Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
Dear Care and Feeding,
I have a 7-year-old daughter, “Sally,” who has recently become obsessed with wolves. We actually had a wolf encounter about two months ago. Our town is up against the edge of a forest, and we were out walking our three dogs when we saw two wolves trotting down the road in the other direction. Nothing dangerous happened, thankfully. The canines spent about a minute sniffing each other, and then the wolves darted off. But that definitely sparked her interest in the creatures. If she’s on the computer, she’s looking something up about wolves. She’s already taken out and read every book about them our little library has. She’s looking forward to doing a report on wolves when she gets back to school. She chatters about them constantly.
None of that would be bad per se, and I don’t mind her interest in the abstract. But we do live near woods with wolves in them, and I’m worried that one day she’ll take it into her head to run off into the forest and try to see some. She hasn’t mentioned any such plan, and I’m worried that raising it with her and telling her not to do it will give her the idea if it hasn’t occurred to her already. What can I do to prevent her from doing something so obviously unsafe? The current method is watching over her constantly, and while my husband helps with that, it’s exhausting for both of us; we thought we had left that sort of thing behind with toddlerhood. There has to be something better than this, right?
—Wolf Worries
Dear Worries,
Before you had this encounter with these two wild animals, you didn’t watch your daughter like a hawk, right? You weren’t convinced she was going to suddenly flee into the forest, where she’d live like a wild thing in perpetuity. I expect you had some rules about when and under what circumstances Sally was allowed into the forest that surrounds your town. Did she follow those rules in the past? Does she follow rules, generally? Has she given you any reason at all to believe that an infatuation with wolves might lead her to break the rules of the house and hie off into the wilderness like Julie, to live among them and learn to speak their language?
Your daughter’s committed research into canis lupis—or, heck, the reading of any number of fairy tales—has surely impressed upon her what big teeth wolves have, so I’d be pretty surprised if she’s hankering to meet one up close and personal. But if for some reason you remain worried, simply reminding her of the rules about solo exploration is going to solve this problem just fine. Long-term, though, you should think about how you, as parents, view the forest that surrounds your town. As an exciting, wild wonderland you can’t wait for your daughter to explore? Or as a borderland full of threats, from which you need to protect her? Get out into that forest with your daughter—I guarantee you’re unlikely to run into many more wolves, which are generally very shy of humans—and teach her how to stay on a trail, how to navigate in the wild, and how to judge and respect the beauty and the danger of the natural world. That way, whenever she’s finally out there on her own, she’ll be ready for it.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
I left my ex eight years ago. He’s verbally abusive. He turned on his teenage kid after I left. Four years ago, a coach called CPS. CPS didn’t put her in foster care, but the worker pushed him to let her stay with me. She turned 18 in July and has graduated. I’ve helped her find counseling, but she remains high-drama and messy (absentminded more than intentional). We argue over my house rules, like not allowing friends overnight on weekdays. I have a small house with only one bathroom, I work 60 hours, and I need sleep—and teenagers are loud!
I’m ready to get my own life and have my house to myself. I’ve helped her find resources that will pay for her housing in college, but now that move-in day is approaching, she’s started making comments about living at home. I’ve tried a gentle approach of laughing and telling her how much fun she’ll have at the dorms, but it’s clearly not enough, and I worry she will show up at my door as soon as she has roommate conflicts. I get anxiety even thinking about the firm, direct conversation we need to have: I don’t want her to feel unloved, and I don’t want her to tell me I’m a terrible person, although I feel like I might be because of the feelings of resentment when I’m exhausted and get home to boyfriend drama and a messy kitchen. Her real mom literally abandoned her as a 3-year-old so that’s on my mind also. How can I gently but firmly tell her it’s time to move on? Or am I wrong to do so?
—Stepmama Bird
Dear Bird,
You are certainly not a terrible person. You’ve stepped in for a teenager in trouble, and you set aspects of your own life aside in order to give time, energy, and love to someone who needed it. It’s totally normal to do these wonderful things and yet also feel resentful at times. You are not a saint or a martyr! You are a regular human person who did a very kind thing, and whose life has in some ways been turned upside down as a result.
I appreciate your worries about this young woman’s college experience, and your concerns about making her feel abandoned yet again. (If you were a terrible person, you wouldn’t be so worried about her!) But in this case, what she needs and what you need align perfectly: for her to take wing and begin to leave the nest. So before she leaves, and once she’s gone, your goal should be to make clear to her how much joy lies in independence, and how much you want that independence for her—not because you want her gone, but because she deserves to move into the next exciting, wonderful stage of life.
You might consider, instead of the gentle approach you’re using—which might have the unintended effect of making her feel you’re laughing off her concerns—treating them a little more seriously. Get ahead of things by sitting down with her and talking honestly about why you think this next step is a positive, important one: She’s ready to live a little more independently, to have this adventure on her own. Talk to her about what things were like for you at her age, and the ways that independence was meaningful for you. And reassure her that you’re behind her all the way, ready to support her from afar.
Many colleges have instituted first-year support programs that go far and above what folks our age remember from our freshman years, when kids were basically released into the dorms like trout into a stream, totally unsupervised and unobserved. These programs are often run through the counseling office. Spend a little time on the school’s website and learn what kind of services the school offers, including social and emotional support for first-year students, and encourage this young woman to take advantage of them. And if she does show up at your front door—be kind, give her a cup of coffee, and tell her you’re ready to drive her back to school in a couple of hours.
Dear Care and Feeding,
I am having trouble maintaining a positive relationship with my 16-year-old daughter, as it seems that every conversation we have ends up with her being upset and telling me that I always take the other person’s side. I feel like lately she is setting me up to “disagree” with her, and then it typically turns into a fight where she yells at me and tells me that I make her feel bad.
A typical conversation may go like this:
“Mom, I want to go to the beach, but Avery doesn’t like the beach. Isn’t that weird?”
“Yeah, well, some people don’t like the beach.”
“But that’s really weird that Avery doesn’t like the beach.”
“Well, some people don’t like the sand or water, but they probably like other things.”
She will then proceed to yell at me and tell me that I always take Avery’s view.
What is the right approach here? I want her to know that it’s OK to have other opinions—that not everyone will agree with her on everything, and that’s allowed. And yes, I do sometimes take the other person’s view, but just to let her know that sometimes people have different opinions. But now we fight all the time! Am I supposed to just go along with everything she says? Just keep saying, “Yeah, it’s weird that some people don’t like the beach, I can’t believe that someone wouldn’t like the beach!” when I can fully understand why someone wouldn’t like the beach! When she gets upset and starts yelling at me, I do my best to tell her that the conversation is over and that I don’t want to talk about it anymore. If I walk away, she chases me around the house, kicking doors or grabbing me if I try to get away. I’ve taken to leaving the house and walking around the block.
When it’s something bigger, for example if she gets a grade she is not happy with, I’ll start by saying, “Yeah, that’s really disappointing that you got a lower grade that you wanted.” She will keep pushing the issue, and I might eventually say something like, “Well, it looks like the teacher took off some points because you didn’t follow all the directions” (or something similar that is true), and then she becomes angry and tells me I’m never on her side. How do I point out to her that sometimes she is wrong, but that’s OK, and things can be a learning experience? Do I just go along with everything she says? Agree with her that the teacher is a horrible person and the worst teacher in the world because they didn’t give her an “A” on an assignment that clearly doesn’t deserve an “A”? Help!
—I Don’t Want to Be a Yes-Man
Dear Yes,
Remember that scene in Mad Max: Fury Road where Max points at the woman up in the tower and says, “That’s bait”? Well, for the next year or so, whenever your daughter says anything to you, repeat to yourself: That’s bait. She may not understand consciously that she’s hankering for any opportunity to feel aggrieved and to argue with you, but in classic teenager fashion, that’s where she is, so you need to operate at a heightened level of situational awareness at all times.
And, yes, if you are sick of getting in fights, you should just go along with everything she says for a while. Parenting kids who are in an oppositional mode is often a long, torturous lesson in biting your tongue and simply not saying the totally reasonable things that any normal human being would want to say. In my case, this took the form of letting slide, for several years, the kinds of insults that if uttered by an acquaintance would result in me telling them to eat shit and never speaking to them again. But because they came from my angry, struggling 12-year-old, I tried to take a deep breath, think of 1987 Milwaukee Brewers highlights, and walk away. This was hard to do, but whenever I slipped, I was rewarded by a rapidly escalating fight that made me feel even worse.
In your case, you’ve got a kid who is itching to debate you, bro, and ready to seize upon any evidence that you’re not on her side. In her defense, the experience of being a 16-year-old girl generally is one of finding that most people are not on your side. (If you’re worried your daughter doesn’t know that sometimes she’s wrong, let me reassure you that that lesson is being taught to her again and again, by the patriarchy.) So for now, it costs you nothing to simply nod, tell her she’s right that it’s crazy that Avery doesn’t like the beach, and move on. Honestly, by punting on, like, 85 percent of these conversations, you’re doing a kindness to her, to you, and to your entire family.
—Dan
