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Did these columnists read the same letters I did?
1. Dear Care and Feeding,
My step-niece, “Polly,” is 10, and her behavior is so far out of bounds that it is in a different state. My family only sees Polly during holidays and some weekends, but I don’t remember one instance where she hasn’t acted out. Polly has no manners and zero boundaries. She is an absolute bully to the younger children and has gotten physical more than once. Having fits because you can’t blow out someone else’s birthday cake isn’t acceptable at 5, let alone 10.
My sister says she can’t correct her, and her father will not do it. The excuse that she was “just a little kid” was thin when she was 5, but she is turning 11 this year. Her brother is two years younger and never causes problems.
Well, we had a party to celebrate that my husband and I adopted out puppies from the pregnant stray we rescued, and that’s where things really went off the rails.
My mother-in-law was visiting, and she had made her famous cake. Dessert was to be served after we finished barbecuing. Polly wanted the cake earlier and kept interrupting adult conversations demanding it. My mother-in-law put her hand over Polly’s mouth and told her we already told her no and she should not interrupt. Polly bit her. The entire party just imploded after that. My husband nearly got physical with my brother-in-law. My sister and I got into an argument over Polly. My brother-in-law argued that my mother-in-law shouldn’t have touched Polly. I said that Polly needed a muzzle if she hadn’t learned how not to bite people.
The entire family is sick to death of how Polly acts out, and her father does nothing. She has been uninvited to future events unless her father can demonstrate that he has taken steps to fix the situation. My sister blames me and tells me I put her in an impossible situation. She is usually the first to complain about how Polly acts out. I know she has been in trouble in school before. What do I do here?
—Once Bitten
Dear Once Bitten,
There really isn’t much you can do here, aside from offering your sister moral support.
If the decision was made to ban Polly from family events, I wouldn’t challenge it; on one hand, it seems unfair to basically ex-communicate a child from her family, but she is prone to physical violence. Certainly, your sister is struggling greatly with dealing with her stepdaughter; let her know that you’re empathetic, even if you’re not willing to reinstate Polly’s invitation to family events. Ask her what she and her husband have done to address this behavior. Urge her to seek therapy for her stepdaughter so they can try to get some answers about why she acts the way she does, and hopefully, some interventions to help her make different choices in the future. Again, there’s just not a lot you can do to fix this. It sucks, especially for your sister—and for Polly, who very well may be facing some undiagnosed challenges that prevent her from conducting herself differently—but your family has to do what’s necessary to keep everyone safe.
—Jamilah
Link one
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2. Dear Care and Feeding,
How much hurt is it appropriate to share with my kids? I have two kids, H (13) and E (11), who I share custody of with their dad. When the kids are with me, I frequently encourage them to call and text their dad, and make it clear that they’re welcome to call him at any point. However, when they’re with their dad, they very rarely initiate calls or texts with me. They will mostly answer texts, but essentially, they’re just answering any questions I have or will say “good morning” back—never will they try to carry on a conversation.
On Thanksgiving, neither child reached out to say “Happy Thanksgiving,” and they gave short answers when I texted them (and neither answered my FaceTime call). This really hurt me. We had a conversation afterward about the importance of letting loved ones know you’re thinking about them and engaging in conversation, and how much it means to me to hear from them.
Now, a few weeks later—again, crickets. I just FaceTimed E, who had gone outside to answer my call (it’s 22 degrees!), and when I asked, she said her aunts (her dad’s sisters) were over and she felt like she wasn’t supposed to talk to me in front of them (what?). She ended the call, quickly and pretty flippantly. It kills me that the kids quite simply don’t care enough to want to reach out to me. They’re not off living their own lives as adults; they’re kids! I don’t know how much hurt is appropriate to let them know I’m feeling, or even the best way to share my feelings with them.
—Call Your Mother
Dear Call Your Mother,
I understand why you feel hurt—you miss your kids when you’re apart and think of them all the time, and you want them to think about you, too. I’m sure they do! But they aren’t adults; they are kids. If you expect eager or reciprocal communication from them at their current ages, you will frequently be disappointed.
Many kids aren’t great at phone calls and back-and-forth communication to begin with. Even if you weren’t sharing custody with your children’s father, they would be starting to flex their independence and probably wouldn’t always be super responsive to your check-ins. At 11 and 13, they want to talk and socialize with their peers more than their parents. You can feel a way about that, but you should also recognize that it is typical and developmentally appropriate, not something they’re doing to hurt you. It’s also not surprising that they didn’t (perhaps couldn’t?) pick up right when you called on Thanksgiving—holidays are often busy, and they were trying to spend time with their dad.
Of course you miss your kids when they’re not with you. And they probably miss you, too, but they experience the separation differently than you do. They’re at an age when they are supposed to be learning to be more independent, and maybe it’s also a bit easier to go between households if they mainly focus on one place at a time. I’d also be concerned if they’re under the impression that they can’t or shouldn’t talk with you in front of their dad’s family—your children need to know it’s always ok to talk to you. But if they would just rather not until it’s more convenient or they have more privacy—or if they’d prefer texts to calls, or fewer demands to communicate a certain way when you’re apart—try to respect that, so long as you know they’re safe and well.
My teenager recently went abroad without us for the first time, on one of those school-sponsored educational tours. She’s always been responsible and we absolutely trust her, but we’d never been so far apart before, so we asked her to check in with us via text at least once per day. Surprise, surprise—most of the time, we were the ones checking in with her. We only managed to connect for an actual call once in the whole 10 days she was gone. But we knew that wasn’t because she wasn’t thinking about us; she was just focused on who she was with and what she was doing at that moment.
No, your children aren’t off living their adult lives just yet, and neither are mine. But they still see people and do things and experience life independent of us at times. That will be more and more the case as they get older. And that’s natural, and exciting, and hard, and necessary. Let them know that you require enough communication to be assured of their safety and wellbeing, and beyond that, try to give them a break. While I think it’s fine to acknowledge your hurt and sadness, I don’t think that you should make those feelings your kids’ responsibility, as if they are peers who’ve wounded you. Be honest with yourself about what you’re struggling with—vent to a friend, share with a therapist, etc.—but don’t expect your children to be the ones to comfort you or meet this particular emotional need.
Link two
My step-niece, “Polly,” is 10, and her behavior is so far out of bounds that it is in a different state. My family only sees Polly during holidays and some weekends, but I don’t remember one instance where she hasn’t acted out. Polly has no manners and zero boundaries. She is an absolute bully to the younger children and has gotten physical more than once. Having fits because you can’t blow out someone else’s birthday cake isn’t acceptable at 5, let alone 10.
My sister says she can’t correct her, and her father will not do it. The excuse that she was “just a little kid” was thin when she was 5, but she is turning 11 this year. Her brother is two years younger and never causes problems.
Well, we had a party to celebrate that my husband and I adopted out puppies from the pregnant stray we rescued, and that’s where things really went off the rails.
My mother-in-law was visiting, and she had made her famous cake. Dessert was to be served after we finished barbecuing. Polly wanted the cake earlier and kept interrupting adult conversations demanding it. My mother-in-law put her hand over Polly’s mouth and told her we already told her no and she should not interrupt. Polly bit her. The entire party just imploded after that. My husband nearly got physical with my brother-in-law. My sister and I got into an argument over Polly. My brother-in-law argued that my mother-in-law shouldn’t have touched Polly. I said that Polly needed a muzzle if she hadn’t learned how not to bite people.
The entire family is sick to death of how Polly acts out, and her father does nothing. She has been uninvited to future events unless her father can demonstrate that he has taken steps to fix the situation. My sister blames me and tells me I put her in an impossible situation. She is usually the first to complain about how Polly acts out. I know she has been in trouble in school before. What do I do here?
—Once Bitten
Dear Once Bitten,
There really isn’t much you can do here, aside from offering your sister moral support.
If the decision was made to ban Polly from family events, I wouldn’t challenge it; on one hand, it seems unfair to basically ex-communicate a child from her family, but she is prone to physical violence. Certainly, your sister is struggling greatly with dealing with her stepdaughter; let her know that you’re empathetic, even if you’re not willing to reinstate Polly’s invitation to family events. Ask her what she and her husband have done to address this behavior. Urge her to seek therapy for her stepdaughter so they can try to get some answers about why she acts the way she does, and hopefully, some interventions to help her make different choices in the future. Again, there’s just not a lot you can do to fix this. It sucks, especially for your sister—and for Polly, who very well may be facing some undiagnosed challenges that prevent her from conducting herself differently—but your family has to do what’s necessary to keep everyone safe.
—Jamilah
Link one
2. Dear Care and Feeding,
How much hurt is it appropriate to share with my kids? I have two kids, H (13) and E (11), who I share custody of with their dad. When the kids are with me, I frequently encourage them to call and text their dad, and make it clear that they’re welcome to call him at any point. However, when they’re with their dad, they very rarely initiate calls or texts with me. They will mostly answer texts, but essentially, they’re just answering any questions I have or will say “good morning” back—never will they try to carry on a conversation.
On Thanksgiving, neither child reached out to say “Happy Thanksgiving,” and they gave short answers when I texted them (and neither answered my FaceTime call). This really hurt me. We had a conversation afterward about the importance of letting loved ones know you’re thinking about them and engaging in conversation, and how much it means to me to hear from them.
Now, a few weeks later—again, crickets. I just FaceTimed E, who had gone outside to answer my call (it’s 22 degrees!), and when I asked, she said her aunts (her dad’s sisters) were over and she felt like she wasn’t supposed to talk to me in front of them (what?). She ended the call, quickly and pretty flippantly. It kills me that the kids quite simply don’t care enough to want to reach out to me. They’re not off living their own lives as adults; they’re kids! I don’t know how much hurt is appropriate to let them know I’m feeling, or even the best way to share my feelings with them.
—Call Your Mother
Dear Call Your Mother,
I understand why you feel hurt—you miss your kids when you’re apart and think of them all the time, and you want them to think about you, too. I’m sure they do! But they aren’t adults; they are kids. If you expect eager or reciprocal communication from them at their current ages, you will frequently be disappointed.
Many kids aren’t great at phone calls and back-and-forth communication to begin with. Even if you weren’t sharing custody with your children’s father, they would be starting to flex their independence and probably wouldn’t always be super responsive to your check-ins. At 11 and 13, they want to talk and socialize with their peers more than their parents. You can feel a way about that, but you should also recognize that it is typical and developmentally appropriate, not something they’re doing to hurt you. It’s also not surprising that they didn’t (perhaps couldn’t?) pick up right when you called on Thanksgiving—holidays are often busy, and they were trying to spend time with their dad.
Of course you miss your kids when they’re not with you. And they probably miss you, too, but they experience the separation differently than you do. They’re at an age when they are supposed to be learning to be more independent, and maybe it’s also a bit easier to go between households if they mainly focus on one place at a time. I’d also be concerned if they’re under the impression that they can’t or shouldn’t talk with you in front of their dad’s family—your children need to know it’s always ok to talk to you. But if they would just rather not until it’s more convenient or they have more privacy—or if they’d prefer texts to calls, or fewer demands to communicate a certain way when you’re apart—try to respect that, so long as you know they’re safe and well.
My teenager recently went abroad without us for the first time, on one of those school-sponsored educational tours. She’s always been responsible and we absolutely trust her, but we’d never been so far apart before, so we asked her to check in with us via text at least once per day. Surprise, surprise—most of the time, we were the ones checking in with her. We only managed to connect for an actual call once in the whole 10 days she was gone. But we knew that wasn’t because she wasn’t thinking about us; she was just focused on who she was with and what she was doing at that moment.
No, your children aren’t off living their adult lives just yet, and neither are mine. But they still see people and do things and experience life independent of us at times. That will be more and more the case as they get older. And that’s natural, and exciting, and hard, and necessary. Let them know that you require enough communication to be assured of their safety and wellbeing, and beyond that, try to give them a break. While I think it’s fine to acknowledge your hurt and sadness, I don’t think that you should make those feelings your kids’ responsibility, as if they are peers who’ve wounded you. Be honest with yourself about what you’re struggling with—vent to a friend, share with a therapist, etc.—but don’t expect your children to be the ones to comfort you or meet this particular emotional need.
Link two
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However, with that said, the columnist certainly doesn't seem to think it's fake, and it's more interesting to assume that it's not, so let's look at it!
Polly certainly seems to have some challenging behaviors! However, at this particular barbecue, as narrated by an LW who absolutely hates this child, she seems to have been... mostly just a little annoying? She wanted to eat the "famous" cake, and was not happy with the vague answer of "We'll have it when the barbecue is over". I'd have advised saying something more direct like "We'll have the cake at 5pm, and I'll set a timer on my phone so we're sure not to miss it", but okay.
And for the crime of being a little annoying, this woman who also obviously hates her covered her mouth? Seriously, what did MIL expect to happen when she did that? That's a really forward thing to do to somebody else's child on even greater provocation! At which point everybody gets violent and says super hurtful things, like, okay, so clearly Polly is not the only badly-behaved person at this gathering, except that she has the excuse of literally being a child.
And the columnist does not even address any of the misbehavior on the part of the grown-ups. Doesn't even so much as say "Hey, maybe find some other way to reprimand another person's child than literally covering her mouth, how did you think that was going to work out for you?"
(Polly should not have bitten, probably, but frankly if I was ten years old and surrounded by people who absolutely loathe me, I might have reacted very badly to this as well.)
2. Well, it's not the kids' job to manage Mom's emotions for her. But - the kid snuck out of the house to talk on the phone and said she wasn't sure if she was allowed to call her mom? And LW's sole concern is on her own hurt feelings and the columnist doesn't even bring up the fact that this is troubling behavior?
WTF. Seriously, wtf. LW's behavior isn't great, but this still needs to be addressed in some constructive fashion.
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I don't know. I think biting someone who puts their hand over your mouth without your consent is a pretty reasonable thing to do. I'm an adult and I'd bite someone who did that to me!
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I 100% would have done that as a kid and yeah, probably as an adult as well.
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Everyone here is talking about how inappropriate it is to put your hand over a kid's mouth. But I think the key is that it's inappropriate when you and the kid don't have that relationship. My godfathers would have happily put a hand over my mouth when I was a kid and I would have felt comfortable putting a hand over theirs, because we adored each other and were very comfortable roughhousing. If one of my godfathers' friends had tried it he would have gotten bitten and probably elbowed in the stomach and kicked, and then he'd have gotten reamed out by my parents. I think that Step-Grandma here knew very well indeed that she and Polly did not have a relationship that involved playing tag or play-wrestling or even just slinging an arm comfortably around each other's shoulders. She wanted to apply the rules of a close relationship to one that is clearly anything but close. I wish I thought this would be a learning experience for Polly's Step-Grandma, because "don't treat a distant relationship like a close one" is stuff people should be learning at Polly's age and should DEFINITELY already know by Step-Grandma's. Never too late to learn...theoretically, but only if you're willing to learn. I bet Step-Grandma isn't.
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but biting in response to someone covering your mouth with their hand without asking first is not unreasonable.
I'm 48 and I would quite possibly bite under those circumstances! I need my mouth to BREATHE.
Also covering mouth without asking in a nonemergency[1] situation = invasion of personal space and violation of bodily autonomy.
[1] If someone eg covers a toddler's mouth because a toddler with a life threatening nut allergy has two handfuls of peanuts and is about to shove a handful of peanuts in their mouth, that's different. Mouth covering shouldn't be a routine event/solution, but it's better than death by anaphylaxis.
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I'm torn between
a) "LW sounds super needy and that shouldn't be her kids problem"
versus
b) "It's not great that her kids feel that their Dad would be angry/sad/disappointed/other negative emotion if they called their Mum when they are with their Dad."
How strong b) is an issue depends on how much time the Dad gets with the kids.
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I have two young friends who are 13 and 14, whose parents are divorced, and they are still in the age bracket where each parent needs to remind them about the other parent's birthday, Mother's/Father's Day, etc., and often provide an assist with taking them to a shop for a gift or making sure they're reminded a second time. That's for the things that the family has established as legit occasions for the kids to be focused on your happiness in small ways, which--they're young, this is not their job, those occasions should be few, but yeah, it's also legit for their other parent to say, "hey, it'll make Mom happy if you call her on Christmas, why don't you do that now before you get really into hanging out with your cousins so you've handled it and don't have to think about it later."
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LW #2 - I wonder if the kids have complained to Dad and Dad said, "look, your mother loves you and wants to talk to you a lot, but if you don't want to, you can tell her you're busy or blame me".
I know my dad did that for me with my grandmother. (Thanks, Dad! Appreciate it!) She was an emotional vampire and glommed onto me for a long while because she couldn't call my mother at work.
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Also, holy crap this woman would have hated sharing custody before cell phones were ubiquitous.
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Nah, I mean as a person who seems to depend on her children for her emotional support, she'd've hated it.
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It says a lot that Polly has been a member of this family for many years (6?) and is still referred to as a step-niece. The LW might want to think about that.
2. Clingy Mom is embarrassing the kids and needs to dial it back.
It's not clear whether the child meant she might not be allowed to call Mom or whether she wasn't supposed to be using her phone because family is here to socialize and it's rude to make and take calls and engage in extended texting in front of visitors.
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We also don't put our hands on people, but I guess here we are.
And honestly, I don't trust LW's story here. I'd be willing to bet that this was the umpteenth escalation on the part of the adults. Sooner or later, everybody will react badly.
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If organic causes have been ruled out, then it’s time for family counseling, firm expectations, and natural consequences until she accepts that she doesn’t have a blank check to get away with whatever she feels like doing.
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Dear Once Bitten, if you put your hand over my mouth I would bite you just as hard as I possibly could. Just saying.
Why do we expect kids to put up with things no reasonable adult would?
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I also feel like when people have done that to me they generally had enough of a grip that "knocking the hand away" was not really an option. It was biting or licking, or possibly stomping or kneeing.
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I'm not arguing that Polly's described behavior is generally okay. She definitely sounds like she's got some challenges, and I don't know if they're being addressed at all. (Not that I'd tell LW shit about it if I was her parent, but who knows.) But LW just sounds like she hates this kid, and has hated her pretty much since she met her, five years ago.