"It’s no secret mealtimes with kids can be a wild card. Perhaps your little one is a highchair tosser, chucking food and sippy cups overboard just to see if someone nearby will play a little dinnertime fetch. Maybe your once adventurous eater suddenly only consumes beige foods like noodles and chicken nuggets, and you’re worried they’re not getting enough nutrients. Or maybe your kids fight through every meal, making dinnertime loud and chaotic. If you’ve tried all the dinnertime and picky eater parenting hacks, and none of them have worked, you might want to try something a little out-of-the-box—like the dinner candle mealtime hack that recently went viral.
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What is the Dinner Candle Hack?
Parents on TikTok are trying the dinner candle hack to make their family mealtimes more peaceful. What is the dinner candle trick? It’s simply dimming the overhead lights and lighting a candle on the dinner table—a family candlelit dinner, if you will (safely out of reach from little hands, of course). The candle theory for kids at dinner is that the flame has a calming effect and can tame even the most chaotic mealtimes.
TikTok user McKenna Cobb tested the hack she described: “Just light a candle at dinner, and your children will just sit down like a moth to a flame and eat.”
Does the Dinner Candle Hack Work?
We know that no parenting hack works for every family, but we suspect the results from the candlelight dinner trend have helped the idea go viral. Search for “candle at dinnertime,” and you’ll get tons of video experiments on TikTok. Cobb has a 2-year-old and said she just wanted to eat together as a family once in a while, so she also decided to test the candle theory with her son. Here’s what happened:
“I lit the candles and he sat down, no questions asked. 10/10 recommend. Super calm dinner,” Cobb captioned her video.
Her video now has over 300K likes and tens of thousands of comments and shares. But what about other parents? Commenters weighed in with their own experiences.
“Father of 2 girls(4,6), they aren’t picky and we tried this, it wasn’t perfect, but when they argued they didn’t yell or have a tantrum… it was unsettlingly calm,” wrote user Orion Binder.
“this works with mine. I have no idea why. my daughter says ‘it’s fancy’ the whole time instead of ‘I don’t want to eat,’” wrote Alex Ballenger (um, adorable).
While the dinner candle trend recently went viral on TikTok, many users noted it isn’t new because their moms did when they were growing up.
“My mom did this, turned off the overhead light. she was a genius apparently.” wrote @racheljeanninedro.
User @vyingforpie shared, “My mom used to do this and I swear it triggers some subconscious thing, like it’s a cue to act mature or something.”
“My mom did this on Sunday nights and it was so calming to my anxiety of knowing school was the next day.” agreed TikTok user tara.
But it doesn’t work for everyone. “I want to try this! But every time my 3 year old see a candle she sings and blows it out,” wrote @J’Ava’sCraftyMomma.
Other parents said their kids are afraid the house will catch on fire, so their kids are always blowing out the candles. Many others wanted to test the theory themselves—even if they didn’t have kids.
Why Does the Candlelight Dinner Trend Work?
While some users shared some hilarious theories: “Children crave ambiance,” wrote one user @roydizzy512. Cobb shared that she “saw a video explaining it’s human instinct. For centuries most meals would have been eaten around a fire. I also think it’s weirdly calming to have the lights dimmed too.”
Call it primal instinct or a parenting win, we’re open to trying the dinner candle hack if it means a more peaceful family meal.
Kathy Sisson, Senior Editor
A mom of two, Kathy is passionately committed to sharing the honest, helpful—and often humorous—stories of motherhood, as she navigates her own everyday adventures of work, marriage, and parenting. She honed her creative and strategic skills at advertising agencies in Detroit and Chicago, before pivoting from marketing to editorial. Now instead of telling brand stories, she’s sharing her own, with articles published across popular parenting sites—including hundreds of stories on The Everymom.