My 6-Year-Old Disappeared for Two Hours. There’s Only One Move Now.

Care and Feeding Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Wavebreak Media/Getty Images Plus. Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here. Dear Care and Feeding, My husband, “Doug,” and I are arguing over how to discipline our 6-year-old son, “Preston,” for taking off on his bike and not telling us. Preston received a new bike for his birthday last month, and on Sunday we couldn’t find him anywhere. His bike was missing, so we drove around and found him over two blocks away at a friend’s house. I want to keep the bike under lock and key until he is 12 if we are not with him when he uses it. Doug says while Preston shouldn’t have gone to his friend’s house without telling us, he used to bike to his friends’ homes when he was that age and thinks he should lose it for a month rather than “resorting to extreme measures.” Please tell me I’m right and my husband is out of touch! —Bike Bickering Dear Bike Bickering, If you want Preston to lose the bike for some period of time, fine, but it seems to me that punishment is less important than clearly communicating all of your expectations around the bike. Preston is only six, and might not have fully understood what you are and are not comfortable with. Of course you want to know where your 6-year-old is—make it clear that he can’t just take off without telling you. It seems a bit extreme not to allow him to ride his bicycle without you until he’s 12. I also don’t think it’s necessary to preemptively lock up the bike. It will be tedious for all of you to have to go and unlock it every time he wants to use it! Discuss and set some reasonable limits, make sure Preston understands them, and then see how he does—give him a chance to show you that he’s trustworthy. Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don‘t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Dear Care and Feeding, This might sound dumb, but here goes. How do people find time to do…anything? My kids are 5 and 3 and my husband and I work full-time, often going back to work after the kids are asleep. We try to spend our weekends doing fun stuff with the kids, and travel fairly often. But between kids, work, exhaustion, our house is a disaster, laundry piles up, I’m behind on my own medical appointments. We have a cleaner every other week (you wouldn’t know it!) and get groceries delivered. But I guess I could use some real-life guidance, tips, or ideas to avoid feeling like I’m constantly drowning and disorganized. —Disaster Zone Dear Disaster Zone, If you have a full-time job, I’m hoping you also have the ability to take some PTO? I’m sure it gets used up quickly on your kids’ sick days, but try to keep at least some PTO for your own necessary appointments. Set calendar reminders for your regular checkups. If you’re less than six months overdue for an exam, I’d consider that a win. If you don’t already have your kids put away their own toys and books at the end of each day, make it a practice—your children are definitely old enough, and they’re probably already doing a version of this at school/childcare. Keep it simple: it will probably take less than five minutes for them to put their books on a shelf and throw all their toys in a container. Other areas might still need cleaning, but you’ll feel better if you’re not literally tripping over their stuff all night. You’re in one of the most physically demanding phases of parenting. When my kids were that age, I remember trying to find little ways to have some semblance of control over the things that felt important to me, knowing that many things would inevitably fall through the cracks. Everyone is bothered by different things—I hate wrinkled clothes and ironing, so I’d make a point to fold and hang all my clean clothes after doing laundry. It did not, on the other hand, bother me at all to leave some dishes in the sink, and to this day I’m not great at mopping the floors (one of many reasons why ours is a shoe-free household). Prioritize what matters to you, or helps you feel a little more sane or together, and try to remember that nothing terrible will happen if you let a few other things slide. I also think it’s worth lowering your standards, if you can—or, if you prefer to think of it this way, giving yourself as much grace as possible. Accept that you’re in a very high-intensity stage of life/parenting, and that it won’t last forever! Try to believe that your best is good enough so long as everyone is safe and relatively happy. —Nicole More Parenting Advice From Slate My husband and I have a delightful, inquisitive 4-year-old daughter, “Bree,” who has a nut allergy. We have been able to manage this fairly well, but the problem is my in-laws. They were careless about nuts to the point that we had to stop coming over to their place. My father-in-law keeps a bowl of peanuts or trail mix on the end table next to the couch, and never remembered to remove them before we arrived for a visit. Even worse, my mother-in-law believes Bree’s allergy is something she will outgrow over time and even thinks she can be “cured” if she is exposed to nuts in small doses! Never miss new Slate Advice columns Get the latest from Prudie and our columnists in your inbox each weekday, plus special bonus letters on Saturdays. 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