Boyfriends / girlfriends staying for dinner

[theredchicken]

For those of you with teens who have boyfriends / girlfriends, how often do they come round, and how often do they eat with you?

DD has asked to have her boyfriend round for dinner 4 days out of the last 7 and lunch on Saturday. I refused the last time as she only asked 20 mins before dishing up dinner. It also doesn't help that he's veggie and we are not.

[BuzzLightbulb]

I'm a bit old fashioned so I'd be pushing back a bit.

Unless of course they've been going out for ages and you know the boy quite well, or he lives a long way away etc.

In general though I prefer to have some notice and a bit of downtime in the evenings!

But on the plus side its nice that your daughter is happy asking him to stay, and that he's happy to stay. Says a lot about your domestic vibe.

Better than getting the 'oh we'll just go out and get something to eat' or 'he's gonna eat before he comes over' we get when we make the offer.

It's the being asked to go pick boyfriend up and bring him round because the bus takes too long that used to bug me. Got short shrift. 10 minutes v 15, hmmmm.

[LucyLasticBand]

when ds was 15 I used to feed his GF a LOT,
and she was a vegetarian, annoyingly, and then converted! to eat our meat.

[BuzzLightbulb]

Here's an idea....

Keep cooking bacon! Seems to be the thing veggies falter for!

No offender to any vegetarian members !

[chocoluvva]

Never usually on a weekday, partly because BF lives a 40 min round car drive away and partly because there's too much coming and going to after-school/evening activities. They have the luxury of being in a small sixth-form at school with its own common-room where they hang out during free-periods so there's plenty of opportunity to see each other during the week.

Approx once a fortnight as they kind of take turns in going to each other's home.

When I was their age approx. ninety-years ago my BF used to come home with me after school several days a week and loll around in front of the coal-fire until my mum kicked him out at 5.30 when we had our dinner.

[Aelfrith]

Hmm tricky. It's great she is so keen to have him participate in your family life, that's a good sign I think that she is comfortable with him and his welcome at your house.

If you can possibly bear it, I'd continue to feed him as much as you can! Food is such a message of acceptance and care, he may really needing that for whatever reason. And you will be sending out a fantastic message to your daughter of your acceptance of her friends.

I pretty much always feed any teens who pitch up here...I just bulk out whatever we are having, but I'm a pretty cheap cook to start with so it's mainly another portion of pasta going on to boil. But they have to eat what's offered, it's not a cafe. So if I don't know that they are veggie (with sufficient notice) they'll have to make do, I'm afraid. But once I know I can usually find something suitable (stash of veggie burgers in freezer etc, gluten free stuff for another friend).

It's a short phase and it (potentially) says a lot about you as a parent how you , I mean, handle it! I was always incredibly envious of friends whose parents were laid back and welcoming about this kind of stuff...something I've tried to do for my DCs.

[Weegiemum]

My dd (she's 14) has recently asked if I "really meant it" when I said I'd be happy for her boyfriend (all of TWO WHOLE MONTHS) to come here on a Saturday night when we usually get takeaway and watch a DVD. I am!

Turned out she's worried dh and I will embarrass her by "cuddling or holding hands"! I promised we won't :D

[chocoluvva]

Until this year -my DD is 17 - I wouldn't have been happy with her having dinner at someone else's home four nights out of seven. We aim to chat as a family at dinner time and I'd be telling her that she shouldn't be imposing herself on someone else's family.

[theredchicken]

Choco, that's what I thought. There's no way I would want that the other way round.

We even took him out with us last week for a pub meal and his parents were in the same pub having a quiet dinner.

They may well be inviting ds back and she's refusing to go but somehow I don't think so.

[chocoluvva]

Hmmm. A bit odd....

Is he a nice lad?

[theredchicken]

He's really nice. I can see why she likes him. My cousin thought he was 20 not 15. He's really chatty and polite and his parents are decent people too.