Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here or post it in the Slate Parenting Facebook group.
Dear Care and Feeding,
As a mom of two sons, we’ve been working on consent since they were old enough to shy away from smooches and hugs at daycare. Now at 3 and 4, we’ve run into some issues when it comes to brushing our teeth, washing our hair, etc. My 4-year-old has recently started the whole “I don’t want to, it’s my body,” (his younger brother mimics him about 98 percent of the time) which I can appreciate when it comes to not hugging Great Aunt Millie but when he comes in coated in mud and dirt and won’t wash his hair? Now we have a problem. I’m trying to empower my boys to make their own choices (haircuts, clothes, etc.) but most days they come in from playing outside looking like Pigpen and I’m pretty sure if I send my kids to daycare smelling like yesterday’s socks, someone’s gonna call CPS. How can we manage the fine line between physical autonomy and decent hygiene? Reason doesn’t seem to work, and I’m not a fan of bribery.
—Nasty Boys
Dear Nasty,
Every parent who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. Parenting is a mortifying series of own-petard-hoistings, a decades-long slog of reconsidering what is most important to you over and over, and you will be surprised what once-cherished ideals you will abandon, or at least revise and recontextualize, as you go on. I will never forget the day that our daughter told us she couldn’t possibly play the game the other kids wanted to play on the playground, because “you told me to be true to myself.” It’s a classic modern parenting conundrum: A child discovers that they can craftily turn your ideals against you in order to achieve their greatest dream (being dirty). Often, the child acts as if they have outsmarted you. In a way, they have.
I admire your lessons in bodily autonomy with your children, and am not suggesting you should or will abandon them. But I could not have done that when my kids were 3 or 4, because I didn’t actually believe in bodily autonomy for 3- or 4-year-olds. I’m not proud of this. I was too dependent at that age on the last-ditch parenting hack of Simply Picking Your Child Up And Carrying Them Away. When all else failed, when a kid was sprawled across the floor of General Mitchell International Airport’s Terminal C, kicking and wailing, I could simply take her by the waist and drag her onto the plane, where we would be hated by all.
You are now forced to consider the deeper, more annoying ramifications of your child absorbing the important lessons you’ve been teaching. What you are looking for is a middle ground between your current situation, in which your child engages you in an hours-long negotiation about the deer ticks adhered to his ankles, whom he calls his “nibbly friends,” and my past situation, where I viewed my toddlers as inconveniently squirmy carry-on luggage. You can appeal to your child’s environmental consciousness, pointing out that each time he crawls into bed covered in dirt, mommy and daddy must wash the sheets, which uses lots of precious water. (“More water than the bathtub?” your tiny Clarence Darrow will ask, and you’ll be back at square one.) You can appeal to his sense of responsibility, which you’re fostering wonderfully, by asking him to help you set a good example for his filthy little brother. You can appeal to his sense that it’s fun to play with a hose by giving him the hose and going inside for 10 minutes.
Or you can bribe him. You’re not a fan of bribery? Well, you’re also not a fan of your children looking like attendees of Woodstock ’99, and sometimes one’s beliefs are irreconcilable. I’m not saying you should offer your kids candy to get in the tub—though I bet it would work—but you could consider how you can incorporate more delight and fun into the bathing experience in order to sweeten the pot for your li’l mudlarks. Are there certain toys that could become exclusive tub denizens? Are there colorful shampoos or bubbly bath products that might excite your kids? You parents might consider delaying your own showers to the end of your kids’ day and invite them to join you; often the chance to be alone with a parent, pointing at all-new body parts, will lure little kids into the tub.
Don’t forget, though, you can also pick them up and drop them in the water. That option is still available—at least for a few more years.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
Is there any way to keep the end of summer vacation from sucking? The first two months were great! But those last few weeks of August have always been an endless slog. My kids get bored and spend all their time bickering, and I’m always all out of energy and enthusiasm. By that point, it’s all I can do to get everyone to brush their teeth every day. We really did have a nice summer up until a few weeks before the end of August, so I feel bad that we ended it with my kids all sick of looking at each other. I really don’t want it to be this way again next August. Is there any way to end summer on a high note?
—Endless Summer
Dear Endless,
Any way? The traditional way to end summer on a high note is to go on a fun trip, and those families who live in school districts that don’t start until the end of the actual summer have a huge advantage: Much of the country is wide open for travel, because all those Midwestern kids started school on, like, July 29.
So plan a trip! Now’s the time to start thinking about national parks for next August (I know, I know). Choose one that won’t be 1,000 degrees. Or go to Iceland or Canada. Or a retro-ridiculous vacation destination like Wisconsin Dells. Or don’t plan anything, just load everyone in the car and take off! As long as the car has E-ZPass and everyone has their own music, the family road trip is alive and well. I’m a big fan of the No Rules Kids Decide Road Trip, for which you buy a huge road atlas, toss it into the backseat, and let the children tell you where to drive. For a certain kind of child, this level of responsibility for the family’s fortunes feels like they’ve been knighted. Even if your child doesn’t like telling you where to go, they can at least enjoy the No Rules rule that at every gas station, each child may choose any snack, no matter how fluorescent its cheez.
If you can’t go on a trip for cost, career, or agoraphobia reasons, those final weeks of the summer really can be tough. I suggest you embrace the nascent ferality of your children. Offer a cash reward for the kid who can end the day with the most mosquito bites. Purchase those sugar-water popsicle tubes that only come in primary colors and tell your children they must be eaten outside. Install Roku in their backyard fort. If ever they complain about being bored, say sweetly, “Oh good, you can get a head start on your schoolwork!”
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Dear Care and Feeding,
How do I support my 12-year-old daughter “Olivia” in becoming a big sister to two kids at the same time? Her father and I split when she was 8, and we have 50/50 custody. As an only child, she’s thrived on one-on-one adult time and being babied a little bit, and also can be a little bit of an attention diva (we’re working on it). By accident, most of the big changes in her life have been spaced out: I came out immediately after the divorce and remarried two years later, he re-partnered more slowly, and Olivia had time to kind of process all this over time.
My wife and I have been intentionally trying for kids with a sperm bank, and just passed the three-month mark with her pregnancy after the first try. We’re overjoyed. He just told us that his girlfriend is three months pregnant and though it was a surprise, they’re also overjoyed together. Both of our households will likely need to move to fit an additional occupant—them before birth and us when our baby is a toddler. We’re both committed to staying in the school district if we can. Neither of us has broken any news to her yet, although we’re planning to in the coming weeks. I realize that suddenly becoming an older sister in both households where she’s always been an only child is a lot! Moving is a lot too. My ex and I have a good co-parenting relationship so I’m hoping we can coordinate the big sister shift together, but I’m not sure where to start. Olivia has a solid relationship with her father’s girlfriend and a loving but slightly more fraught one with my wife. How do I help her become a big sister?
—Sister, Sister
Dear Sister,
First of all, congratulations on your family’s new addition! That’s wonderful news. I suppose it’s also wonderful that your ex-husband knocked up his girlfriend, though I’m less emotionally invested in that. But it’s great that all this exciting new life is entering the world, and it sounds like everyone is on good terms with everyone else, which makes things a lot easier all around.
Great news: Olivia is about to get a double dose of the world’s greatest remedy for attention divahood. Six months from now, she can turn as many cartwheels as she wants, and she’ll have to deal with everyone absently saying, “That’s great, honey.” But while that will be a struggle, I’m sure, my guess is that Olivia will view these new additions to your family with quite a bit of the same excitement that you all share. And unlike my daughter, who—being 2 when her sister was born—expressed her feelings on the matter by crawling around the new infant and shouting “Goo goo ga ga, I’m a baby,” your daughter is old enough to talk about her emotions with real clarity and honesty.
Which means the first step is talking to her! It’s up to you whether you want to coordinate a joint reveal or whether you’d rather keep it more intimate, but the sooner you start having these conversations, the better. Be honest about the changes and challenges that are coming (though you don’t necessarily need to tell her now that you might be moving in two years), but also be enthusiastic about the wonderful opportunities for love, caring, joy, and snuggling that are on their way. And your daughter is at an age where she’s likely to be yearning for ways to demonstrate how grown-up she is; the responsibilities of big-sisterhood can be a real gift to that kind of kid, giving focus to the tween and teen years.
Above all, express your utmost confidence in your daughter. She’s going to be an amazing big sister. You know it, your wife knows it, your ex and his knocked-up girlfriend know it. Soon Olivia will know it too.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My 3-year-old son is officially in the “I can’t” stage. Doesn’t matter if it’s hard, easy, or something he’s done before, sometimes he just can’t or won’t. My big worry is raising little boys who once they decide they can’t (or again, won’t) do something, that their mommy or aunt or whoever will just do it for them. Given that their father was raised with that mentality, I’m determined to not go there or inflict that sort of aggravation on their future partners.
But where do you draw the line with a 3-year-old who doesn’t want to change his pajamas on his own, put his shoes away, get his own snack, or pick out crayons? The list is endless. I try to strike a balance as much as possible; some mornings, he wakes up cranky and just can’t so I’ll help him as needed but other times he’s parked his butt on the floor and doesn’t want to put his backpack away because he wants to watch his animal show instead. I try to be fair and firm and set clear expectations and routines (“After we come inside, we take off our shoes, put them in our basket, and put our socks in the hamper”) but we know how with toddlers it’s in one ear and out the other. Plus, my husband recently tore his rotator cuff so I’ve been waiting on him hand and foot due to his injury and subsequent surgery. The boys love to park themselves on the couch to snuggle and watch YouTube or play games and I end up waiting on all of them. HELP!
—Can’t Hardly Wait
Dear Can’t,
Wow, I am sorry about your two toddlers who don’t listen and make you wait on them hand and foot. Oh wait, one of them’s your husband? Hoo boy!
I’m significantly more sympathetic to your son than to your husband. Being 3 is more of an impediment to accomplishing simple tasks than recovering from rotator-cuff surgery; your husband should not be attempting to throw curveballs but certainly can get his own beer from the fridge. Also, his brain is, presumably, fully developed. The first person to have this discussion with is him: Clearly and lovingly, tell him that you do not wish to be viewed by all the handsome men in the family as the cleaning robot who brings them snacks. He shares responsibility for his own well-being and for the household, and should also be firmly enforcing the rules and routines of the home with your child.
Of course, both toddlers and husbands learn quickly that if someone just does something for them when they whine long enough, life is sweet. So I recommend you just don’t do things for a while! Yes, it’s a difficult balance to strike—more so when dealing with the toddler than the husband—but spend a few weeks erring on the side of not picking out the crayons or allowing that animal show or even thinking for one second about what’s for dinner. If the 3-year-old truly can’t, say, reach the milk, you can be there to help. If the husband says he can’t, say, clean up the milk the 3-year-old spills, you can remind him that actually he totally can. Soon your child will grow up and become more independent, and with luck, perhaps your husband will too.
—Dan
More Advice From Slate
I’ve been with my husband for nearly 14 years. When we first got engaged, my mother-in-law, “Barbara,” told me to my face that she’d been having a hard time accepting that her son was marrying me. Things have never gotten better. She constantly makes offhand comments about my weight and appearance. She’s told me that she does not like my parents and that they never make her feel welcome. When visiting, she rifles through my bathroom drawers and uses things I consider personal (hairbrush, toothbrush). She goes through cupboards and takes unopened food items home with her. Barbara has also pulled these stunts with my sister-in-law.
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