Care and Feeding
I left them unsupervised for 15 minutes.
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Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My mom is the worst. My dad is mostly great when she’s not around but doesn’t stand up to her when she is. They weren’t abusive parents, but they weren’t good ones either. My husband and I know better than to leave them in charge of our kids without our supervision. Recently, we were visiting them and their dog got out. My husband went to coax her back. While he was doing that, our toddler had a nightmare diaper accident, so I went to get him cleaned up. In that 15-minute window of unsupervised time, my mom scooped up our 5-year-old and just drove off. No car seat. No telling anyone she’d left. He was in his PJs and it was a cold, rainy spring day. My dad thought my mom was napping. I knocked on all the neighbors’ doors and eventually, I called 911 because they live in a lakeside area and there have been child drownings there. When we realized the car was gone, I called and texted her repeatedly and she didn’t answer.
She came home five hours later and I lit into her. She told me I was overreacting, and that she didn’t ask if she could take him out because she knew I’d “obsess” (her word) over the car seat. My son said he’d called out for me when they left and she told him to hush, that this was a secret. My dad went after me for upsetting my mom. We left and haven’t spoken since. I’m feeling like the next time she’ll get to see my kids is from her casket. My husband feels even more strongly. But now my dad has fallen and he broke a hip, and I only found out through a cousin. Not being in touch with my mom means I don’t get to see my dad, but he keeps trying to reach out in ways that loop her in when I try to talk to him. How do I deal with this? I’m furious. But he is in the hospital and not getting younger, so I’ll have to face this sooner or later.
—Furious Mom
Dear Furious Mom,
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that you had every right to be furious. (Though perhaps I should tell you that it sounds like your mother may have a mental health disorder, and that she needs professional care. Not that you’re in a position to insist on that—but it might be worth bringing up to your father, carefully and gently, or to someone else who would be receptive and who has some influence on her. The situation you describe does not sound like mere eccentricity or grandmotherly hijinks.)
Now that some time has passed, I’m wondering if you might want to reconsider the complete banishment of her from your life. Certainly, I’d never leave her alone with the children (not even for five minutes). But are you sure you want to cut her out of your—and their—life for the rest of hers?
Perhaps you are. If so (and I’m not going to judge you for that—this experience on your last visit might well have been her latest affront, and cutting ties with her has been long coming), you may have to face the fact that you will lose your father too. Can you live with that? It’s clear that he can’t bear the situation as it currently exists. He wants his wife and his daughter to have a relationship. And it’s true, he’s not the one who gets to decide that. But if he won’t let up on trying to connect you with your mother, if you are adamant about not wanting to have anything to do with her, you may have to make a choice: Give him up too, or let her back in. You don’t want to demand that he make a choice between the two of you. I’ve witnessed this, and I know how devastating it is to a child (yes, even a full-grown one) when a parent, asked to choose, chooses their spouse, not their child.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
My sister was a single mom by choice. We both grew up in a loving, stable family and stayed close, even though we lived far apart. Unfortunately, the timing of our pregnancies and the pandemic meant that I never got to see her parenting her son (except over FaceTime). She died in a car accident when Silas was 2 and we adopted him. Once he made it through the grief and the transition, he was—and is—a sweet and friendly kid. His big sister, our bio-daughter, adores him. A few months ago, he fell at daycare and had to get X-rays. They showed healed breaks from the past that weren’t in his medical records. I felt very weird about this. Then, last week, I took him to the dentist, who is a family friend. She pulled me aside to tell me that Silas’s dental X-rays showed clear signs of a high fever that had gone untreated early in his life. Warping and mis-forming in molars, she said, can be a sign of early childhood medical neglect—so she had to go through the mandated reporter process. Because of the adoption records, our interaction with CPS was perfunctory, but it was still horrifying.
I’m grappling with the idea that my sweet and loving sister abused her son. I’m scared about what else might pop up, and how it could hurt him later on. I thought I knew my sister, and I feel so scared and angry and mixed up. My husband is in pain too for Silas, and neither of us knows what we should be doing. Up to now, I’ve tried to keep the memory of his mother alive for him. How should we be talking to him about her if she harmed him? I’d like to have the kids’ pediatrician do a full exam in case there are other hidden health issues as a result of abuse, but I have no idea how to ask for that in a way that doesn’t make it sound like I’m trying to dodge abuse allegations. Should we put Silas in therapy, even though he seems fine right now? Is there something else we should or could be doing?
—Sad and Angry
Dear Sad,
I am so sorry—this is an awful thing to have learned. I’m afraid you’ll likely never know the full truth about the first two years of your son’s life—or the full truth about your sister. But I do think you need to ask your pediatrician to do a prior-abuse screening, which will include a head ultrasound, an abdominal CT scan, and a scan for skeletal trauma beyond the presumably limited area of the X-rays already taken. The more information you have about Silas’s early experiences, the more you’ll be able to help him as time passes, as early trauma puts him at risk in various ways, not only now and in the near future but well into adulthood.
I know this is a terrifying thing to contemplate, particularly as it cannot be completely separated from your shock and horror—and confusion, and grief—about your sister. But for Silas’s sake, you must press on. Tell your pediatrician everything you’ve told me. I doubt you’ll need to explain why it’s important for you to have a more complete picture of what your child may have experienced at the hands of his first mother (or, possibly, by others in her life), and/or the extent of the neglect he suffered. If the thought of talking to your current pediatrician about this makes you so uncomfortable or afraid you don’t think you can do it, you need to change pediatricians. Their doctor should be someone you trust and feel at ease with, and with whom you can have a difficult conversation.
As to psychotherapy for Silas: Don’t wait until he doesn’t seem fine. What you know about his early care (or lack of care) alone makes it important for him to have the widest net of support possible (even if he doesn’t consciously remember anything about his life before the age of 2). Those first years of a child’s life are crucial ones for development.
Take the time to find the right therapist for him. You’ll want to find someone who specializes in children Silas’s age and who has training and experience treating children with a history of abuse/neglect in early childhood. You will also want it to be someone you find it easy to talk to, someone your instincts tell you is a good fit. And I know I always mention this when I talk about therapy for small children, but I urge you to find someone who is trained in play therapy. You’ll get through this. Silas has you now—he has you and your husband; he has a sister. He is surrounded by people who love him and who will take care of him. But if I may, I’d like to make one more suggestion—which is that you get help dealing with what you’ve learned (and whatever else you may learn). You have a lot to process and try to make sense of. Don’t neglect yourself while you move forward to do everything you can to help your child.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
I’ve gotten the “ick” about the mother of one of my 10-year-old daughter’s friends, and it’s made me not want to trust her with my daughter’s care anymore. The woman is very sweet and caring and I felt only sympathy when she recently lost her job and her marriage broke up (her husband then moved far away for a job, though he returns each month to see his daughter). For more than a year, she’s told my wife that the handsome father of another classmate is about to leave his wife, though to all appearances that couple is solid. I raised my eyebrows about these constant reports of an impending breakup that never happened, but it didn’t worry me. My discomfort arose when we were recently talking about the war in Ukraine. She has Eastern European roots, though from a country not traditionally friendly to Russia. She revealed herself to be pro-Putin and wouldn’t even agree with me that it would be better for Russia to be a democracy. My wife wasn’t too bothered by this but to me it was a “what’s up with this person” tipping point. It revealed values that are just too hard for me to understand, and a character that’s got more going on than her sweetness suggests. Now my wife and daughter are mad at me that I don’t feel comfortable about my daughter going to her house for a sleepover. I don’t know if my ick is rational, but it’s not going away.
—The Ick is Real
Dear Ick,
It’s your ick, not your kid’s. Unless you have reason to believe that her pro-Putin stance puts your 10-year-old at risk, I don’t think it’s reasonable to forbid sleepovers at her house. (If I’d applied the political purity test to the parents of all my daughter’s friends throughout her childhood, I’m not sure she would have had any friends.) If you don’t want your kid to be indoctrinated (and who does?), just make sure she knows you disagree vehemently with her friend’s mom and why. But I doubt very much that this woman you dislike is going to talk politics to the kids or that they’d pay any attention to it if she did. Or are you assuming that her political beliefs (as well as all the other things that didn’t bother you before) mean she can’t be trusted to house and feed your daughter overnight? I don’t see why. And I don’t see why your “ick”—rational or not—should affect your daughter. Let her play. Think of it as practice for when she’s a teenager and young adult and you don’t like her choice of friends or romantic partners. Your ick is irrelevant.
Dear Care and Feeding,
Last year, my niece came on the monthlong road trip my family took. Her mom had just died and I thought it would be a distraction for her. She is the same age as my daughter and the girls are very close. The trip was good for her, and she has spent a lot of time with us over the course of the year. Living full-time with my brother and her stepfamily hasn’t been easy for her. Among other things, she hasn’t been doing well in school since her mother’s death.
My brother and his wife are having a lot of issues, and I don’t think the marriage is going to survive. I thought it would be good (not just for my niece—and my daughter—but for my brother and his wife too) to get her out of their house this summer. We’re driving cross country country to visit my in-laws, and I’ve offered to take her along.
Here is where my sister-in-law stuck her nose in. She is offended that we have never offered to take her two kids on any of these trips—just my niece. But the thing is, her kids are fine when she is there to supervise them, but are completely out of control once her back is turned. The few times we have babysat them were exhausting. I shudder in horror at the thought of traveling cross country in an RV with them, especially with the younger one constantly wandering off without a care. So I told my brother that five kids was too much for my wife and me to handle. He has been wavering back and forth about allowing my niece to come with us. How do I convince him? My sister-in-law usually rules the roost and has always had a chip on her shoulder. I just never thought she would be this petty, and punish my niece over it.
—Uncle in Arizona
Dear Uncle,
If your sister-in-law has decreed that her stepdaughter can’t go unless her non-step two kids (your brother’s stepchildren, I assume, and not his children with her?) get to go too, I agree that she’s being willfully hard-hearted, even cruel. Your niece has lost her mother; the other children haven’t. This isn’t unfair “special treatment”; it’s a kind and loving gesture from a devoted uncle and aunt.
But … well, a couple of things. You haven’t said that your sister-in-law made this decree (only that your brother seems to have decided that it may come down to that). And you say that she’s angry that you “have never offered to take her two kids on any of these trips” [emphasis my own], which makes me wonder if the practice of inviting your niece and not her siblings, to whom you don’t consider yourself related, long predates the death of your brother’s former wife—in which case it may be that your brother’s current wife feels that you have never fully welcomed her into the family. And I think that may be true. The fact is, if these younger kids are your brother’s children—step or otherwise—they are part of your extended family, but you don’t refer to them as such. I certainly get the sense that you don’t much like their mother, or at least not as much as you liked the woman your brother used to be married to. Now, I don’t know the backstory here (I bet it’s complicated!), and you are under no obligation to love your brother’s current wife, but it does behoove you to treat her respectfully (bonus point for compassionately).
So when you talk to your brother—which you should, because I am absolutely in favor of your taking your niece along on this trip, and I do want to help you convince him to let her go—don’t be stingy with your empathy. Especially if you have slighted these other children over the years, but even if you haven’t. Tell your brother you understand how his wife feels. But remind him that his daughter is grieving; that she has lost her mother, which is one of the worst things that can happen to a child; that you and your wife want only to offer her support and love. You’re not excluding his other children from a fun vacation this summer; you’re actively trying to help one of his children during an extraordinarily difficult period. If that doesn’t convince him, then there is way more going on in the family dynamic than you’ve let me in on.
—Michelle
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