agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Care and Feeding,

My nephew is 9 years old. He has cerebral palsy and suffers from limited mobility (he uses a wheelchair), vision impairment, cognitive impairment, and a seizure disorder. He has recently been matched with a service dog who is primarily needed to alert the family to seizures, but also provides him with support to be more independent. I am very glad that he has the dog to assist him.

The problem is that my wife and one of my children are allergic to dogs. We live a few hours away by plane and visit my parents twice a year (they come to visit us twice a year). When we visit, we stay with my parents. Unfortunately, my parents watch my nephew after school one day a week. This means that the dog is in the house at least once a week. Even with deep cleaning, that is likely to set off an allergic reaction in my family. My parents have suggested that we begin staying in a hotel. My kids are very disappointed because they love Grandma and Grandpa’s house—they love the candy drawer and my dad’s woodworking shop and sleeping in a tent in the basement with all my old toys. My wife and I don’t want them to lose that experience. We’ve asked if my parents could watch my nephew at my sister’s house, but they said the commute is too far (his special needs school is near my parents’ home, but about an hour from my sister’s home). We asked if the dog could stay home on the day my parents babysit, but that was shot down, too. I’m not sure how to proceed from here. They do not seem willing to compromise, and I don’t want my kids to feel less important than their cousin.

— What’s Fair?

Dear What’s Fair,

In a conversation many years ago, my younger child’s former special educator shared these words about school-based accommodations for disabled students, which I’ve never forgotten: “Everyone should get what they need. That doesn’t mean that everyone always gets the same thing.”

It was determined that your nephew should have a service dog to be as safe and independent as possible at home, in childcare settings, and at school. That is why he has been matched with one. The dog is not just a pet to which he’s grown attached; the dog is helping him get his real day-to-day safety and mobility needs met. Your sister is sending her child to a school an hour from their home because that is the educational environment he needs. Your parents are helping to meet still another need by providing childcare once a week, at a location that is conveniently near your nephew’s school. You get where I’m going with this by now; a need is different from a really-nice-to-have wish. If the service dog stays home on the day your parents watch your nephew, that means that your nephew won’t have the additional support at their house or all day at school. He and his educators and family won’t have the reassurance of knowing the dog will alert those around him if he might be about to seize. He shouldn’t have to go without his service dog one full day a week, year-round, thus compromising his independence and possibly his health, because you want to stay with your parents a couple of times a year. I understand that allergies are serious and renting a hotel or Airbnb is an added expense, but I don’t think it’s right to ask your family members to make a choice that ultimately makes your nephew less independent and less safe on a weekly basis for the sake of your (very occasional) convenience.

You are entitled to your feelings about this, and so are your kids. But you have a choice in how you handle this. If you keep pushing your parents and sister, focusing on how unfair you believe this arrangement to be, or allow your children to conclude that they are “less important” or being wronged, you’ll be encouraging your kids to resent their cousin, sowing discord in your family, making your nephew’s and sister’s and parents’ lives harder, and, I cannot stress this enough, really telling on yourself. On the other hand, you can accept the fact that your nephew has, as all people do, a right to the support and accommodations he needs in order to be safe and participate in his education and other activities to the fullest extent possible—which, in his case, includes having his service dog with him every day, not six days a week. You can allow your children to express any disappointment they may feel while also doing your best to help them see that this is one small but important step toward inclusion and independence for their cousin, something your entire family should want and support for him.

Hopefully, your kids can hear and internalize the truth that other people getting what they genuinely need is no slight to them. And if you really don’t understand this, I urge you to spend some time educating yourself so that you can be a better relative to your nephew and sister.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/03/summer-vacation-care-and-feeding.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It does seem to me that the grandparents are willing to compromise - they're willing to compromise by having the kids stay in a hotel when they visit. It's not ideal, but sometimes people have different accessibility needs that conflict and, sorry, but on two different metrics I agree that this nephew gets priority - first, because he's there every week, and second because his disability looks like it affects him a lot more than the kids' allergy. It sucks, and it sucks all around, but he's not the kid I'm going to inconvenience.

LW, what's fair is a world where nobody has dog allergies but unfortunately we don't live in that world.

That said, it seems like you're the one who's not ready to compromise. All the compromises you have suggested involve other people changing things and you going on as you are with no changes or inconveniences. But it's really hard to suggest compromises without knowing how severe your allergies are. If going for an afternoon to a grandparent's house that has been deep-cleaned after a dog visited a week ago is going to make your wife and kid miserable to the point they can't enjoy any part of the trip, or put them in serious long-term danger, that's a different question than if the problem is that spending an entire week there will make them sniffly or itchy or have to take extra meds. And that's really going to change the possible compromises, of which there are many! (As a start, what many people do is keep an animal-free guest room, which gives guests an indoor refuge to go to if they need it, if they're willing to tough it out in the common spaces.)

But they start with you realizing that a compromise involves both sides offering changes.

I'm wondering if everyone isn't overreacting here. The LW says that the dog's presence once a week might cause an allergic reaction, but it doesn't seem to be certain, and also, how long do they stay when they come?
Couldn't they try to do it business as usual (with perhaps the parents vacuuming beforehand?) and the mom and son could take some allergy medicine?

Exactly. I have a cat. I have a friend who is allergic to cats. The couple times a year that she comes over, I make sure to wash the curtains and vacuum the couch and carpet before she comes over, and she makes sure to take a Claritin.

In fairness, both my brother and brother-in-law have cat allergies so severe that, even after we go over our clothes with a sticky tape role, just having us in their home can set off an asthma reaction, and neither could be in my mother's house for more than a few minutes without a painter's mask. Some allergies really are just that bad.

Wow jaw dropping self centered-ness. My grandparents' places were also some of my favorite places growing up, but the idea of asking a cousin to go without his disability aid once a week so that I could experience that twice a year just blows my mind. For competing needs, seizure alerts trump animal allergies by a lot in my mind. Also I love the direct assumption that their kids will feel second rate, like that isn't something parents can directly address and model graciousness on.

Maybe they should think about asking Grandma and Grandpa to come see them four times a year (and offer to pay or at least help with the extra travel expense if they can), or find something local to Grandma and Grandpa's house they can maybe do as an annual daytrip? I get that spending the whole time in a hotel is a bummer, and it sounds like their allergies are severe enough they won't be able to set foot in the house at all. They are going to have to find some new ways to keep that relationship flourishing, but that's not such a great hardship under the circumstances.

Edited 2023-03-13 18:33 (UTC)

LW are you sure you don't resent your nephew for being disabled at you? (n.b., he's not)

this 1000%

My take is LW is asking everyone to change their daily, regular, normal routine, so that he and his family can have a special experience a couple of times a year.

Which: no.

Suck it up and deal, Allergy-Boy.

I'd ask LW how they would feel if

no seizure dog = kid had a seizure without warning = head injury = either an Acquired Brain Injury or death

but LW seems too self involved to take any responsibility if that happened, even if no seizure dog was a direct consequence of LW asking for seizure dog not being at the grandparents house

Edited 2023-03-14 05:15 (UTC)

There's zero reason for all that detail about the kid's disabilities. It's irrelevant to the actual question and could have been summarized as "my nephew has a service dog for his disabilities (including seizures)." Why are you fixated on this, LW? Why the hell are you sticking your nose into the routines of households that aren't yours and that you only even visit twice a year? Why is the severity of the allergies, which are relevant, completely skipped over, while the irrelevant medical info of the nephew gets so much detail? (If they're so severe that a once-a-week visit from a dog makes the house impossible to stay in even with cleaning, walking around outside is going to be at least as bad, and your family had better have heavy-duty meds on hand at all times. Dogs are everywhere.)

Speaking as a person with dog allergies, who has suffered through family gatherings at dog-households (with allergy meds, for a couple of hours, followed by decontamination at home immediately) - you are full of shit. Have you TESTED whether deep-cleaning is insufficient? You say it's "likely" there'd be an allergic reaction but it's not even your allergy, wtf are you doing harassing other people to change their whole lives around on a hypothetical? Have your wife and kid experimented with different allergy meds and sensitivities to places where dogs have OCCASIONALLY been vs where dogs live? Why is it you white-knighting about allergy hypotheticals instead of your wife making a plan to protect her health, e.g., by staying at a hotel if the house is too allergenic? You're just so far out of your lane it's absurd.

Use the hotel, give the kids individual choices about hotel vs grandparents' house, and shut the hell up about your nephew's disabilities and his service dog. Forever. (Also be grateful your parents still want to see you at all, after you campaigned for separating their grandkid from his service dog and making his life AND their lives more difficult and dangerous all year, just to satisfy your anxiety about your twice-a-year visit. Hell, maybe they don't! Maybe it's their other grandkids they want to see and they're putting up with your awful behavior so you won't cancel on them out of spite.)

I think this is a pretty decent answer as far as it goes, but it does sort of bring up that it's tough for the columnist when the problem is essentially that the LW is a terrible person. It's vanishingly unlikely that anything said in this answer would help out with that problem, even if it does make them less likely to create more drama by fighting with their parents about it.