My Kid Loves Dogs and Has No Filter. She Doesn’t Deserve Her Grandfather’s Cruel Response.

Care and Feeding I can’t keep on like this. Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here. Dear Care and Feeding, My 11-year-old daughter “Anna” was diagnosed with autism at age 5. Because she looks “normal” and is not intellectually disabled, people often have trouble believing it, choosing instead to believe that her social awkwardness, outspokenness, oversensitivity to raised voices, aversion to touch and eye contact, trouble expressing her own emotions or understanding those of others, and trouble seeing implications beneath the surface of things are personality defects. One of those people is her own grandfather. Ever since getting hold of a book of dog breeds as a toddler, Anna has had a strong special interest in dogs. We can’t afford a dog or an apartment that allows them, but Anna wants to say hello to every dog we see; knows everything there is to know about dog breeds, dog training, dog shows, and dog care; can’t wait to be old enough to volunteer at our local no-kill shelter; talks about wanting to become a veterinarian who also trains and shows dogs; and never misses an opportunity to mention how much she loves dogs. Over two years ago, when Amelia was 9, I was talking on Zoom with my father, who’s been divorced from my mother since I was a teenager. My father was friends with and semi-dating a woman with a small female dog who was pregnant. When her dog went into labor and seemed to be having trouble, my father’s friend started experiencing heart palpitations. My father insisted on taking her to the emergency room, where they waited for hours to be told it was just stress, and by the time they got home, the little dog and her unborn puppies had sadly died. My father’s friend blamed him, and he was defending his actions to me, saying, “Which one would you save, the human being or the [bleeping] dog?” Anna had just walked into the room behind me, and I don’t think she heard most of the story. She immediately, loudly blurted: “I would save the dog!” I know her, and I know she wasn’t thinking about the relative value of a human life, or the tragedy of a person potentially dying, at all; she was just reflexively affirming her love of dogs. But my father exploded. I calmly told Anna not to interrupt and to go to her room, and tried to explain this to him, but he wouldn’t hear it. And because Anna was going through a rough time where she would get extremely upset if told she’d unknowingly said something hurtful, I didn’t discuss this with her or have her apologize at the time. Ever since then, my father has acted as if Anna doesn’t exist. He’ll still talk to me, but doesn’t ask about her at all, and doesn’t respond if I mention her. He doesn’t send her Christmas or birthday presents or make deposits to her college savings account, as he always used to, and still does for my sister’s three perfect children. I need this to end. Not only does it tear me up emotionally, since my father favored my sister even when we were growing up, but it feels like a rejection of me as well. But Anna and I lost her father when she was too young to even remember him, and putting her through college without her well-off grandfather’s help will be a struggle. Would it be worth having her apologize, when she probably doesn’t remember the incident, and doesn’t even seem to have noticed the change in her grandfather’s relationship with her? How could I prepare the ground for this, since I don’t want to risk him yelling at her, which she can’t handle? Is there anything else I can do? —Mourning a Misunderstanding Dear Mourning a Misunderstanding, You should put your daughter first here. You do not want to force her to apologize for something she truly doesn’t understand or, as you said, set her up to be yelled at. Your father will either need to come around, or you should keep him away from her. I’m not one to quickly push for going no-contact with parents. I think it’s important to try our best to keep them in our lives, especially for our kids’ sake whenever possible. But, as the mother of a son with autism, if any adult in my life—parent or not—refused to try to understand my kid, they would simply need to be out of our lives. Your father is the capable adult in this situation. He has everything he needs to understand autism, or at least understand Anna’s needs, as you have been trying to explain them to him, and he’s been refusing to comprehend. That’s the main issue here: his downright refusal to understand, and to be the grown-up. Talk to him and tell him that he needs to try harder to understand Anna. Press the issue. And, if he brings up expecting an apology from her, clearly say, “No, I’m not going to ask her to apologize because, like I’ve explained to you, she doesn’t understand, and I’m not going to make her say words that don’t mean anything.” Then, take some time away from him—for you and Anna’s sake. While we might often talk about fighting for services in school meetings or other places in the greater community as ways to stick up for our children, it often ends up starting somewhere in our own family. That’s tough because those “fights” are with people we also love. But remember that Anna needs you, and you are her number one supporter. 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, My husband and I both come from tough families and are not in touch with our parents. We each have a sibling we’re kind of fond of, if not close with (my brother, his sister), and a sibling who is deeply weird, dramatic, and emotionally unstable (his brother, my sister). He and I are the only child-free people, and we have seven nieces and nephews under 8 years old who live in our hometowns in different states. I’m really struggling with what our relationship should be to our nieces and nephews. I feel like a good auntie to my local friend’s kids because I see them all the time. I’m able to do the odd school pickup and ice cream date, show up for the dance recital, and bring them something fun for their birthdays. I feel connected to them and invested in their futures because I loved their parents first and then grew to get to know and love the kids. The more time goes by, the more our siblings’ kids feel like strangers to us, especially the ones whose parents we’re keeping our distance from. But even with our benign siblings, I’m just not that interested. Traveling to our hometowns is expensive, boring, and brings up old traumas. FaceTiming and ordering presents to arrive at the right time doesn’t really feel like a relationship to me. I can feel myself phoning it in with them and not even really trying to get closer. Is this OK? Do I have an obligation to try to connect with these young people in my family even if I don’t really like their parents? My husband is disinterested in all kids equally, but something about my being able to show up for my friends’ kids and not my siblings’ keeps coming up for me. To make matters worse, each of our siblings and their kids do see each other often, and it’s already become apparent that we are even less close with the problematic siblings’ kids than the others. —Anxious Auntie Dear Anxious Auntie, You mention that you are both pretty disinterested in developing these relationships. Your siblings’ kids aren’t in any danger; they are well cared for, and they’re safe. So if you truly don’t want to travel back home and build a relationship with them, that’s your right. I think you’re worried about what it says about you that you don’t want to do these things and find ways to bond with them. But it really does seem like just a product of not being close to your siblings. It’s really hard to be close to kids you don’t know who live in a place you don’t like. You like your friends, and so you like their kids, and you like hanging out with them. This makes sense. Unless you have a desire to reconnect with your siblings or reconnect with your hometowns, which it seems you don’t, this will probably remain the case. Is it likely that your family talks about you behind your back because of this? Of course! But that’s also fine. You can’t fake a relationship with kids out of duty in general, but especially when you won’t physically go see them every once in a while. Again, if I were you, I’d ask myself: Do I care about the relationships or just how I look to my family? If you decide you really do want to build those relationships, there’s only one way to do it. Show up. Dear Care and Feeding, My 10-year-old daughter is struggling with the same body type issues I did. She is considered overweight for her age and has a large belly despite having a good diet and being extremely active (two to three hours a day of sports and running around). It’s just genetics. We’ve worked very hard to overcome her constant wish “to be skinny” with counseling and lots of body positivity work, and she’s finally come to the point where she is wearing clothes that fit (she was wearing things many sizes too big to hide herself) and not talking about wanting to be thin constantly. However, I just got an opportunity I’m worried will ruin all of that. I lost a good deal of weight back when my daughter was small, and I just saved enough money to do skin removal surgery on my stomach. I have never had a flat stomach, and it would be so nice to get rid of the pooch. But how in the world can I do this and not be a total hypocrite? I’m worried it’ll potentially kick off her body issues again. —Good for You But Not for Me Dear Good for You But Not for Me, I want to applaud you for thinking of your daughter and doing so much to help her feel better about herself. If you decide to go through with the surgery, you should lead with honesty. No one but you can decide what to do with your body or how it should look. And I think that can be something you talk through with your daughter. There are a lot of reasons someone might get skin removal surgery that go beyond aesthetic desires, and you can share those with her. But you should be frank, though, and stress that this is something you simply want, not something you absolutely need. You also can’t be surprised if she eventually desires cosmetic surgery or some other major change as she gets older. After all, your daughter holds similar insecurities to you, and surgery will then be more normalized for her. Again, I’m not making a judgment call on whether or not this is a good or bad thing. But I am saying that you have to talk very directly with her about your decision and know that you can’t determine how her own journey with her body and the way it looks will unfold. —Arionne More Advice From Slate Ever since I was young, I loved putting together outfits. I was always the kid who definitely looked as if she dressed herself because I was so excited about fashion. Fast-forward to today, and I have two children under the age of 2. I still love getting dressed up for special occasions and was excited to start getting to dress them for this kind of stuff too. However, my mother-in-law buys their outfits for every single special occasion… Advice Family Kids Parenting