The Night I Realized We Were All Home, but Not Really Together

It was an ordinary evening. Nothing had gone wrong. That's what still unsettles me about it.

Dinner was finished. The dishwasher was humming. My daughter was on the sofa with a tablet propped against her knees, a cartoon playing at a volume she had chosen and I hadn't noticed. I was at the kitchen table with my laptop, answering an email that could have waited until morning. My husband was a room away, on a screen of his own. The television was on in the other room, talking to nobody.

I looked up for a reason I can't remember, and for a second I saw the house the way a stranger would. Everyone was home. Every light was on. And nobody was with anybody.

Why being home together isn't the same as being together

There was no argument. No slammed door. If someone had asked me that night whether we were close, I would have said yes without thinking. We were. We are. But closeness isn't something you have, like a sofa. It's something you do, and that evening none of us was doing it.

I think this is the loneliest kind of family evening, because it doesn't look lonely. It looks peaceful. Everyone is fed, warm and occupied. The screens make sure nobody is bored, and when nobody is bored, nobody comes looking for anyone else.

We were all home that night. We just weren't in the same place.

What a five-year-old notices

My daughter is five and a half. At that age a child still tells you, very directly, what she needs, if you happen to be listening. That night she wasn't asking for anything. That was the part that stopped me. She had stopped asking.

Children learn very early what the evening is for. If the evening is for screens, they become very good at screens. If it's for each other, they learn that instead. Neither lesson is taught on purpose. Both are learned completely.

What quality family time actually looks like

Most advice about spending quality time as a family asks for things a tired family doesn't have: a free weekend, a planned outing, a budget, energy. I don't think that's where it lives. Quality time is smaller and more ordinary than that. It's twenty minutes in which everyone in the room is inside the same story.

It isn't about the amount of time. It's whether attention is shared. A whole Saturday side by side on separate screens is less together than ten minutes on the floor with one book.

Small screen-free things to do together in the evening

• One shared thing after dinner, the same every night: a chapter read aloud, a puzzle, a walk around the block
• Screens go to sleep in one place, at one time, the grown-ups' included
• On some nights, let the child choose. Choosing makes it hers
• Ask one real question at dinner. Not “How was school?” but “What was the strangest thing that happened today?”
• Sometimes, do nothing together. Lie on the floor and look at the ceiling. Shared boredom is a kind of company
• Keep it small enough to survive a bad day. A ritual that needs energy won't last a week

None of these are clever. That's the point. The ones that last are the ones that fit inside an ordinary Tuesday.

How much time does it take? Less than most of us fear. I don't think it needs more than twenty minutes. What matters more is that it happens at the same point in the evening, after dinner and before the screens, so nobody has to decide it again every night. That's all a family evening routine really is: a decision you only have to make once.

Why I keep coming back to books

I write books and I run a site about them, so of course I'd say this. I believe it anyway: a book read aloud is one of the few things that puts a whole family inside the same story at the same time. Nobody can scroll ahead. Nobody is watching something different. For as long as the chapter lasts, everyone is in one place.

On reading together without a timer: The Reading Rule I've Decided Not to Make

How to Start a Book Club With Kids Who Don't Think They Like Reading

What I'm trying now

I haven't fixed anything. I want to be careful about that, because nothing makes a tired parent feel worse than a post by someone who has found the answer. Most evenings in our house still have screens in them. Some of them should.

But I notice now. When the house goes quiet in that particular way, I close the laptop and sit on the floor. Sometimes my daughter looks up and moves over. Sometimes she doesn't, and I stay anyway, because being there first is the only invitation I know how to give.

We will all be home again tonight. I'd like us to be there too.