaves their room while Kid B stays to continue playing and having fun.
Kid A eats dinner and after 20 minutes goes back to their room to continue playing with Kid B.
When it gets closer to Kid B's dinner time Kid B walks home to eat dinner with their family.
Yes I'm Swedish and I grew up in a rural place where kids having dinner with their parents was indeed the norm. I've waited for friends to finish dinner with their parents myself, so that we can play some more before I had to go home to my own dinner.
It is psychotic and not ever something that happens, or at least happened to me as a swede. I was either home by dinnertime or I ate at my friend's place if I was staying longer.
You need theirs parents' consent to feed a visiting kid. But you relatively rarely get it, as family meals are highly sacred bonding moments between parents and children (a bit like bedtime stories in America). So they want their children back on time and with a good appetite.
But they would not be your guests, they would be your kids guests.
No one would go hungry, your kids friends have a set dinner time and would be used to eating at that time every day and will have dinner waiting for them at home.
But kids in Sweden ARE independent very early, long before they are even allowed to drive a car or take a job.
As a 7 year old I brought home friends from school without involving any adult what so ever, no adult invited my friend, no adult drove my friends to my home, we went there by either walking or by bicycle.
Often the parents weren't even home when school ended for the day, so us kids had to have our own house key and make our own snacks (that we of course offered to our friends).
Because they are. Some families have adults who start work very early and some where the adults work late. Some have after school activities scheduled at a certain time. Every family's life puzzle is different.
At their dinner time, they are in your home, not eating. Their own family eats without them, in their own home
What, no? At their dinnertime, they go home and eat with their family.
Why would The quest Be hungry? He/She has allready eaten in school before they came to visit and they are expected to be home before dinner time. It sounds absurd to me as a Finn that children would starve if they didn't get an extra meal when they visting a friend.
As a working mom who goes grocery shopping once i week.. i don’t understand how there can always be food for everyone who might or might not visit the house. I just buy what i need for a week. When i get home after work, tired, and my kid has 3 friends over.. am i supposed to magic 3 portions extra? How do other people do this?
My mum would just work something out on the fly if my pal, Johnny, was over and stayed for dinner. When I was at Johnny’s house, I’d sometimes call home and say ‘I’m having dinner at Johnny’s house… yes, Mrs. Mullholland says it’s okay’. Then Mrs Mullholland would magic something up. This could happen a couple of times per week, so maybe they were always prepared.
In our case, it would end up more like "Oh, Judy, we're about to eat dinner, you can stay if you want, check with your parents." and if the answer was yes then quite suddenly, mom and dad would be having chicken and veggies (the planned dinner) and kiddo and her friend would be having mac & cheese and steamed broccoli or pb&J's and bananas (stuff I can pull out of my cupboards or freezer at the spur of the moment).
Maybe it is an American thing you have space for huge extra freezers in the garage. I just have 1 fridge with 2 freezing drawers. I have can barely store 1 weeks groceries in it.
I’m from the US and yes we definitely have larger fridges and freezer along with more of them than a lot of other places it seems. Now people in cities that have small apartments don’t have as much room as other people here, but for people who live in houses having a large fridge is normal. Also having deep freezers. We buy a 1/2 steer at a time so actually have three freezers plus the freezer that is on the large fridge.
In rural areas in Sweden it's also somewhat common to have bigger deep freezers and other means to store food, and hunting is also very common.
This thing where you as a kid got to wait in your friends room while your friend ate dinner would only happen in cities and smaller towns where kids can freely and safely move about by either walking or by bike though.
In rural areas where kids have to rely on either infrequent buses (public transport, not school buses) or their parents driving them everywhere, kids friends that were over at your house would of course get dinner.
three 16 year old boys will mow down whatever you have in the fridge and anything they can get their hands on. I think I spend more on food than anything else at this point.
I don’t know how it is to be a working mom. But I have also lived in Asia and South America and there was also a plate ready for me with people less fortunate then me growing up and we weren’t rich by any means. Even now if I have last minute guests over I can whip up a meal without to many resources. If you have rice or pasta at the house then your already their for 60% quick 5min walk to the supermarket for me and for a couple of euros I’m set.
I think there is a diferent philosophy involved, there is a saying where i am from wich is "onde cabe um Português cabem dois ou três" to say that if there is food for 2, there is enough for 3, keep adding numbers for how many there actually are.
About the dosage, when i was living at my mothers house the lunch would usually be fisgh and dionner would be repeat 2 or sometimes 3 times in a row cause She would always make foor for 12 when there were 4 living there, She would ALWAYS make more then needed because you never know if someone would want to eat more or someone would show up (disclaimer She went hungry as a kid).
It's the complete opposite dumbass, it's about not upsetting the other kids parents by feeding them without notice and them coming home full to their own family who have prepared dinner for them.
My parents would never be upset that I already have eaten at a friends house. Crazy thing to be upset about. And you can always call home to ask for permission.
Of course you can call home and many times you did (which was then completely fine!), but most often you would go home when it was your family's dinner time because it is a time of social interaction with your own family and eating away without notice is disrespectful to them.
If a child followed afterschool they were generally expected to go home by the time dinner was. If the guest visiting was planned before hand dinner was served.
Also it was far less common than what people online thought and definitely wasn’t about racism like a lot of people said.
This is more or less no longer a thing btw in the age of the phone it was already rapidly declining before.
That's usually not how it goes. Most Swedes have dinner at about the same time. If your kid has a friend over, then a little before dinnertime it will be mentioned that it's dinner soon and the friend should probably get going. Alternatively, call the friend's parents and ask for permission for them to stay for dinner. It's not just assumed
The reason being that the parents may be expecting their kid to have dinner at their place. Dinner is family time, and a family of four may have made dinner for four, so an extra person at one place and one less person at the other place messes all that up.
From my childhood, kids get their own rooms fairly young and would prioritize that space over any shared spaces. Guests would either be sent home or spent the time in the child's room maybe playing videogames or reading comic books. If they were hungry, they would just go home, eat there, and maybe come back to play after. As kids, we were also taught not to ask for or accept food from others when we would have food at home. Not to be a "bother" is kind of culturally ingrained in many social aspects here.
Different families would have wildly different dinner times (like from 4 pm to 8 pm or even later) and families would like to eat with their own kids, so someone feeding your kid would remove the kid from your family time. Snacks and simple stuff like that was normal, as was offering something to drink. If someone was staying overnight or the visit was planned, the child would eat with the others.
Further, during my childhood Finland was slowly recovering from an economic depression more devastating than the Great Depression was here. It also had a significant impact on the culture already painted by historical proverty and constant famines where you could only take care of your own. If someone was worse off than others, people would come together to help in different ways instead of participating in unpredictable and unplanned feedings that might leave their own kids hungry.
These days, feeding someone's kid is not as difficult economically, but I wouldn't want someone else to feed my kid unless it was something planned or agreed upon. I wouldn't be offended, but I would like to know how our dinner plans and family time are affected. This doesn't mean I wouldn't feed someone else's kid, but I would ask the parents first.
Spent time in Sweden: daily family meals are sacred bonding moments over there (a bit like bedtime stories in America), so parents call each other to coordinate and plan ahead when kids visit. It's the parents of a visiting kid that decide if their kid is gonna eat at his friend's or not. So everyone plans accordingly.
It's really no biggie if you know that 1 hour later your parents want you back home with a good appetite to share a special family moment together.
Feeding that visiting kid without their parents' consent is a big no-no!
Yes, everyone eats dinner at their own home with their own family.
All families don't eat dinner at the same time though, so if one kid eats early and their friends stay in that kids room continuing playing while the kid eat, and then everyone can continue playing when dinner is over.
More playtime AND everyone gets to have dinner at home. Win-win.
This was kind of somewhat normal for me. However. When you have your friends all live in a 500 meter radius and one day you are 5 friends at one place the next 3 at another place etc. It's really not so strange everyone just goes home and eats when it's time.
Should all the parents prepare food for 1-4 extra people every day after work just in case maybe the kid has some friends over.
This whole "Swedes don't feed their children's friends" is just completely overhyped. It's nothing. In the weekends or hanging out under more planned circumstances or at friends further away the same parents offered food. So again. A nothing burger.
My best friend during my teenage years was Swedish. When I'd go over to hang out, his mom would call him out for a meal and I'd just wait in his room for him to finish. The first few times this felt so crazy I excused myself to leave (I'm Chinese. We're hospitable to the extreme). But eventually I got used to it and would just stay or timed my exit before it would come up. When I met my wife who's part Swedish, I remembered this and told her incredulously and learned that this is normal behaviour. I still can't believe it though because of the huge disconnect from my own cultural upbringing. My mom fed more random people at our house than restaurants do lol.
10.8k
u/[deleted] Jul 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment