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.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Targeting early afternoon start times and expecting guests to leave by dinnerDid this help you?
- 2Refusing evening social invitations or declining plans entirelyDid this help you?
- 3Attending gatherings only briefly for an hour or two before leavingDid this help you?
- 4Bypassing bedtime routines only for special occasions and holidaysDid this help you?
- 5Being more strict about the bedtime, leading to less playtime and questions from other kidsDid this help you?
- 6Making her at least eat dinner before playingDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“She needs to be up by 6:30, and most days when I let her play past her bedtime (7:30-8), I find her asleep with her mouth open while the alarm is blasting at max volume.”source ↗
“She’s anxiously looking out the window on a daily basis to see who’s out there and if she’s missing out on the fun.”source ↗
“I feel conflicted because on one hand I understand why she’d feel this way when she is literally the only one with a strict bedtime/dinner rule, while everyone else gets to play and eat whenever.”source ↗
“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
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