Kate Ferdinand, mother to five children aged between two and 19, candidly describes her bustling family life as "special and crazy and loving and loud".
The reality TV personality, known for her time on The Only Way is Essex, shares two young children with her husband, the former footballer Rio Ferdinand, and is stepmother to his three teenage children.
She readily admits that their household, particularly during mealtimes, is a wonderfully chaotic yet profoundly special environment.
“The chaos!” she says with a laugh. “There’s five kids and it’s so loud I can’t even tell you, you can’t even hear yourself think. There’s a lot of over-stimulation. But also, it’s so special and crazy and loving and loud and everything that you could wish it to be.

“The bond between the kids is amazing.”
Ferdinand married former England and Manchester United captain Rio in 2019, becoming stepmum to his three children Lorenz, now 19, Tate, 17, and Tia, 14, from his first marriage to Rebecca Ellison, who died of breast cancer in 2015 at the age of just 34.
Kate also has two children – Cree, aged four, and Shae, two, with Rio, and founded a podcast, Blended, to ‘celebrate’ blended families.
The two eldest boys are both footballers for Brighton & Hove Albion and live away from home, but Ferdinand says they both come home regularly and she tries to make sure the whole family sits down for meals together whenever possible.
“Sitting at the table and having dinner is a massive thing in our house – I feel like it’s massive for talking,” she explains. “It’s where everything comes out, where you reconnect after the day, but it doesn’t happen every single night, because obviously the big boys don’t live at home any more because they play football.
“We’re a very sporty household and our kids have a lot of clubs, so it’s near impossible to get everyone there every night.”
The Ferdinand’s aren’t alone in finding it tough to all get together for dinner – new research from HelloFresh has found almost one in three (31.8 per cent) of parents questioned say their children’s hobbies and club schedules make it difficult to share dinner together midweek, and the the situation gets worse once school term begins again, with 62 per cent of parents saying mealtimes feel “more squeezed”.

But, like Ferdinand, more than half of parents (55 per cent) agree that shared mealtimes are beneficial for children’s development and a great chance for the family to reconnect. So Ferdinand has teamed up with HelloFresh to encourage families to set aside at least one night a week to sit down together for a family meal.
“We eat together when we’re all at home – we sit at the table, that’s part of our family routine,” Ferdinand says.
“Don’t get me wrong. The little ones are wanting to run off, but I try and be quite firm with it. They have to ask to leave the table, and they’ve got to take their plate up. It’s quite funny, Shae’s only two, and she actually takes her plate up and puts it on the side.
“We all love it because we’re all talking at the dinner table – everyone’s so busy, but we reconnect. And it’s mental, and there’s food getting thrown about everywhere, drinks are being spilled. But it’s the one time we’re all together, normally.”
Fortunately, the Ferdinands have an extendable dining table, because as well as the seven family members, she says the boys sometimes bring their girlfriends for dinner, and meals can be for 12-16 people.
Kate does the cooking, but she does get help from all the family, including Rio – if she asks for it.
“The kids are great,” she says. “I have to ask for help, but when I do ask, they help me. We all have our own little jobs – I’ll do the cooking, the kids lay the table, they help with the washing up and the tidying up. There’s a bit of teamwork, really.
“Rio’s very good at seasoning the meat – it’s a bit of a collaboration. To be honest, Rio carves for me and then pretends he made the meal.
“But if Rio’s home, he’ll cook as well. Everyone gets involved.”
Even the older boys will lend a hand with cooking, and their proud stepmum says: “Tate’s just turned 17, and he loves cooking. He actually thinks he’s better than me. And that’s a little debate in our house – I’ve said cook a few more times for me, and I’ll let you know.”
She says that while Tate cooks for himself, he’s yet to cook a meal for the whole family. “Everything changes when you’re cooking for seven people,” she says. “When the quantities go up, it becomes a little bit more difficult!”
But she hopes he’ll give catering for the whole clan a try one day, and says: “As a parent, you always want to do everything for your kids, and it’s only in recent years that I’ve realised you’ve really got to let them make mistakes and try stuff themselves and take a step back so they can thrive.
“That’s something I used to struggle with, but now I’ve been doing a bit more of that, and it’s paid off so much, because you can just see them thriving in so many aspects of their life.”
But with such a busy life as a wife, mum and podcaster, how does Ferdinand herself thrive?
Speaking when all the kids are out and the house is peaceful for once, she says: “Don’t get me wrong, it’s the summer holidays now, and I’m glad they’ve gone out so I can make calls for a few hours.”

She agrees it’s nice to get a bit of peace sometimes, and says: “Absolutely – I think any parent that doesn’t say that might be fibbing.”
She occasionally manages to wangle a bit of ‘me-time’ – although it might take getting up at the crack of dawn to do it.
“It’s not a real representation when it’s the summer holidays,” she explains. “But normally when the kids are at school and I’m not working, I’ll prioritise doing things like trying to get some me-time – this morning I got up extra-early and took the dog out for a walk at 6.45am just to have a minute.
“Because sometimes I feel like you need to give yourself 10 minutes, even if it’s just walking around the block, just to think before the day starts. It’s not a half a day in the spa like it was years and years ago, pre-kids, but it’s just about finding those moments.”
Kate Ferdinand is a Back to School ambassador for the recipe box delivery service HelloFresh and is showing how prioritising just one meal together a week has improved her family’s wellbeing.