My Grandma Had a Nasty Mean Streak. But I Found a Way to Shut Her Down for Good.

Dear Prudence Prudie replies to readers’ comments and suggestions. Advice by Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Jenée Desmond-Harris? May 15, 20266:00 AM Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by KrizzDaPaul/iStock/Getty Images Plus and 4ndrei/iStock/Getty Images Plus. Each week, Prudence asks readers for their thoughts on the letters she’s received. Her reply will be available every Friday. Hey Prudie, Re Mean Mom: I agree with the advice, which will work in lots of situations where your kids hear something that opposes your values. But you can also just walk away from your mother-in-law when she starts going on. My grandmother constantly talked down my sister-in-law. SIL is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, but she and my brother are devoted to each other, and SIL did a lot of caregiving for Grandma. Grandma and I mostly spoke by phone at that point (I moved away). One day, I finally said, “I love SIL, and she is one of my best friends. It hurts me to hear you talk about her like this. We can talk about anything else, but from now on, when you start talking her down, I will need to end the call.” She continued to say truly mean things about SIL, so I said goodbye and hung up. I had to do this exactly three times before Grandma stopped. When she slipped later, I reminded her, but I never had to hang up again. It was so nice to be able to talk to her about all the other enjoyable things without hurt for SIL in the mix. —OneSillyMe This is definitely an option, and I’m glad it worked for you. Sometimes you just have to train someone! 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. Hey Prudie, Re Biking: This is solid advice, Prudie, but Biker should understand that he doesn’t have to say anything for his girlfriend to be feeling like she is being judged for her body or weight, or that if they are now a “mixed size” relationship, people are judging her (please refer to Bridgerton season three). I honestly didn’t believe my husband didn’t mind my larger body size until he actively disuaded me from taking a weight loss drug my doctor had recommended! Women are dealing with a lot around diet and exercise, and perhaps she used to feel like you were an ally in rejecting diet culture, and now you are playing for the other team. You can be a role model for how exercise can feel when you are not focused on losing weight, but you might have to be more explicit about how you love her the way she is and that you are aware of the way the world makes her feel, even if you don’t. —MandaCoop That’s such a good point. Even if he hasn’t done anything wrong when it comes to judging her weight, the world has done a lot wrong, and they live surrounded by these messages. So he may need to go above and beyond if he wants her to feel secure. Hey Prudie, Re Unhappy Husband: While I agree that it’s something they should handle as a team, I disagree that his wife was in the wrong here or being mean or unreasonable. This uncle is a perfect example of toxic masculinity, and it’s every decent person’s job to call it out when they hear it and make it as uncomfortable and unacceptable for those people to tell those crude stories as possible. If you stay silent when someone tells those types of stories, you are complicit, and you are part of the problem. I would not feel safe with a partner who allowed that kind of talk in their presence without calling it out. —Make the Creeps Squirm I received a few responses similar to yours, and you all have a point. I originally understood the letter writer as saying his wife asked him to tell the uncle to be appropriate around the kids, and she became furious when he didn’t keep him in check around the adults, too. My reaction was that I didn’t think it was healthy or fair for her to give the letter writer this very challenging job (making the uncle stop being inappropriate in front of children) and then attack his character for not doing a different, additional job (preventing the uncle from saying anything inappropriate to adults) that she never mentioned. But I was wrong. The original assignment was to prevent the uncle’s creepiness in any setting, and the letter writer misled his wife by agreeing with her and claiming to have it handled, only to later decide he was OK with this rhetoric being shared around the adults. Worse than that, he seems to have a disturbing level of comfort with disgusting comments and the worldview they represent. I can understand why his wife is questioning everything. Hey Prudie, Re People Say It Will Be My Turn One Day: I wouldn’t throw around the word “abnormal” because this very much seems like human nature, but I do think the letter writer is struggling to be objective about their family right now and is viewing things through the heavy lens of their own recent problems. For example, what LW wants really isn’t quite reciprocal. LW feels they don’t check in enough or ask how LW is doing, but counterpoints it with attendance at events they have invited LW to, which isn’t quite the same thing. Are you ever checking in with them to see how they’re doing, or just assuming they’re fine because they’re having milestones? Are you actually giving what you want to get back? I don’t think LW is a bad person for that or anything—as I said, it’s all just very human—but it seems like LW has an “I’m the only one with any problems” filter pretty firmly applied re: the family right now, and needs to get over that a bit to see the situation clearly. —Mercer You make a very good point. Showing up as a warm body at an event is wonderful, and it does take energy, but it really isn’t the same as sincerely asking a loved one how they’re doing. These relatives might be thinking that they’ll attend any milestone birthday, graduation party, or down the line a wedding or baby shower the letter writer invites them to, and it will all even out in the end. She may need to ask directly if she wants to talk about her breakup or other struggles. And she might be pleasantly surprised by the response she gets! Hey Prudie, For Celiac Mom: I’ve got a kid who eats a specialized diet, too. He’s 18 now, so I’ve been doing this for a while. The truth is that no one else really cares, and they don’t have to. It’s not your job to make everyone else understand and respect Celiac, it’s your job to make your daughter safe food and to teach her to make herself safe food. Period. Let go of trying to remake the world around this. Enjoy the fact that there are a huge number of options for this diet that include lots of fun foods like baked goods and hamburgers (my guy was on and off a feeding tube for years, so all of these choices are luxuries in his eyes), and realize that no one else can truly be trusted to do this crucial job. You cannot outsource it to the world. Your daughter has a serious medical condition, and to protect her, you have to teach her and yourself food independence. Focus on learning to help her, not teaching others who don’t really care or matter. —Wild Flower Seed This is very practical advice, and I don’t disagree with it. I do think it’s reasonable to ask loved ones to be understanding, even if they won’t be personally responsible for baking gluten-free pastries. Classic Prudie My husband and I are looking to purchase a new home. We’ve seen probably a dozen houses in the last couple of weeks, and only two have really felt immediately like they could be “home.” We lost out on the first to another buyer, but the second is still a possibility. Then we learned that the house was the site of an extremely grisly murder. 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. Advice Dear Prudence