Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here .

Dear Care and Feeding,

My parents are in their 70s and live around the corner. About once a week, we go to my parents’ house for family time and dinner.

My daughter is almost 2 and has a pretty strict bedtime; it becomes more difficult to get her to sleep if she goes past it. Here’s the problem: No matter how hard I try, I can’t get my mom to get dinner on the table early enough for us to get home in time for bedtime!

I try to help her plan and make dinner, but even then, she’ll get out the ingredients and just wait before she starts cooking. She works full-time and has always been bad at coming home on time, so getting the whole evening together to start sooner is not

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