When My Son Told Me His Friend Has a Crush on Him, My Stomach Dropped. I’m Not Sure What This Says About Me.

Care and Feeding Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by kieferpix/iStock/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, I’m the single mom of a 16-year-old son. I feel blessed that we have a very close and open relationship. What advice should I give him about dealing with a female friend whose crush he does not reciprocate? My son says he feels guilty because he really likes this girl as a person, and would date her if only she were more attractive. How can I assure him this is natural and OK without raising another shallow man who judges women by their looks? I also feel bad about my inner “Nooooo!” reaction when he first told me this girl liked him, which I figure is Darwinian because he’s my only child and that primitive part of me wants “better” for him. How can I avoid letting this come through? —Mom of a Good Guy Dear Mom of a Good Guy, Of course it’s OK that your son isn’t attracted to and doesn’t want to go out with this particular friend. When you talk about it with him, I don’t think you need to focus on her looks at all. Just listen to what your son shares, and affirm his decision to remain friends. If you want to, you can also point out that it would actually be misleading and unkind to go out with his friend if he can’t see himself ever having romantic feelings for her—and their friendship would no doubt suffer, too. Since you seem to be concerned that he’s judging women by their looks, it may be worth reminding him that attractiveness is highly subjective and also has nothing to do with a person’s real value, whether they are kind or funny or actually worth spending time with, etc. We all have our preferences, but he shouldn’t assume that someone he doesn’t personally find attractive is therefore unattractive to everyone or undateable. You can also encourage him to think about what qualities, apart from the physical, are really important to him. I’m not totally sure what to say about your own reaction—it does sound like you already know it wasn’t great?—or what your son being your only child has to do with it. I assume that you refrained from actually telling him not to date anyone his mother doesn’t consider a 10? If you managed to keep that to yourself, good—keep doing that. 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, I’m an autistic woman. My nephew (my sister’s son) was recently diagnosed, and my sister asked me to “be a role model” for him. I’m unclear on how this is different from normal aunt stuff I already do. She says she’s worried he’ll feel upset about being different, and that she wants me to show him it’s OK. I’m not the right person for that. If I could be not autistic, I would take it in a heartbeat. I don’t think I could lie in a helpful way to him, although I hope and dream that he won’t feel the way I do. Unfortunately, he seems to have a lot of patterns I recognize from myself. Inexplicably, I wasn’t diagnosed until adulthood. As a kid, I was academically ahead, but behind in every other way. I didn’t have friends for large stretches of my childhood. I was easily overwhelmed by classrooms or groups and would shut down and become unable to speak for hours at a time. When routines changed, I’d sometimes cry myself unconscious. In college, I focused 70 percent of my attention on memorizing social patterns and got much better at masking; it was a horrific four years that I can’t really remember, but I did acquire the skills. I have friends, I date, I have a career. From the outside, I’m a successful adult. But dealing with my autism shapes my entire life: I organize everything from my job to my housing around giving myself opportunities to be alone and reduce sensory input. I want to set a good example for my nephew, but I can’t recommend my own experiences. —Unsure Aunt Dear Aunt, I understand that your sister is worried about her son, but you and he are not the same just because you’re both autistic, and your experiences and feelings won’t be the same, either. It would have been better if she’d simply said that she’s glad her son will have you as his aunt, and perhaps asked whether you’d be OK listening to him or talking with him about autism as your relationship grows, instead of assuming that you would want or be able to share a certain type of experience with him. You do not have to “set an example”: your life is neither an inspirational lesson nor a cautionary tale for your nephew, or for anyone else. I’m sorry that your sister’s request created some pressure for you, but I don’t think you need to worry too much about what you can’t do for your nephew, because there is a lot that you can do. Being a loving and involved aunt doesn’t mean that you have to lie to him, or recommend anything in particular, or say that something was easy or okay for you when it wasn’t. If you’re at all open to talking with him about autism as he gets older, I think that’s already very generous—and, if so, you can probably focus more on listening to what he shares as a safe, nonjudgmental, understanding person who cares about him and wants the best for him, rather than sharing every detail from your life or attempting to guide him through an experience that is bound to be different from yours. It occurred to me that your sister might not have made such a request if she had a solid understanding of what you went through at school and as a young adult. I get that you might not want to share everything you wrote in your letter with her. You certainly can try if you want her to understand those things, and how you felt about them. But if you don’t want to do that—or don’t think she’d be able to hear you—you don’t have to. You can just let her know that you love your nephew and want to be part of his life and his support system, which would be true whether or not you (or he) were autistic. —Nicole More Parenting Advice From Slate My husband and I adopted two baby girls from India, and we raised them as twins, despite each of them having a separate biological family. So while they’re sisters, they look very different. In the summer after their junior year of high school, both girls wanted to get internships. “Priya” interned at my husband’s nonprofit, and “Marie” interned for the daughter of one of my clients, who runs a modeling agency. It seems that Priya feels jealous and possibly jilted that her sister was given this opportunity. 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