Planning time together

Time together does not happen by leftover. Work, school and screens expand to fill every hour that is not defended, so the lab treats shared time as a calendar item with the same rank as a shift or an appointment.

The three kinds of time

• Family time — everyone, at least one real block a week: an outing, a project, a game, a meal out. Planned at the family meeting, protected like it matters, because it does.
• One-on-one time — each child gets time alone with a parent on a rotation. Short counts. A drive, a chore done side by side, twenty minutes of their chosen thing. This is where the real conversations happen.
• Daily contact — the small deposits: meals, rides, bedtime for the younger ones. Not planned so much as noticed and kept.

Planning it

Each member's dashboard shows the week's shared time the same way it shows their jobs, so a kid can see the good stuff coming, not just the obligations. When a week has to give something up, the family meeting decides what moves — together, in the open, instead of by drift.