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Dear Care and Feeding,
Is my sister trying to mess with me through my daughter’s birthday gift? My sister, “Ashley,” and I have never been close. Growing up, our parents always pitted us against each other because (so they have claimed) they thought this dynamic of competition would help us become successful. It did not work, and our relationship has always been strained. The last straw was when my father left more money to me than to Ashley in his will. This seemed to really bother her, and we haven’t talked much since he passed.
Last weekend, my daughter—who is trans—turned 7. My sister knows that “Isabella” is a trans girl, but for her birthday she sent a plush dinosaur. It seems to me that giving Isabella a birthday gift that isn’t girly was a passive-aggressive way of getting at me. So I asked Ashley about it. She claimed that she doesn’t see dinosaurs as particularly gendered and that she herself (supposedly) liked dinosaurs as a child. I don’t buy it. Dinosaurs are known to be a boyish interest. (For what it’s worth, Isabella seemed happy enough about the gift and thanked Ashley over the phone. But I can’t tell if she was just being polite to her aunt.) Am I overthinking this, or am I right to be suspicious?
—Dino Dig
Dear Dino,
Let me get this straight. You are a sufficiently forward-thinking person to fully support your trans child’s identity (yay for you!) but also so backwards-thinking that you have the genuinely wacky idea that dinosaurs are for boys? I will confess that it’s hard to concentrate on the meat of your question (Does my sister hate me? Is she expressing this hate by meanness toward my child?) when my brain is spinning ceaselessly around the central mystery of your letter.
But I’ll try. I don’t know if your sister hates you, though your father leaving the two of you unequal amounts of money was a seriously cruel parting gesture—unless there are extenuating circumstances you haven’t mentioned here, like Ashley is well off financially and you are desperately strapped. If addressing your years-long conflict/competition with your sister was really important to you, and your financial situations are comparable, you would have taken matters into your own hands and made the bequest equitable after the fact, so that your parents’ misguided, mean, bizarre child-rearing tactic didn’t end up getting the last word. So I would say that the troubles between you two can’t be laid entirely at Ashley’s feet. As to whether her (possible?) antipathy toward you found its expression in the gift of a stuffed dino—which is in no way I can imagine, no matter how I much I stretch my imagination, a toy that only a boy could love—the only possible answer is what on god’s green earth are you talking about?
—Michelle
https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/10/kids-skip-college-parenting-advice-care-feeding.html
Is my sister trying to mess with me through my daughter’s birthday gift? My sister, “Ashley,” and I have never been close. Growing up, our parents always pitted us against each other because (so they have claimed) they thought this dynamic of competition would help us become successful. It did not work, and our relationship has always been strained. The last straw was when my father left more money to me than to Ashley in his will. This seemed to really bother her, and we haven’t talked much since he passed.
Last weekend, my daughter—who is trans—turned 7. My sister knows that “Isabella” is a trans girl, but for her birthday she sent a plush dinosaur. It seems to me that giving Isabella a birthday gift that isn’t girly was a passive-aggressive way of getting at me. So I asked Ashley about it. She claimed that she doesn’t see dinosaurs as particularly gendered and that she herself (supposedly) liked dinosaurs as a child. I don’t buy it. Dinosaurs are known to be a boyish interest. (For what it’s worth, Isabella seemed happy enough about the gift and thanked Ashley over the phone. But I can’t tell if she was just being polite to her aunt.) Am I overthinking this, or am I right to be suspicious?
—Dino Dig
Dear Dino,
Let me get this straight. You are a sufficiently forward-thinking person to fully support your trans child’s identity (yay for you!) but also so backwards-thinking that you have the genuinely wacky idea that dinosaurs are for boys? I will confess that it’s hard to concentrate on the meat of your question (Does my sister hate me? Is she expressing this hate by meanness toward my child?) when my brain is spinning ceaselessly around the central mystery of your letter.
But I’ll try. I don’t know if your sister hates you, though your father leaving the two of you unequal amounts of money was a seriously cruel parting gesture—unless there are extenuating circumstances you haven’t mentioned here, like Ashley is well off financially and you are desperately strapped. If addressing your years-long conflict/competition with your sister was really important to you, and your financial situations are comparable, you would have taken matters into your own hands and made the bequest equitable after the fact, so that your parents’ misguided, mean, bizarre child-rearing tactic didn’t end up getting the last word. So I would say that the troubles between you two can’t be laid entirely at Ashley’s feet. As to whether her (possible?) antipathy toward you found its expression in the gift of a stuffed dino—which is in no way I can imagine, no matter how I much I stretch my imagination, a toy that only a boy could love—the only possible answer is what on god’s green earth are you talking about?
—Michelle
https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/10/kids-skip-college-parenting-advice-care-feeding.html