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 hoping that you can solve a (what I think is a really silly) disagreement between my husband and me. We have a baby girl, our first, and she is 10 months old. I am an adjunct professor at a local community college, so I am home a lot with the baby. She is a typical baby in all respects and is growing beautifully according to her pediatrician. Like most babies, she is interested in everything, but especially items that aren’t “traditional” toys. For example, she loves, loves, loves plastic water bottles. She loves to crinkle them, throw them, mouth them, carry them around. I drink a lot of water because I am breastfeeding so there is always an empty bottle around for her to play with. I let her because a) babies are weird and they like what they like; and b) who cares?!
My husband has the opposite approach.He thinks it’s weird and we should teach her about appropriate toys and if he sees her with one, he will take it from her and replace it with a block or ball or something. Of course, she will cry and fuss because her “favorite” thing just got taken away. He thinks that she needs to learn and eventually she won’t cry. In all other areas, he is an amazing dad and super attentive and indulgent so for me, this feels like a strange hill to die on. Is he correct that I am teaching her bad habits about getting whatever she wants with this? Or he is being over the top?
—It’s Just a Water Bottle
Dear IJaWB,
You are correct (but also wrong, we’ll get to that), and your husband is wrong. Please make sure you are only buying disposable water bottles that don’t contain BPA, etc., and also don’t let your baby share your mouth germs, so please pour the water into a glass and drink it instead of downing the bottle and then handing it to your kid. Then buy yourself a reusable water bottle and stop drinking multiple disposable bottles of water a day.
She’ll move on (as fewer plastic bottles are present in her environment), but in the meantime, give your husband the task of finding more crinkly toys (crinkly toys are almost uniformly beloved by babies) so that he has something to do.
It’ll be better for the environment if you can replace your habit in time, but in terms of the baby, it’s a normal and fun toy and she’s not missing out on anything.
—Nicole Cliffe
From: My Mother-in-Law Is Secretly Planning to Circumcise Our Son. (May 10th, 2019).
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Dear Care and Feeding,
My MIL lives several states away, so we see her just a few times a year. My 10-year-old daughter is her one and only grandchild. Of course, when she comes to town, I don’t want to block access to my daughter, but it has always made me uneasy that her time with all my in-laws has to be alone, something my husband shrugs off. My husband and I are pushed far to the side of all time when they are in town. When she came up several years ago a few weeks prior to Christmas, MIL had my daughter for the weekend and threw a “Christmas Morning” with my daughter and her other son. My husband and I were not invited. I explained to my husband I wasn’t OK with this for several reasons, including but not limited to: I want to see what she gets, and take pictures, and am not OK with being out of the picture.
I thought we were on the same page, but when MIL came in a few weeks prior to my daughter’s birthday, she gave her all of her birthday gifts in private, despite the fact that I was throwing a family dinner for everyone at the end of the weekend. Husband says it’s no big deal, but he also went and cleaned the chicken coop the minute his mom showed up for the dinner, so I’m thinking he’s out of touch on the issue too. Am I crazy, or is this weird?
—This Seems Wrong
Dear This Seems Wrong,
This is absolutely weird, and it ends today. Your MIL can get stuffed. Tell your wuss of a chicken coop–hiding husband to get in gear and back you up, you’re tired of being treated like the nanny when his mother comes to town.
That “Christmas Morning” shit she pulled? Not on my watch.
From now on, you go where your daughter goes, you act pleasantly bemused when your mother-in-law tries to reinstate the old rules, and if she asks why things have changed you can say, “Oh, they just grow up so fast, I want to be there for every minute,” ideally while staring her dead in the face and channeling Charles Bronson.
I insist you email me about developments in this situation.
—N.C.
From: My Mother-in-Law Insists on Seeing Our Daughter Without Us. That’s Weird, Right? (March 22nd, 2019).
Dear Care and Feeding,
My younger sister has made a lot of choices in the last few years that my family has struggled with. After shocking us with a divorce, she’s now engaged to a man twice her age who’s in prison for an inappropriate relationship with a previous student (also half his age). My sister met him at church before he went to prison, and says that he’s turned his life around and is heartbroken for his past transgressions. They plan to marry this fall.
The entire situation has been tough for our family, but I’ve worked hard to support her and love her through everything, even though she knows I don’t necessarily agree with her decisions.
The issue is how to handle this when her fiancé gets out of prison, and they get married. My husband and I live across the country and only come home a few times a year, but we have a young daughter, and I’m not comfortable with her being around a registered sex offender.
I know that my sister believes him to be a good guy, and I don’t want to be unreasonable, but I feel like I want him to be around my daughter as little as possible, and absolutely never without me present.
My sister casually mentioned that next year they could join us for our yearly family vacation, and my heart stopped. The thought of being under the same roof with that man scares me.
Am I being irrational, or is this a valid concern? I’m a Christian, and I do believe that God can change people and that everyone deserves forgiveness. But his past behavior landed him in jail, and that seems severe enough for me to create boundaries.
If my feelings are valid, how do I address this without hurting my incredibly sensitive sister?
– Conundrum
Dear Conundrum,
Hell no. Feelings will be hurt. That’s OK. That’s sometimes just what has to happen. Your child is never to be unsupervised around Uncle Bert, and that’s just how the cookie crumbles. If people get up your ass with “but whyyyyyy” or “he’s chaaaanged,” you can say “my job is to protect my children, and that’s what I’m doing.” I would also make sure there are not, in fact, restrictions on his ability to spend time around minors, because that would be helpful ammunition for you.
I’m very sorry. This sucks. It will cause a rift. You will get nasty emails from random relatives about not putting family first.
Delete them.
—N.C.
From: My Sister Is Marrying a Registered Sex Offender and Wants to Include Him in Family Events. (March 25th, 2019).
Classic Prudie
About two years ago my then-boyfriend got a job offer at a large, global company for nearly a 40 percent pay raise. He was contractually obliged to give a month’s notice at his old job and during that time I found out he cheated on me, amongst other things. To get back at him I logged into his email (he gave me his password previously) and wrote an email pretending to be him. The email detailed a drunken weekend out using recreational drugs, racist vents about my ex’s then boss, and the last paragraph contained offensive remarks about the HR manager who recruited him. I sent it to the HR manager to make it look like he’d accidentally sent it to her instead of a friend, then deleted the email from his sent account. Naturally the company withdrew the job offer.