My work hours are set up so that I work until 7:30pm on Mondays and 6:30pm on Fridays.  These are my two “late days” and, as such, I miss out on dinner with my family two nights per week.  But, breakfast is our dinner.

A lot is said about family meal times, and the benefits of eating together; and, most often, the focus on family meals centers around dinnertime.  But we’ve managed to find a solution that works for us, and I can absolutely say that 7:00am-8:00am is my favourite hour of the day.  This is the hour that all four of us are together, consistently.  Every.  Single.  Day.  We all eat breakfast together and talk about the day ahead, and it sets a remarkable tone for Team Worobec.

It hasn’t always been this way.  Before our move last year, we missed out on my husband joining us two or three mornings per week.  On those days, he would head to the gym for 6am, shower onsite, and drive straight to work.  We lived too far from his workplace to make it happen any other way, and the kids and I would often chat with him on the phone as we ate our cereal and eggs.  So while we still had our beloved dinner-at-breakfast a couple of times a week, we didn’t have it every day, and when we did, it was far shorter.  This subtle change in morning routine has been an unexpected and profound benefit of our decision to move neighborhoods.

Why post this?  Because I have lots of patients who are parents, namely moms.  And lots of patients who share parenting-guilt stories with me, namely moms.  My treatment room conversations often turn into bare-your-soul discussions.  People seem to have very defined ideas of what family time, especially dinnertime, should look like.

Family life looks different for all of us.

And we’re all doing the best we can, finding ways to make it all fit.