Help! Our Relatives Gave Our Daughter a Makeup Gift Card. She’s 11.

Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here. (It’s anonymous!)

Dear Prudence,

My wife and her brother’s fiancée (I’ll call her Jane) have had friction in the past that they’re working through. This week, for our daughter’s birthday, Jane gave our daughter a $50 gift card to a beauty products retailer. There are a few issues there. First, she has a child with my brother-in-law and a child from a previous relationship, and we love them both, but we’ve never given them large gifts on their birthdays. We really don’t want to set the precedent of giving presents to all of our nieces and nephews because there are a lot of them between my side and my wife’s side of the family, and our kids already have too much as it is. $50 is enough that we would feel compelled to do the same for their children.

Second, we have tried to limit the amount of “things” our daughters get, in general, for birthdays and Christmas. They have more books than they can read and more toys than they can play with. Finally, I feel confident that Jane knows we have a strong aversion to makeup for our 11-year-old daughter. We think she’s too young for it. She just got some at Christmas, and we didn’t like it then. I don’t really think Jane is giving that specifically to stick a thorn in our side, but … I guess I do or I wouldn’t be bringing it up. It is also possible that she saw how much our daughter got excited about her Christmas makeup present and took more of the “spoiling aunt” role and got it anyway. My wife already accepted it before she knew how much it was or what business it was for, but we really don’t want to start this precedent for the next 10-plus years. How in the world can we ask not to give gifts in the future without insulting Jane—and my brother-in-law—and damaging an already tenuous relationship?

—Anxious About Gifting

Dear Anxious About Gifting,

Let her keep the Sephora gift card. She can get fun face masks, a nice-smelling shampoo, or something else that’s age-appropriate. But here’s how to address the issue going forward. You (not your wife, because she already has tension with this woman) can say to her brother’s fiancée, “Thank you so much for the gift for Jane. It was so incredibly generous. We were blown away and honestly a little embarrassed because we’re not in the habit of buying our nieces and nephews gifts, since there are so many of them that it would become unmanageable for us. That said, she is so excited to get some of the moisturizer all the girls her age are crazy about and definitely thinks you’re the coolest aunt.”

You have now made it clear that you are not going to be reciprocating. But I honestly think it’s too much to add, “And never get anything for our child again.” If you and your wife don’t give your daughter many gifts throughout the year and most of your other relatives in the family are on board, she will survive an annual $50 gift card without becoming entitled or a hoarder. This is a situation in which it’s better to share your values directly with her (“We don’t want to make holidays all about material things in our family—we have so much, and it feels better to focus on giving to people who have less,” etc.) than to try to control the behavior of others who don’t share those values. And of course, the real gift she’ll be getting, if you’re able to be a little bit flexible and navigate the adult relationships at the center of this letter, is closeness with her aunt and uncle.

Dear Prudence,

Many years ago, I really thought I (30F) was in love with a guy. We had an extremely emotionally intimate friendship: deep conversations, shared passions, and grief—but nothing more than hand-holding. I never said anything, although I learned later that he may have had some idea I had a crush. It was unrequited, I helped him ask someone else out, and I kind of cut ties. It took me much too long to get over not only him, but also the insecurity and self-doubt for ever thinking that the feelings were returned. After some time, we reconnected and were on good terms, although I still kept a distance.

I went through old texts recently, and it made me really miss my friend. We haven’t chatted in a couple of years, but I’ve been aware that he has lost some family this past year. I avoided reaching out directly by habit. But now I feel like a bad friend. Part of me wants to reach out now just to genuinely say that I’m thinking of him. But all the gremlins in my head make me unsure if I’m A) overthinking, B) in denial, C) right, or D) lonely. I guess my question is: Am I being overly sentimental, or is this normal to try to reconnect with a friend after emotionally untangling them being your hopeless crush?

—E) All of the Above

Dear All of the Above,

Reaching out to an ex or ex-crush in order to avoid being “a bad friend” is the oldest trick in the book—the book of tricks that we play on ourselves to justify romantic choices that might not be the best for us. Women especially are socialized to be “nice,” so when we want to do something, thinking of it as an act of kindness can make it feel acceptable or even necessary.

I don’t doubt that you genuinely care about this guy, but you have to be honest with yourself. The gremlins in your head that are telling you that you might just be lonely right now are onto something. I think your desire to reach out started when looking at those texts reignited your crush a little, and I suspect you looked at the texts in the first place in part because you don’t have any other active crushes or romantic interests at the moment. It’s normal to yearn to reconnect with someone you were once close to, but that doesn’t mean that doing so is a good idea. My specific concern is that to do so could really set you back emotionally and suck up a lot of your time, putting your focus back on him and making you less available to attract someone who will return your feelings. Also, it will stress you out. Seriously, imagine how this might go. Either he’ll give you a quick, polite response (“I’m doing OK! Thanks so much for thinking of me. Hope you’re well”), which will leave you reeling because you wanted more connection and feel rejected, or he’ll actually engage with you, and you two will keep talking until you’re right back where you were before you did all the hard work of getting over him. Wish him the best in your head—say a little prayer for him, visualize better times in his life, whatever—and turn your attention elsewhere.

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Dear Prudence,

I hate that some parents have gender-reveal parties. First of all, it’s the wrong terminology! I know that gender is a social construct, and it infuriates me that people are making an event out of the genitalia of their soon-to-be child. I hate that there are parents out there who care about the sex of their baby at all. I feel so passionately about this because I feel as if my family and society treated me differently because I’m a cisgender female, and I don’t want the world to do that to my kid. How do I express my views to my parent friends? Or is this a view that I hold to myself and express only in the areas that I can control? And most importantly, if I get an invite to a gender-reveal party, should I say anything that the terminology is wrong?

—It’s Sex, Not Gender

Dear Not Gender,

No, you should not RSVP no with the word gender crossed out and replaced with sex, along with a note about how the whole thing is problematic. While I happen to think you’re ultimately right about the substance of your critique and I hope we as a society get to a place where these events don’t feel necessary, that doesn’t mean you have to or should be the gender-reveal police. I’m just imagining a world in which we all confronted our friends about what they were doing wrong according to our values: “Are you seriously using lip gloss that’s tested on animals?” “You’re a dummy for changing your last name when you get married!” “Is that sweater fast fashion? You have to stop destroying the earth and supporting exploitative labor conditions.” It would be like the comments section on an article or Twitter come to life. But I will note that typically people with similar outlooks about things like whether gender should determine how a baby is raised tend to gravitate toward each other. Your mismatch with multiple friends on this issue might be a tiny sign that you should look for a community of people who care about the same things you do. Not to replace your current friends entirely, but just to build a life in which you’re not constantly looking at the choices of your loved ones, going, “WTF?”

I’m not going to encourage you to tell your parent friends that they are backward and problematic, but I do think you should do something productive with the values that are fueling your frustration. After all, what you really want is a world in which no kid faces unfair expectations of poor treatment because of their genitalia. You’ll find a lot of people who get this point of view—and probably a lot of young people who would really benefit from affirmation from someone like you—in the LGBTQ+ community. The Human Rights Campaign, in a blog post for people who want to do something to support LGBTQ+ youth, suggests:

Then, skip the gender reveals by using the excuse that you’re tied up with your volunteering and activism.

I’ve been dating an Asian American man for the better part of a year, and he’s the most wonderful person I’ve ever met. His mother and I got along for about six months. I was invited over for dinner, stayed at their house (he lives with his parents), and we even exchanged phone numbers. My boyfriend agrees that I was polite to her and never stepped on her toes. Recently they got into an argument (she didn’t know I was there), and she went on a tirade about how he shouldn’t bring his “little girlfriend” into her house anymore.