When I was growing up, our family always had dinner together at 6:30 p.m. every weekday. Both of my parents worked, but they had very predictable work schedules, and my mom would take the train home from her office downtown pretty much at the same time every day. Also, my grandmother lived with us, and she would usually make dinner so that we could eat right when my parents got home from work.

I guess it took me quite a while to realize this, but I think I had some pre-programmed instinct inside of me because of all those years of family dinners that something was majorly wrong if I wasn’t doing the same thing with our kids.

But the reality is my husband often does not get home from work these days until 7:30 p.m. or later, which is ideally when the kids should already be fed, bathed, and getting ready for bed.

We tried for a while waiting until he got home, but even though the kids would be snacking and eating all afternoon and early evening, they felt like we hadn’t had a real dinner unless we all sat down and ate with Daddy.

Unfortunately, this also meant that the kids would either not be hungry for dinner because of all the snacks, or they would be starving by the time we all ate together as a family. Then, bath time would either be a disaster because the kids were crabby and tired, or they would literally be collapsing without even putting on their pajamas. Basically it was meltdown city.

I don’t think we’ve figured out any perfect solutions yet, but I’m doing my best to let go of some of my expectations of that 6:30 p.m. daily dinner, and just feed the kids early with a simple meal, give them their bath, and have them in their PJs and ready for bed by the time Daddy gets home. Then he can at least read them a story and spend some one-on-one time with each of them before they go to sleep.

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Another thing we’ve been working on is blocking off some of our weekend for quality family time since we’re not getting it during the week. We recently celebrated our 5 year Family Day, or the anniversary of the day that we brought HJ home from Korea. It was basically a simple day of family activities together and eating out for dinner, but the kids apparently liked it so much that they’ve been asking for Family Day every weekend. And on those weekends that my husband has to work, I’ve recruited my sister, whom I’m lucky to have living close by, so we can take the girls out and go to the pool or do some other low-key fun activities together. My husband has also been pretty good about trying to take off work on days that HJ is off from school if he feels like he’s been working late for a few weeks. So as I’m writing this, I realize that I should be pretty grateful for the family time that we are able to squeeze in here and there, even if it’s not what I had originally envisioned.

Another challenge this year has been finding a good time for HJ to do her homework, as she’s pretty exhausted after school, but if she doesn’t do it until after dinner, there’s a good chance she’s not going to finish and we’re either going to have to rush in the morning, or hand it in late the next day. This one we’re still working on. She doesn’t even have many extracurricular activities going on this year, just her speech therapy which we recently started up, and her occupational therapy and counseling which we schedule for the weekends. I don’t know how families with lots of activities squeeze everything in during the week!

What have you done to make your weekday dinnertime and bedtime routines easier? I know those who are single parents, or have spouses who travel for work or are in the military have had to learn how to handle lots of things on their own. I’d love to hear what tips you’ve learned to make it work for your family.