My Son Spends a Lot of Time With My Well-Off Family. I’m Not Sure It’s a Good Idea.

Care and Feeding He’s starting to notice some major differences. Photo illustraation by Slate. Photos by baramee2554/Getty Images Plus, GOLFX/iStock/Getty Images Plus, and Gratsias Adhi Hermawan/iStock/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, I am a single mother to my son, “Jake” (age 10). Jake and I live in a cramped two-bedroom apartment. I do my best to provide for him, but given my current circumstances, I can’t provide a lot. Jake knows we are poor. It would be pointless to try to hide this fact of life from him. My brother “Edward” and his wife live in the same metropolitan area we do, but in a wealthier suburb. Edward is a lawyer, his wife is an optometrist, and together they are quite well off, especially compared to us. Edward’s daughters are similar in age, and they get along well with Jake. In fact, Jake often refers to them as his sisters. Edward often invites Jake to join them on family outings and vacations. I often have to work on Saturdays, so I’m not often available to join them. I probably see Edward and his family no more than once a month, but Jake is with them once a week, and more often than that during the summer. Edward has also paid for Jake to attend the same summer camps as his cousins. Jake has started making poignant comparisons between our life and his Uncle Edward’s and his family. He notices that the meals we eat at home are plain and very simple—”struggle meals,” some might call them—and that we rarely eat out, while when he’s with Edward, they cook more elaborate meals or order in. Jake notices differences in the decor of our cramped apartment and the appliances we have as opposed to what’s inside Edward’s three-story house. I am truly glad that Jake is getting experiences he otherwise wouldn’t have. But I’m also worried he’s becoming resentful about what I provide versus his uncle. There have started to be hints (from Jake himself, who says he hasn’t asked Edward and his wife about it) that next school year Jake might stay at Edward’s house and come home on weekends, so that Jake can go to a well-funded suburban middle school and not the school in our district. Is it too much for me to start putting boundaries on his interaction with my brother, or should I foster it more? Am I just too sensitive/prideful, ashamed at how much I contribute to his life versus his uncle? I feel really conflicted about what to do, particularly about the school situation. —Poor Mom, Rich Uncle Dear Poor Mom, When you say Jake has begun to “notice” the differences between life at home and life at Uncle Edward’s, I imagine you mean that he has voiced this to you. If your 10-year-old son is pointing out these differences, he is giving you the opportunity to have a difficult, but absolutely necessary, conversation about money, resources, economic inequality, and economic realities. Jake is not too young for you to talk to him frankly about your economic circumstances and Edward’s. Of course, you could have had (and can have!) this conversation with your son without his observations paving the way toward it. But I understand your reluctance to talk to him about money—and your shame, discomfort, sadness (and so on)—and thus perhaps your reluctance to take the situation with your brother head-on. Do it anyway. While Jake is not too young to notice profound differences in lifestyles—nor too young to have a conversation about them—he isn’t old enough to figure out on his own why this disparity exists. And where there’s an unknown—a vacuum, if you will—a child will supply his own uninformed answers. So move into that vacuum and fill it with truths. If one truth is that you want your son to live with you—not merely visit you on weekends—you need to tell him that. Tell him why, too. (Make sure you know why.) My guess is that it isn’t because you’re prideful, sensitive, or even jealous; it’s because you love him and want him with you. If I’m right, say all that. (If I’m wrong: Maybe it is worth considering the idea if it’s something Jake really wants and Edward is OK with it.) In other words, the answer to the question of whether you should “set some boundaries” on Jake’s relationship with Edward’s family or encourage it depends entirely on how you feel about it. I bet it would be helpful to have a frank, real conversation with your brother, too, in which you confess to feeling occasionally unsettled by or anxious about how much he’s able to do for your son when your own resources are so limited. You might also tell him how grateful you are, too. Hear him out: He may very well tell you how much it means to him to play such a big part in his nephew’s life. He may tell you he wishes he saw more of you, as well. The takeaway here should be—as it so often should be in complicated family matters: Own your feelings, good and bad. Then talk about them with the people affected by them, those you’re feeling them about, and whom you love. Plus: Talk to your child about money. It’s not a subject that should be hidden away and then left to be guessed about; it shouldn’t be a deep, dark secret. 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 wife, “Analise,” recently told our 16-year-old daughter, “Jenna,” something that I think was uncalled for and has greatly upset Jenna. Out of the blue, Analise told Jenna that once she is an adult and off our health insurance, we will not be helping her in any way if she (or, down the road, any child of hers) develops a medical condition that requires costly treatment. She told Jenna that we’ll need the equity from our house and all our savings to support ourselves, and that anything that happens to her is on her. Our daughter tends toward anxiety, and now she’s extremely worried about something happening to her when she grows up and is no longer covered by our health insurance policy. Even worse, Jenna now says she might not have kids out of fear of not being able to provide help for them because health insurance is so expensive. My wife never cleared this with me. Frankly, I can’t imagine NOT doing all I could to save my child or a grandchild. We are fairly well off financially, so I have no idea where this is coming from. Should I reassure Jenna that we will make sure she’s taken care of no matter what, so that she doesn’t have to live in the grip of crippling anxiety? —Mom Malpractice Dear Mal, You can reassure your daughter all you want—and you can make good on that reassurance when/if the time comes (a good 10 years on!) that Jenna needs your help no matter what your wife says about it. She is not the boss of you. But have you taken this up with Analise yet? What on earth caused her to say such a thing? Was it said in anger, in response to something Jenna had done or said? Did she even mean it? And if she did, what’s wrong with her? It’s a strange thing to say to one’s child (which is why I find myself thinking something must have provoked it—and given what I know about teenagers, it doesn’t seem far-fetched to imagine that Jenna did provoke it, though that still wouldn’t make this any less bizarre). In any case, since I take it you weren’t present when Analise said this, and that you would not have known she had said it if Jenna hadn’t repeated it to you, the first order of business is for you to talk to your wife. And I’ve got to ask: If Analise meant what she said and tells you she was merely stating the obvious, will you be surprised? Is it out of character, or pretty much what you’d expect from her? If it’s the latter, there’s a big disconnect between you two that makes me wonder about your marriage—both up to now and going forward. Ever Gotten a Call From Human Resources? Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir want to hear about it—and help you navigate your problems at work. Does your colleague constantly bug you after hours? Has an ill-advised work romance gone awry? Ask us your question here! Dear Care and Feeding, My 12-year-old granddaughter, “Melissa,” hates her stepmother, “Cindy,” with a vengeance. Last week, I caught Melissa stabbing pins into a sort of “voodoo” doll she’d made to represent Cindy. I told her mother (my daughter), and she said that if it helps provide Melissa with an acceptable outlet for her frustration, she sees nothing wrong with it. What can I do to get my daughter to understand that wishing ill on another person is anything but acceptable, and that she must teach Melissa that? —Not A Healthy Outlet! Dear Outlet, Your time to get your daughter to understand this has long passed: She is no longer a child for whom you are responsible to teach and model goodness. And you don’t get to decide what she teaches her child. If you object to something Melissa is doing while in your care, tell Melissa yourself. Better yet: Provide Melissa with a healthier outlet for her frustration by encouraging her to talk to you about how she feels and creating a safe space for her to express her distress and anger. Her mother is right about one thing: Melissa needs to be able to do something with all those hard feelings (and sticking pins into a doll is definitely better than sticking pins into her stepmother). Just make sure you don’t continue to insert yourself into this complex family dynamic by reporting on your granddaughter’s actions or behavior and then expecting your daughter to handle what you’ve told her in the way you wish her to handle it. —Michelle More Advice From Slate I have a son (9), and two daughters (5 and 6 months). About a month ago, a new family moved in a couple blocks away. They also have a 9-year-old boy (Luke), who’s in my son’s class. The boys hit it off at school and started asking to hang out with each other more often. After one meet-up at the neighborhood park, we set something up at our house after school. The boys had a great time. The next day, I got a text from Luke’s mother asking me to call her. Alarmed, I called her immediately, and she asked me if I breastfeed my 6-month-old… Advice Family Kids Parenting