By the time the evening begins, you may already have done a substantial amount of parenting. There has been the morning rush, the school run, work, messages to answer and at least one conversation about something that needs bringing into school tomorrow. Now everybody is home, hungry and looking to you for the next thing. There is dinner to sort out, a kitchen to deal with and bedtime somewhere in the distance. When you are doing it on your own, even an ordinary evening can feel crowded with jobs, particularly when several people need you at once and none of them is interested in waiting until you have finished draining the pasta.

One useful place to start is with the decisions that keep coming round. Having a few familiar evening meals can save you from standing in front of the fridge trying to invent something appealing at the point when you are least interested in being inventive. These can be straightforward meals your family already eats: jacket potatoes, eggs on toast, pasta or something from the freezer with whatever goes alongside it. You can write them down if that helps, or simply give yourself permission to serve the same thing again. Dinner does not have to demonstrate the full range of your abilities. Getting everybody fed without using the last of your patience is a worthwhile aim.

The same approach can work for the evening itself. A familiar order may be easier to manage than a strict timetable, especially if your finishing time changes or you have children of different ages. You might eat, clear away what you need to, have a little time together and then begin getting ready for bed. The NHS recommends a winding-down bedtime routine for young children, starting around half an hour before their usual sleep time. That can be something simple and repeatable, rather than a complicated sequence you have to supervise perfectly. It is a useful starting point, rather than a promise that every child will settle promptly once the final story is finished.

It is worth looking at the moments that regularly become difficult and seeing whether one small change would help. If everyone is exhausted by bath time, could the bath happen earlier on some evenings, or could you simplify washing on the nights it is not needed? If finding pyjamas involves opening every drawer in the house, putting them out before dinner might save a little irritation later. With older children, it may be agreeing when homework will happen, or making it their job to put their school things by the door. None of these adjustments will transform family life on its own, but removing one predictable source of friction can make the evening feel less like a succession of avoidable arguments.

There can also be room for time together that asks very little of you. Reading on the sofa, listening to an audiobook or chatting while a child draws at the kitchen table can fit into an ordinary evening without becoming another activity to prepare. Some evenings you will have the energy to play a game; others you will be better company sitting down with a cup of tea while somebody explains an extremely detailed Minecraft development. You do not have to be equally available at every moment to take an interest in your children. It is reasonable to say that you need ten minutes to finish eating, then come back to what they want to show you.

Your own comfort deserves a place in the evening before everybody else is asleep. That might mean changing into comfortable clothes when you get home, eating alongside the children where possible or putting on music you enjoy while you cook. It can also mean deciding in advance what actually needs doing after bedtime. There may be bottles to wash, lunches to prepare or paid work you cannot leave, but it is easy for those essential jobs to expand into an expectation that the whole house should be reset every night. Choosing a stopping point gives you a better chance of having some evening left, even if the laundry remains exactly where it was.

For some single parents, the quiet afterwards is the part that feels hardest. You can be relieved that nobody needs anything for a moment and still wish there were another adult to talk to. A voice note to a friend or a conversation with other single parents on Frolo may offer some company without requiring you to leave the sofa. On another night, you might prefer to read, watch something or go straight to bed. The aim is to make a little room for what you need as well as what the household needs. An easier evening might still involve complaints about dinner and an unexpectedly long search for a favourite toy, but if you reach the end of it with a little more energy left for yourself, that matters.

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