Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
My wife and I are expecting our first baby soon, and we’ve received unexpected pushback from my mother regarding the timing of her first visit. This will be the first grandchild on both sides. Both sets of grandparents live more than a six-hour flight away.
From the start, we let everyone know that we want the first month to establish a routine and get comfortable as parents before having our families visit. My in-laws were not thrilled about this, but have come to accept it. My parents originally expressed support for whatever worked best for us when it came to parenting decisions and visits (including having my in-laws visit first). But once we provided them with the earliest dates we wanted them to visit (roughly six weeks after the baby’s birth), my mother let me know how disappointing this was. She asked if she could visit sooner. When I gently restated our plan, she berated me. She told me our decision is unreasonable and unfair—a complete reversal of everything she’d said prior to this. Her idea is to visit for one night within the first three weeks, and at six weeks for a week.
My wife and I are both worried about how any visits will go, given this sudden change in behavior. We’re unsure how to proceed with setting boundaries and managing her expectations.
You and your wife are in charge of when and for how long anyone visits after your child is born (or ever). “Anyone” includes grandparents. And I say this as a future (soon! In a matter of months!) grandmother who would love to see that forthcoming baby within hours if not minutes after his entry into the world, but who will of course abide by her daughter and son-in-law’s plan (current thinking is two weeks in before any visitors). I held my own parents at bay for a week, though they were chomping at the bit.
Every set of new parents gets to decide when to let others in. And also reserves the right to change their minds—to request more time alone with their baby or to ask for a visit sooner. (By the end of our first week with our newborn daughter, I was relieved I hadn’t demanded two, because I needed help. I was exhausted.) You may find that a month without any help is too long. But that will be your choice to make, not your mother’s or anyone else’s.
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I am at my wits’ end with my husband, “Patrick.” We have two kids, ages 3 and 5, and every time I set a boundary for them (bedtime, amount of screen time, number of treats per week, etc.), he bends the rules for them, saying, “It’s just this once.”
But “just this once” happens more times than I can count each day, and it’s all I can do to get them to listen to me because they know their dad will erase any limits I set. When I call Patrick out on it, he tells me I’m being a killjoy and need to lighten up. How the hell am I supposed to get him on the same page as me?
—Technically Dealing with Three Kids
This sounds frustrating—I get it. But unless you’re solo-parenting, it isn’t fair or practical to unilaterally make rules for your kids and then expect the other parent to enforce them. If that other parent, who has played no part in the decision-making, says “just this once” when the kids break—or ask to break—a rule, but actually means “there are no rules, ever!”, either you two have completely different ideas about how children should be raised, he is passive-aggressively declaring abdication from parenting, or he is (also passive-aggressively!) acting out, purposely getting under your skin, because he had no say in creating these guidelines.
If you’ve repeatedly tried to have a conversation with him about setting guidelines for the children and he has refused to participate (because these conversations aren’t fun? Especially if you disagree about what these guidelines should be … or whether there should be any at all?) … or has responded to your suggested guidelines with, “Whatever you say, hon,” that doesn’t mean he’s off the hook. He’s a parent: The hook is his for life.
Tell him that you have to work out these guidelines together. It’s crucial that you two come up with a parenting plan that works for both of you. If he insists that you know better, that he’s not good at this sort of thing (easy for me to imagine), ask him, gently, why, then, he’s so quick to lift the rules he says he trusts you to make. Don’t approach him hostilely, itching for a fight. Ask him (yet again?): What seems reasonable to him when it comes to limits around treats or screens and so on? If he squirms—if he really does act like a child about this, refusing to actively be a parent—and continues to undermine your efforts at consistency, it’s time for marriage counseling.
Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir want to help you navigate your social dynamics at work. Does your colleague constantly bug you after hours? Has an ill-advised work romance gone awry? Ask us your question here!
I’m a single mother to a 15-year-old son, “Jake.” Jake recently got this job at a local community center—part-time, but it’s something he can fit in around his classes. In theory, I like it. It gives him some responsibility and lets him earn a bit of money. In practice, it’s not so great. He spent half of his first paycheck on what the online shop had labeled a “Fart War Flag.” Then he hung this truly revolting banner in his bedroom.
I’m seriously surprised that this sort of thing can be sold without violating obscenity laws. I’d say it’s pornographic, as it displays genitalia and anuses, except I don’t believe anyone would actually enjoy this. Except my disgusting son.
I insisted he take it down, and he complied, if sullenly. But the more I think of it, the more I’m convinced he’s not ready to earn his own money if he’s going to spend it on stuff like this. I called the community center to tell them he was resigning from the job, and this erupted into a huge fight with him and also with the people running the community center, since he’s insisted he’s staying, and they’re siding with him over me. How do I get him out of there until he’s ready not to spend any money he gets his hands on on grotesque things like this?
If your end goal is to make sure that when your son leaves home (quite possibly in two years, for good), he cuts off contact with you or keeps it strictly limited to obligatory, polite check-ins, you’re doing fine. If your goal is to exercise complete control over him—well, good effort, but it’s going to fail miserably.
Your house, your rules about images of genitals and anuses—OK. But telling a 15-year-old how he can or can’t spend money he’s earned himself, as long as he’s not hurting anyone or doing anything illegal with it, is just silly. He’ll learn soon enough that spending money on one ridiculous thing means he has no money to spend on some potentially less ridiculous thing. Telling him he’s not allowed to earn his own money is absurd.
But mostly, seriously: Resigning from his job for him is unhinged. Pull yourself together.
My daughter is in middle school, and her school’s policy is that homework only counts for 5 percent of a student’s final grade. Since my daughter can maintain A’s and B’s without that 5 percent, she doesn’t ever do her homework. I feel that she is being disrespectful to her teachers by not doing it. I think teachers work hard to plan the lessons. My daughter says if it is important to the teacher, then they’ll assign it as classwork (worth 30 percent), and then she will do it.