Oh, bedtime. I have sat with so many couples over the years who walked into my office thinking they were fighting about bedtime, and what I watched unfold was something much older and much more tender than whether a seven-year-old goes to sleep at 8pm or 8:30pm.
Here is what I want you to hear first: you are probably not fighting about bedtime.
The bedtime routine is just the surface. What is usually happening underneath is one of a few things, and I want to name them because I think one of them is going to land for you.
One partner feels undermined. They set a boundary with the child, they held a line, and then the other parent softened it or changed it. And that does not just feel like a parenting disagreement. It feels like being hung out to dry. It feels like “my partner does not have my back.”
One partner feels like they are carrying it alone. The invisible labor of the bedtime routine, the consistency of it, the showing up night after night, and then the other parent swoops in and does it differently and gets to be the fun one. That is exhausting and it breeds resentment quietly.
One partner is parenting from fear and the other does not know that. One of you might be anxious about sleep, about your child’s development, about structure, and that anxiety is coming out as rigidity. The other partner experiences that rigidity as controlling and pushes back. Neither of you knows you are in that cycle.
What I would ask you to do is slow down and get curious before the next bedtime conversation. Ask yourself: what am I actually scared of here? Not what rule is being broken, but what am I afraid will happen if this goes the other way?
And then, when you talk to your partner, lead with that. Not “you always let them stay up too late.” But “I get anxious when the routine gets disrupted, and I need you to understand why that matters to me.”
That is the conversation that actually moves something. That is the one that gets you toward being on the same team, protecting your family together rather than protecting yourselves from each other.
What is it actually feeling like for you in the moment when it starts to go sideways?
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Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: Co-Parenting After Divorce: What to Expect from Counseling
