Why do hangouts always start right at kid bedtime?
Evening plans regularly start at 5:00 or 6:00 PM and run late, directly colliding with children's rigid 7:45 PM bedtime routines. This forces parents into an exhausting dilemma where they either accept plans and resent the disruption or decline constantly and feel like jerks.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Targeting early afternoon start times and expecting guests to leave by dinner
- 2Refusing evening social invitations or declining plans entirely
- 3Attending gatherings only briefly for an hour or two before leaving
- 4Bypassing bedtime routines only for special occasions and holidays
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“However I keep running into circumstances where people want to START hanging out at like 5-6pm and go until god knows when and I either accept and secretly hate it in my head or I feel like a jerk refusing plans all the time.”source ↗
“Straight up, I hate evening get togethers. We are in the same boat- my daughter goes to bed somewhere in the 7:45ish range and my husband and I around 9:30.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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- 3How to handle family schedules when siblings refuse to attend practices
- 2Why am I penalized for working during planning periods?