The evening routine

We once wrote to you about what we think an average family’s morning routine is like, and why we feel that we fail at an invisible obstacle roughly every day, no matter how hard we try to create the perfect morning. Or at least a manageable one. Now we’ll tell you what an average family’s evening looks like with one or more young children - only here, the obstacles are often already quite visible.

Around Christmas, we saw a film that had a scene in which a long-unseen acquaintance dropped by the family’s home. The children had never actually met him before, but he was so funny and kind that after dinner, all the children insisted that he put them to bed. There was no crying, no arguing; the parents watched happily, smiling as a virtual stranger led the super-enthusiastic little ones upstairs to tell them their bedtime story, and no one found the whole situation even slightly strange. Our children - and, for that matter, we ourselves - would. Not because we begrudge a kind acquaintance this activity, but because we simply cannot imagine the children smiling silently, waving after brushing their teeth, and then peacefully staying in their beds until morning.

There are surely families - we even know one or two - whose evenings really do look like this: dinner, a big family bath, children into bed, a bedtime story, lights out, and done - by eight o’clock, the adults are sitting in the living room discussing what happened to each of them that day. The rest of us envy these families endlessly, and whenever we talk to them, we secretly wonder where we went wrong, when we should have done something very differently. Then we gather every comforting thought that comes to mind (many people’s favorite is, “One day we’ll miss how much our children need us; in ten years they won’t even want me to hold their hand before they fall asleep…”). It’s true, we really will miss many things one day, but we’re not sure we’ll miss crouching in a small room in the dark, or at least not very often.

In an average family, evenings aren’t this quiet. There’s usually a minor argument about what to have for dinner (“no sandwiches!”, “no vegetable stew!”, “let’s have sour-cream noodles AGAIN TODAY!”), and by the time we agree on something that nobody had for lunch and everyone is willing to eat, we realize we don’t have the ingredients at home. So it’s sandwiches. Every week we promise ourselves that on Mondays we’ll make a weekly plan for our shared dinners and breakfasts, but it doesn’t always happen.

Nor does getting all the children to agree to take a bath without an argument. Does time slow down, almost stop, for everyone else at this point too? Do other children also sit dreamily, despite many requests, with one leg still in their trousers and one sock on, like people sleeping with their eyes open? And when we finally get past this stage, and everyone has even had a bath, including the bathroom, it’s time to brush our teeth, which is another opportunity for everyone to lose it. (We won’t even bring up extra activities such as washing hair or cutting nails; suffice it to say that some people will need years to process the traumas they experienced here.)

Once we’ve battled through toothbrushing, it’s time for the bedtime story. This is usually a relatively calm, peaceful activity even in the most active families, a part of the day that we really will miss when it’s gone. But what comes afterward…

Ideally, by this point everyone is already asleep, or they climb into bed and, half-asleep, let us hug them and cover them with kisses. In a less ideal situation, the hugging and kissing are still fine, but after that they won’t let us go, and we have to sit beside them until they fall asleep. Of course, if that happens within a few minutes, it’s fine, but often it drags on, and we find ourselves dozing off too, or thinking about how much we had still wanted to do that day (or how much we hadn’t wanted to do anything at all, just sit on the sofa in front of a good film…)

And when the moment finally comes and everyone is sleeping peacefully… we try to creep out with movements that would put ninjas to shame, avoiding every creaky spot on the floor. We know exactly which part of the parquet creaks when we step on it, and precisely how to close the door without making a sound.

If we manage all that, we’ve done it. The evening is ours, and we can do whatever we want - until a thin little voice calls out from somewhere, “I need to pee”, “I’m hungry”, or “I’m thirsty”.

But believe it or not, this too will pass one day. And then we’ll find out who was right: the person who says we’ll miss everything, or the person who says that there really are some moments we might not miss when our children grow up…

One thing, however, is certain: their little faces breathing peacefully as they feel completely safe - regardless of whether we stayed with them until they fell asleep or not - will later be everyone’s dearest memory.