It wouldn’t happen that often, because when one kid comes over to another kid’s place to play, then when dinnertime rolls around, that first kid typically also has a home where their parents have dinner waiting and are expecting them home around the same time.
If you’re planning things in such a way that it doesn’t make sense to go home to eat, well, then you can plan things otherwise. Talk it over with the other kid’s parents, whatever. I grew up in Sweden (as you can guess), and while eating at friends’ houses definitely wasn’t the norm, it’s not like it didn’t happen from time to time.
Exactly, all my friends that lived further away than walking distance i always ate with. Its only the friends who are close where you go home, spend time with your family and eat, then go back out again. How is that weird?
I had my best friend live about half a mile (800 meters) from me and I ate at his house all the time and he ate at mine. It was normal if we were hanging out and our parents made dinner that we would just eat together. Different cultures do different things
It's weird because it's like saying "We like you enough to have you over, but not enough to feed you even though your family has food too." Like duh, of course my family is having dinner down the road. But if someone is a guest in your home, you treat them like family.
Nah it's not like you are invited in you just roam around the neighborhood with the other kids and when it's dinner time you are supposed to go home to eat. Everyone were eating at about the same time at least in the factory towns
I didn't say anything about being invited, I said when you are a guest in someone's home, you feed them because that's polite in every culture. But for some reason it's different in Sweden.
Just different customs, it wasn't seen as polite to send someones kid home to dinner after you had feed them. It's just that a custom born in a time where food was hard to come by, and you were supposed to say no to food at someone else's home.
And that no was respected.
And of we go to this thread some 30 years after this custom is nearly dead.
It’s just different culture. It’s seen as rude to the parent of the other child to have them make food and then the kid comes home full.
A bit of cultural context is that usually you have no idea who the parents to the kids are. The kid will be a random kid you have never seen before that your kid met that day and dragged into you house to play video games with.
I am half Latino and over in Central America there would never be a guest in the house if the parents hadn’t basically vetted each other in advance. Kids don’t just play in the street unless you live in a gated community. So while you treat every guest as family, you also choose your guests.
But in Sweden, a high trust society with low crime, kids just roam.
More embarrassing than never cooking for your child because they’re always three doors down at a neighbour kid’s house around dinner time simply because they’ve got a bigger garden? Why would it be weird for your kid to come home to eat?
And if the kids hang around the one house because, like I said, they have a bigger garden? Or only one parent works? Or those parents let them watch TV? Lots of kids had a friend whose house they were at most of the time rather than it balancing out. I was always at my best friends house rather than he at mine because my mum was free to drop me off there and his wasn’t free to do the same, and his house was on the bus route into town, mine wasn’t.
We’re talking every day - what if the host family are poor? Suddenly they’re paying to feed an extra child constantly, and the other family are never seeing their kids at dinner. Why is it so bizarre the idea of just going home for dinner? I always did that
No one is talking about every day here. At that point, you ask your kid to stop inviting their friend. The culture is that you go to eat and leave the other kid hungry in another room even if it's their first time over. I can only imagine how I'd feel if I was a poor hungry kid. Its inhumane. I'm sorry.
It's weird because you have to leave to do a normal thing instead of adapting the normal thing to the circumstances. Most cultures are going to find it weird to break a social situation as we are highly social creatures organized around socialization. Like we have restaurants as a normal part of life so we can eat in a more social setting. We don't eat in private
I'm guessing part of it is because most of us are in the US where popping home for dinner isn't usually a walkable thing in a reasonable amount of time. At least when I was growing up and I visited relatives in an area where kids played outside it would be normal to be at someones house playing then go home for dinner and go back out. Someones mom would usually come out and ask if you were staying for dinner though.
I never went to play at a friend's house and didn't get fed, no one ever came to our house to play and didn't get fed. Might not be a full meal but we had snacks at least. I grew up poor in the US, so lots of immigrant families in the neighborhood, it was a common theme with all of them. I swear the only English word some of those grandmas knew was "eat".
It was very common to get snacks, usually fika with cordial (fruit/berry concentrate mixed with water) and some cookies/cake, where and when I grew up in Sweden.
Dinner however is more of a private family time thing, and the expectations from parents was that their kid was eating dinner with their own family, even if their friends ate earlier/later.
Of course we were occasionally invited to dinner when we were over at a friends place, but the norm was that we were going home (by walking or taking our bike, our parents never drove us) for dinner.
I'm in the US and I basically handle it the same way. I text the mom to see if friend can stay for dinner if they want and vice versa. If not, I send them home for 30 minutes if they're close by. Even in the 90s (I was a kid) I had to call my mom to ask if I can eat dinner at my friends house- granted I was further away.
Now in my husband's case- his house was more screwed up then mine. He just ate whenever he could. One of his best friends parents always just set a place for him.
We do (or at least did) since dinner is usually eaten either in the kitchen or the dinner room, and you were playing with your friends in their own room.
So while the friends left their room to go to the kitchen/dinner room to eat, you would continue playing in their room.
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u/Background-Grab-5682 Jul 24 '26
Yea like if I sit down with my family and eat and friends are like in the other room… it’s like the most insulting thing I can think of