The quiet in the house after your little siblings finally fall asleep is the sound of your parents’ second shift ending.

The hour after small children fall asleep is the first hour their parents have had. Everything before it was feeding, carrying, settling and answering, which is a shift of its own stacked on top of whatever paid work came earlier. That quiet is not spare time; it is the end of a working day nobody logged. The silence is the bell.

Notice when it happens in your house this week and make it easier rather than harder. Do the dishes before you go up, keep your door quiet, take one bedtime off somebody’s hands. Then let them have the hour.