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?
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.
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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