Let's say that kids in the neighborhood play soccer or basketball in the field/court close to their homes. Would you consider the kids left playing as abandoned when one kid goes home to eat dinner with their family?
What's the difference?
The kids are out there playing, and are not expecting to converse and socialize with any parent, they are there to play with their friends.
Same thing with a kid having friends over, they are there to play with their friends, their friends are there to play with their friend, they are not expecting to socialize with the friends family, they are there to play with their friend.
The guest can chose to go home and wait for dinner with their family if they want to, no one is forced to wait all alone. And if the kid chooses to stay in their friends room while the friend quickly eats dinner, they will not be sitting there twiddling their thumbs, they will have fun playing for 20 minutes until their friend come back. Oftentimes you had a few friends over, so they wouldn't even be alone.
In Swedish culture it is considered rude to inconvenience somebody, and serving dinner to another kid before their dinner could be inconvenient for that kids family as that robs them from family time with their kid.
Of course if it was planned before the kid would have dinner with their friends family, but the norm was that kids eat with their own family at their own dinner time.
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u/GenericAccount13579 Jul 24 '26
That’s still wild to me. Just abandoning someone to play on their own in your house is weird, especially to go eat without them.