agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Care and Feeding,

How do you gently set boundaries with relatives? My 8-year-old gets along well with her cousins from my husband’s side. In the last year or so, there have been more frequent trips and sleepovers. I was generally easygoing about the arrangement for a while. But now my child is old enough to be aware that different houses have different rules—and my household’s rules tend to be stricter.

She has come home being overly dramatic about any restrictions, complaining about our house and habits, talking back with attitudes, and being mean to her little brother. It usually takes a whole day or more to turn her back to the sweet girl I raised, and sometimes this has to be done with discipline. I am tired of it.

The thing is, when I want to enforce some boundaries that I think are appropriate (with my kids only) when everyone is together, my husband’s relatives sometimes dismiss me or can be patronizing. My husband is more like his family, so he doesn’t see it as much as I do, despite multiple private discussions. I do not want to overly restrict her play with the cousins, as they are really good kids. But I want to be more mindful when I let her have extended sleepovers at the relatives’ house.

Recently during an outing, a relative directly said he planned for her to stay over during the summer. I felt weird about it—the statement was not even phrased as a question to me. I had a chat with my husband and told him that I would prefer to have my daughter stay closer to me for the couple of weeks that she doesn’t have summer camp, and that she should use the time to prep for her next grade anyway. If this is brought up in front of me again, how do I phrase my feelings politely? I don’t want to hurt the future relationship, but I do want to let my husband’s relatives know I have the parenting rights as a mother, and they should not circumvent me, as though my husband is my children’s only parent.

—Boundary Time

Dear Boundary Time,

Whether you are sending your kid to her cousins’ house or a neighbor’s or even just to plain old school, they will come home with some new opinions about how their lives are set up. This age is just about when they really start to notice these differences between families, and to remember them, and to comment on them, and it can be very annoying and feel like your kid is being ungrateful by not recognizing that you have your rules for a reason. But I believe this would be happening whether or not you happened to have the in-laws you have.

The only sane response to this kind of display of 8-year-old aggrievement is to just keep on doing what you know is right, and try not to get too triggered by your kid whining about the other house having Eggos instead of homemade waffles, or letting the kids stay up until 10:00 instead of making them go to bed at 8:00, or whatever the difference is. No, your kid doesn’t know how good she has it, but I don’t think it’s fair to expect her to have that perspective yet. Your options are either to figure out how to act unfazed by this kind of petty complaining, to yell at your kid to keep her feelings inside and always act pleasant and grateful around you, or to keep your kid from hanging out with cousins/going over to neighbors’ houses/going to school. I don’t think the second or third options are healthy. You have your reasons for doing what you do in your parenting, and you have to have faith that in the long run, your kid will appreciate that you were setting up something good for them.

But this seems like only half of the question, here. This is actually a question about in-laws and whether or not they respect you—as a parent, or even as a person. I suspect your kid’s behavior wouldn’t be bothering you as much if you felt respected by your husband’s family. Your husband needs to be much more active in standing up for you—not “seeing it” as you do is not a good reason for him not to act and intervene on your behalf. If this is bothering you, it should bother him that you are bothered, and he should work with you on putting up a unified front.

—Rebecca

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Do 8-year-olds in the US generally have to prep for their next grade during the summer holidays??

No.

The only thing you have to "prep" normally at that age is having all the school supplies all your teachers want and replacing outgrown clothes and shoes as necessary.

I have HEARD of summer homework, but I don't think I've ever heard it going that young.

Thanks. That really makes me think that LW is way too strict.

The kids all had summer homework from first grade on up. Not very intense, though - a packet and a reading log.

Seconding the not intense. I had a packet for the summer after first grade (this would have been 1990), finished it on day 1, and was disappointed the rest of the summer was going to be boring.

I may also have been a weird kid. ;)

Thanks.

I've encountered those before, but not so young! Not that it's a bad idea.

Oh interesting. I have only encountered reading-related "homework" for summer (not the same as library summer reading programs). An actual formal packet would be helpful for early grades especially! More work for Mother, of course, but helpful...

A unified packet among all the schools in the district, or at least all the students in a school, is a convenience for people who are worried about the summer slide. Of course, as always, the people who are most worried are the ones who have the least to worry about - children with well-educated parents gain skills over the summer because their parents do things with them that help them gain skills, put them in the sort of summer camps that, while fun, help them gain skills, and so on. It's the very poor, with the parents who are the least well educated and have the least free time and the most warehoused of day camps whose kids fall behind.

There are also summertime workbooks at any bookstore for parents who either don't get a summer homework packet or who think the homework packet is too light. Those generally have three months of math and reading comprehension worksheets with sometimes some suggested science projects as well. (I'll be honest here. Despite what I just up there said about well-educated parents, summertime homework is about the only homework I approve of for elementary school. Even if it's just two worksheets a day and a reading log it does mitigate skill loss in students who are likely to lose skills. In poorer districts the loss can add up to three months every summer, and it's not all gained back in the first month of school. Meanwhile, their wealthier counterparts have gained a month or more in that same time. And a store-bought workbook, while generally uninspired, at least is less work than running around trying to organize science projects and current events and book reports and your own math on your own.)

I didn't have any prep for any grades except logistical stuff (weeding out the clothes that yes, finally you've outgrown too much to even think of wearing, getting new school supplies) and closer to the start of the year, getting back into a sleep schedule conducive to getting up at 0545 to get on the bus at 0630.

When it rained and I wasn't outside, my mother did have some simple things like brain teasers and flashcards to keep my mind active with numbers (ugh, third grade math was rough, that teacher did not care) but it wasn't homework or prep. (Mom was also a teacher and was very aware of my educational tendencies.)

There might be a (suggested) reading list, but not "prep." The reading list would often be organized through the public library in my experience and not many kids would do it.

The most charitable thing I can think of here is that this mother doesn't want her kid to forget the previous school year's curriculum and plans to review whatever math, etc., was covered, but that backslide is something that the new grade's teacher is aware of and has allowed for in their lesson plans!