I Gave All the Weed Smokers in My Life One Rule for the Sake of My Child. They Think It’s Dramatic.

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,

I live in a state that legalized weed. I have a baby. I don’t partake and I don’t care that others do, but I want to protect my child from unsafe situations. It bothers me that family members who smoke also drive while under the influence. They tell me they need to smoke to relax/unwind but I can see for myself how sleepy it makes them, and that they sometimes have difficulty carrying on conversations. They seem to think my opinion on the matter is an overreaction and insist that since I don’t smoke I don’t understand how weed affects people. They point out that driving high is not the same as driving drunk. While I understand that alcohol and weed have different effects, I still don’t think it’s safe, and I don’t want my child in a car driven by someone who’s smoking weed. How do I set this boundary with people who will take this personally and be offended about it? These are people who believe weed is necessary for them to live a comfortable and fulfilling life, and use it daily, multiple times a day.

—Sober Driver

Dear Sober,

You’re just going to have to put up with their being offended and “taking it personally” when you refuse to allow your child to be driven anywhere by them. Your kid, your rules. Period.

I know this isn’t fun. I didn’t have a weed situation when my daughter was young, but my dad was a terrible driver (who, like many men who are terrible drivers, thought he was an excellent one) and I wouldn’t let him drive his granddaughter anywhere. For a long time, I got away with making excuses, but finally, one Thanksgiving, leaving my brother’s house in New Jersey for a trip back to NYC, where my parents lived, I was cornered: I had no choice but to say the quiet part aloud. Dad was shocked and insulted, and he sulked for days afterwards. But he got over it, and he never offered again.

I’m afraid I don’t have much hope that your family will stop offering to drive your child places (or simply assuming they can do it). I was going to make a joke about how, for one thing, they probably won’t remember that you said no—but the daily weed users among my readers would have my head. (By the way, this rhetorical gesture is called paraleipsis.) You will likely have to say no again and again. I know you’ve already told them how you feel, but see if you can trim it to its fundamental fact: Your child cannot be driven by anyone who’s high on anything, ever. This is not up for discussion—just say that.

Say it as often as necessary; say it every time the question comes up. Skip the debates about your opinions versus theirs or whether you’re “overreacting.” It really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks or says about this. It’s nobody’s business but yours.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

My sister and I both have children: She has two, and I have four. Hers are 2 years and 2 months old, respectively, and I have an infant as well as a 9-, 7-, and 5-year-old. Her family and mine live in the same state. My dad and mom kept their house in our home state and a few years ago, bought a second house in our new state to be near us. When my sister had her first child, my mom agreed to watch him during the day when she was at work. But two years later, it feels like my mom is a grandmother to my sister’s children first, and mine second. We both have babies at this point, but my mom often cannot help me because she is helping my sister.

I worked before I was a stay-at-home mom, and my parents weren’t here then, so I used nannies. But she’s here now and I could use the help, which is unavailable since my sister is monopolizing all of her time. Here’s one example of how this is playing out: When our baby was born, my dad came to our house with my sister’s son … and watched him the entire time. We had to suggest he hold my newborn. My sister was pregnant at the time and was sick, and instead of them being around to help me, they had to watch my nephew. I didn’t even see my parents the first few weeks after having the baby because they were too preoccupied helping my sister—who, by the way, has a husband, so it’s not as if she’s an overwhelmed single mother or anything like that.

She and her husband have never left their 2-year-old with anyone except family (and 99 percent of the time it’s my parents), and because this takes up so much of their time, I don’t even ask them to watch my kids much—I hire sitters. My dad has to travel back and forth between my parents’ two homes for work, but my mom isn’t able to make any trips with him because of her commitment to my sister. My sister seems to turn a blind eye to this. I tried involving my brother, who has a daughter, and he shared my sentiments but didn’t want to rock the boat. I tried talking to my father, and he pointed to recent efforts made by my mom and sister to include me but didn’t address the matter of me struggling with my kids while my mom tends to my sister’s needs. It’s getting to a boiling point and my mom is super sensitive, as is my sister, so I’m afraid to speak up. I’ve told my mom I didn’t mind that she watched my nephew, but this was BEFORE it was every day and night. Can I tell them how I feel about the imbalance of help and time spent or do I need to bite my lip and let it be?

—Needing Help from Grandma

Dear Needing,

I’m sorry you and your kids aren’t getting the attention your sister and her kids are—I know that stings. I’m sure it makes you feel that your parents love her more than they love you. But I don’t believe for a second that that’s true. I think what’s happening is that they feel she needs them more than you do (I know that isn’t true, either. But I can understand why they might think so): You have a new baby, but it must seem to them that your 9-, 7-, and 5-year-olds don’t need as much care as your 2-year-old nephew does. And you’re at home with your kids, while your sister is still working (you know firsthand what that juggling act is like! It’s rough). Plus: Your sister asks for help; you don’t. So my first piece of advice is not to bite your lip. If you bottle up all this resentment and sadness, your relationship with your parents, not to mention your relationship with your sister and her kids, is going to come apart. It’s already in tatters, isn’t it?

But instead of addressing the “imbalance of time and help” in a confrontation with your mom and sister, please consider taking a breath, thinking through what troubles you most about the status quo—for surely it’s not just about fairness and equity but, as I’ve already said, about feeling less loved and thus deeply hurt—as well as what you want to ask of your mom and dad. Also: Set aside your outrage about your sister’s apparent lack of concern for your mother’s needs (that’s Mom’s battle to fight, not yours, and it muddies the water of your own distress). Once you’ve done these things, it’s time for two separate conversations—or maybe three, since your dad is a part of this dynamic too. You need to tell your mother how the current grandparenting situation is making you feel, while acknowledging all I’ve said above and what you told her about “not minding.” Things have changed—that’s fine to tell her. Do your best to be honest with her without scolding her or being bitter. Telling someone you love, and who loves you, how you feel about something that’s happening between you is essential if you’re going to continue to have a relationship. Stick to talking about the dynamic between the two of you. Save the problem you’re having with your sister for your conversation with her. And don’t forget to lay out exactly what you’d like in the way of help, and be prepared to be flexible about it, especially at first. It may make your mom feel anxious to contemplate telling her other daughter, for whom she has been available 24/7, that she won’t be from now on, X times a week or month or whatever. You might even tell her that you understand that this will be hard for her—but that you need her too, and so do your four children. Please try to avoid using the word “fair.” Or calling your sister “selfish” or “thoughtless.”

The reason to talk to your sister is that it will pave the way to repair your relationship with her. In this conversation, stick to the narrowest of paths. Tell her it makes you sad that Mom sees so little of your kids, that it’s become painful for you to see how much closer she’s become to her kids, even though you understand how and why that’s happened. Tell her you love her and that you remember how hard it is to do what she’s doing. Feel free to tell her how envious you are of her, since your parents lived far away when you were in her shoes.

The root of the problem here is sibling rivalry. You haven’t said anything about what your relationship with your sister was like before you both had kids—whether it’s always been something of a competition between you—but if you’d like things to be better between the two of you, it pays to be honest with her about your feelings. Spell this out, to both sister and mother: Your kids need their grandma too, and you need your mom.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

My father, who recently died, was a notable pediatric neurosurgeon at one of the best hospitals in the country. He was famous in his field for his dedication and commitment to difficult cases, but to my sister and me, he was barely present, and chose his work over us at every opportunity. Birthdays, holidays, graduations were all just another day to him, but my late mother always excused his behavior by telling us that other people were counting on him more than we were. My sister, who’s a lot like him (type-A, very driven, very stubborn) basically hero-worshiped him her whole life and is now also a constantly-on-call ER doctor. I grew up feeling angry that he was never someone I could rely on but simultaneously feeling incredibly guilty for resenting him, and it was always difficult interacting with him as an adult.

Following his death, his hospital has received dozens of letters and gifts from former patients and colleagues—which are all getting sent to me, as my sister is currently out of the country.

Every single message about how he refused to pass up a challenging case, how he spent additional hours that he didn’t need to on a patient or went the extra mile to research with a colleague makes me feel frustrated, and right now I’m not even grieving him; I’m grieving this amazing man who was a hero to everyone else around me but is basically nothing to me. I don’t know how I will face my father’s former patients or colleagues at the funeral, let alone make a speech. How can I get through a whole day of these aggravating conversations? And what should I even say to memorialize a father who viewed me as second to career success?

—Fed Up and Fatherless

Dear Fatherless,

I’m so very sorry about your loss. And I mean both losses: the death of your father, and (even more) the absence of him that you felt your whole life. Feeling fatherless is as hard as being fatherless. And now you are experiencing both at once.

I have a friend whose relationship with his father ranged from prickly to downright hostile, and when his father died, he was stunned by the number of people who came up to him at the funeral to tell him how kind, inspiring, and generous his father had been to them. “They were talking about someone I’d never known,” he told me bitterly.

This happens a lot, it turns out. There are plenty of people who cannot or will not be available to their children (or spouses, for that matter) in the way they are to others. Knowing this doesn’t make it less painful, I know. You were deprived, all your life, of something you should’ve had. Of course, there’s nothing to be done for it now except to find a way to make peace with it. The best tool I know of for this is a good therapist. For most of us, it’s impossible to come to terms with childhood deprivation without professional help.

As to getting through the funeral: You know what’s going to happen; you know what people will say—you won’t be caught by surprise, the way my friend was. Steel yourself. Practice saying, “Thank you,” “It’s kind of you to say that,” and, “I appreciate your telling me,” and nodding solemnly. You needn’t say more than that.

The eulogy is another matter. If you don’t feel you can manage one, don’t let yourself be pushed into doing it. Not every member of the family must speak at a funeral; it’s not at all unusual for some people to sit this out. If you do choose to speak—or your mother insists and you feel you can’t refuse her—keep it short and keep it honest. I absolutely believe it’s OK to intersperse hard truths with praise of the dead. When I eulogized my father, I acknowledged his flaws (not all of them: I didn’t mention his driving, for instance); when I eulogized a former colleague with whom I’d had a tense and difficult relationship for decades, and whom I’d known to be a much less than perfect father to his two sons (I’d been pressed into service and was in no position to refuse), I went ahead and told the truth—and his sons thanked me, because everyone else had spoken of him as if he’d been a saint. Your sister may be grateful, even if she can’t bring herself to say it, that you spoke up about what was surely painful for her too, growing up. Your mother may be too, though she may be unable to express that either. I’m not suggesting that you stand up and bash him—only that you include an acknowledgment of his absence at home because he was so deeply devoted to his patients and his research when you speak of that devotion. And even if your sister and your mother can’t (yet?) tell you that they’re glad someone spoke this truth—and even if they’re not in fact glad you did—I think it will help you, on your path to dealing with your grief, if you do.

Check out how another Care and Feeding columnist answered this question.

—Michelle

My 10-year-old son just had a growth spurt. Once upon a time I just picked out his clothes or gave him hand-me-downs from cousins, but he’s getting interested in fashion and is much too cool for that now. We are having a great time shopping together, with one exception. These days you aren’t allowed to use dressing rooms, and he won’t believe me when I tell him what size to buy!