The last conversation of the day deserves a tone that lets people rest afterward.

Whatever gets said last tends to set what the night is like. A criticism at eleven cannot be resolved or acted on, and it stays in the room after the light goes off, whereas the same words at breakfast have somewhere to go. Timing does not make an issue disappear, though it decides whether anybody sleeps. Sequence matters more than most households notice.

Hold the hard subject until morning instead of raising it as everyone winds down. Let the last thing said be something that lets people put the day down.