The Things My Stepdaughter’s Mom Lets Her Do Make Me Cringe

Care and Feeding Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Getty Images Plus. Our advice columnists have heard it all over the years—so today we’re diving into the archives of Care and Feeding to share classic parenting letters with our readers. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here. Dear Care and Feeding, I am stepmother to an 8-year-old. Her father has custody, and we live several hours away from her mother, who is a nice person but doesn’t always make great parenting choices. My stepdaughter visits her mother for a week or a weekend from time to time, and I understand that these visits are important to her, but I struggle with how to talk to her about them. When she talks to me about going to see her mother, she will say things like “My mom lets me eat candy for dinner” or “Sometimes I stay up all night at my mommy’s house—she lets me.” For the most part she is not saying this to try to manipulate me; I think by now she realizes that rules are different in different houses. I guess she is just expressing excitement about going to see her mother. I suppose the best strategy overall is to talk to her about why certain choices are better than others, but in the moment, I struggle with what to say. I don’t want to quash the excitement that she has about seeing her mother, and I don’t want to say negative things about her mother, but I also don’t want to imply that I agree with these choices. Mostly, so far, I have tried to sound as noncommittal as possible, letting her know that I heard her but not agreeing. What is the best thing to say in these moments? —Not an Evil Stepmother Dear NaES, I can see how this is a tricky situation for you, and it may help to draw a distinction here. You know that it’s not good to communicate your judgment about her mother’s choices, but I would also point out that your judgments about her mother’s choices actually don’t matter at all. A general rule with all two-house co-parenting situations is: Unless it’s abuse or neglect you’re worried about, what the other household does is none of your business. I realize that may sound counterintuitive, but this is hard-earned wisdom for most divorced families. This works because these are boundaries, and boundaries are key to the health of a child caught in the middle. Of course, I don’t advocate feeding your kid candy until the break of dawn, but I also don’t think that it’s abuse or neglect if that’s happening once in a while. I might also point out that you say your kid is not sharing this to manipulate you, but I’m not sure how it is that you know that. Kids are wonderfully complicated people with all kinds of plans and schemes and experiments happening in their curious and rapidly developing minds. “Candy for dinner” might mean a candy bar at 6 p.m. after a 4 p.m. taco lunch, which may feel wildly decadent to your kid. “Up all night” may mean a movie and a pajama dance party that ends at midnight, which might as well be Burning Man to her. I mean. She’s 8. She may even be exaggerating these things in an attempt to get you to loosen up the reins a bit. It could even be that this is all happening exactly as you imagine it and it’s because her mother just wants to make her happy. None of this requires your intervention, nor your opinion. You say you want your kid to know that you don’t approve of this stuff, but she already does because you don’t do this stuff at your house. That’s really all you need to say about it. Remember that this is a long-term situation and there will be plenty of time for your kid to figure out everything there is to know about how different parents can love her deeply and in totally different ways. There is no need to say anything negative here. There is no need to even feel anything negative. Your child is connecting with her mother and is happy about it. That’s all you need to care about. Good luck. —Carvell Wallace From: Dear Care and Feeding: My Stepdaughter’s Mother Lets Her Eat Candy for Dinner. (April 3rd, 2019). 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 was the surrogate for her gay brother in his first marriage. Genetically, her nephew is her son by her brother’s ex. She has a daughter by her first marriage, and together we have twins. I love my wife and accept what she went through to give her brother a child. I don’t want it to happen again. My brother-in-law has remarried. He and his new husband are interested in having a child, and they want to repeat everything with my wife. I love my wife, my stepdaughter, and our twins, but I know I will not be able to rationally be able to abide my wife getting pregnant by another man and giving up a baby. I can’t handle it. My wife is disappointed by my reaction and my brother-in-law has gone so far as to accuse me of being homophobic and “possessive.” I told him to concentrate on the child that he has instead of getting a new shiny one (my nephew lives with his other father 90 percent of the time). This has cooled relationships with my in-laws. I am tired of defending myself. Am I out of line? We don’t know if we want more children but my wife is in her late 30s now. Is it wrong to feel like any child she has should be ours and not her brother’s? —Through the Looking Glass Over Here Dear TTLG, What a mess. On one hand, obviously it’s your wife’s body. However, this is the clearest case of “two yeses, one no” I have ever seen. You are not out of line, and I am not impressed that her brother has largely peaced out on his first child (however impolitic and/or rudely you may have pointed that out). I am happy to give you a “this is neither homophobic nor possessive” get-out-of-jail free card. This may end your marriage. I’m very sorry about that. I do think this conversation with your wife would benefit from a disinterested third party, and if you have the resources and your wife agrees, this is a couples counseling situation. —Nicole Cliffe From: Dear Care and Feeding: My Son Shares His Name With a Porn Star. Can I Make Him Legally Change It? (November 22th, 2019). Dear Care and Feeding, My spouse and I are first-time parents of a 4-month-old. My question concerns the small but crucial difference between the words my spouse and I use when we’re comforting our crying child. I say, “It’s all right,” and my spouse says, “You’re all right.” I don’t think we’re intending to communicate anything different (we’re probably both repeating what we were told as children) so I’m almost embarrassed to say that my spouse’s version is beginning to get under my skin. Of course, right now our child is preverbal, so this tiny linguistic difference isn’t even registering with them. But this won’t always be the case. Am I completely imagining that these phrases carry different emotional charges? To me, “You’re all right” feels sort of dismissive of the child’s underlying emotional state, while “It’s all right” feels more accepting. But does it really make any practical difference which version our child hears growing up? I can’t tell whether this is a very silly thing to be hung up on, or totally crucial to our child’s emotional development. —We’re All Right Dear WAR, As I read your letter, I was suddenly reminded—I hadn’t thought about this in many years—of how after hearing me murmur “It’s all right” to our infant daughter for approximately the 437th time during the first week of her life, my husband groaned and asked me, “But what is it? What’s all right?” (His own instinctive preference was to say, “Shh, shh” in a soothing voice, which drove me crazy.) I don’t think it’s silly to pay attention to the subtle messages imparted by the words we choose (or that, as you suggest, seem to choose us, depending on how we were raised). And I read the difference between your words and your partner’s in the same way you do. I can’t tell you whether that barely perceptible alternate message is going to turn out to be an anomaly—a bit of linguistic trivia—or a clue to a fundamental difference in the way the two of you teach your child to deal with setbacks, troubles, grief, and so on. But I can tell you this: While you find your message to be preferable, your child’s other parent is not always going to align with your way of thinking and is going to teach your child different ways of coping (and being) than you will. And this is all to the good, since children (and the adults they will someday become) need a whole array of tools for coping with what the world throws at them. The combination of these two distinct messages—it’s all right and you’re all right—isn’t a bad place to start. —Michelle Herman From: Dear Care and Feeding: I’m an Atheist. My Christian Friend Thinks I’m Going to Hell. Can This Friendship Be Saved? (December 1st, 2019). More Parenting Advice From Slate My husband is a stay-at-home dad to our 1-year old daughter. I appreciate all he does, and I feel lucky he takes equality in our marriage seriously. But his unemployment has put a strain on us financially, and I’m consumed with jealousy that he gets to stay home. 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 Family Kids Parenting