Do you sit together as a family

[Frigginfreezing]

Often?
As in, how often do you all sit on the sofa together to watch tv and how long for?
I feel like Dh only sits with us briefly, then he’s off

Never. We generally have tea together in the week dependant on shifts but always go our separate ways for the evening. Me H and two older teens.

DD is now a teenager and seems to never want to sit with us. She will sit with me and occasionally her dad but all in the living room and she moans there's too many in one room.

There's a meme that having a teenager in the house is like having a ghost. Every so often you'll hear a door slam and a moan.

For meals, yes. Outside of that? We work hard to make sure we’re both having engaged time with all our DC each week but not necessarily the whole family together. We do family night once a month and the DC take turns picking activities. And DH and I usually have one or two shows we’re watching together at a time, maybe 1-2 episodes per week after younger DC are in bed.

But everyone sitting in the same room distracted on their phones or whatnot would be extremely low priority and I’m probably the first to leave because I genuinely need alone time on a level DH doesn’t, and I don’t find everyone just being in a room particularly valuable.

Here’s the exception: with very small children, having one parent who is by default there and available during unstructured down-time and one that always goes off and hides usually creates an imbalance in workload. It’s fair that both parents get time to go off by themselves and that both are spending time “on shift” while small DC are playing independently or whatnot.

We hardly ever watch TV as a family, if we have a movie afternoon DH will either not be in the room or is on his phone so not engaging.

I watch tv with my 12 year old most nights after younger DD is in bed, while DH is in another room working or watching sport.

We usually sit in the same room on a Friday and Saturday evening though. Usually talking and sometimes playing cards / listening to music etc