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’m 19 years old, in college, and recently came out to my (single) father as trans. He took it well and is being supportive, which was a surprise, as he’s a retired military officer and pretty conservative overall. But he’s using my new name and he introduces me to people as his daughter. The problem is that he’s kind of trying to take over my transition. This tendency of his to want to be in control, to plan and map out everything that’s going to happen, has always driven me a little crazy. Now it’s completely out of hand.
He wants me to stop going to the clinic I’m getting treatment from and instead go to a different one out of state. The one he has picked out does have more resources and, if you go by the numbers (he always goes by the numbers), is a considerably “better” clinic, but the doctors there would all be strangers, plus it’s a huge hassle to get to from where I live. But of course, when I tell him that (we’ve had this conversation more than once), he starts rattling off statistics and then ends up making one of his speeches about how I deserve the best treatment available. This is how he reacts to stress, I know, and it’s a pattern I’ve seen before in other situations where he can’t control the outcome. He schemes, plans, and works his butt off for the tiniest of marginal advantages, so at the very least if something goes wrong, he can look back and say to himself that he did the absolute best he could. I suppose there are worse personality traits out there. But I can’t seem to get through to him that this is a deeply personal path and I don’t want him interfering, even with the best of intentions, never mind his using this behavior to manage his own anxieties. How can I get him to back off?
—Feeling Crowded
Dear Feeling,
First: Congratulations! Knowing who you are and living an authentic life is cause for celebration. And I’m so relieved and glad for you that your dad is being supportive—that he seems to be happy for you and wants to do whatever he can to help you on your path. That’s love, and it’s what being a parent is about.
But alas, he’s overdoing it. I want to make sure you know how insightful you are to recognize that his need to be in charge (not just of this but of everything) stems from his own anxiety. The expression of an anxiety disorder can take many forms. This happens to be one with which I’m intimately familiar. My father was a take-charge-of-everything guy. And I’ve been guilty of this sort of behavior myself. (I don’t do it anymore, because I came to recognize it—in part because I’d seen it in my father—and learned that there were other, better ways to manage my anxiety.) The bad news: Someone whose anxiety is driving their behavior cannot be reasoned with about it. Thus: You can’t get him to back off.
We cannot change others; we can only change ourselves and the way we react to others.
The challenge for you is to find a way to manage your own anxiety about your father’s efforts to take charge of your life. As you say, he means well. My dad always did too—and if he was ever asked, no matter how politely, to ease up (like, “I’ve got this, don’t worry about it”), he would be deeply hurt; then he’d either sulk or lash out—which would set off a vicious circle of aggrievement and anger. It took me many decades to stop that circle before it even began. (I’m grateful that my own reaction to being told to back off was “only” to be sad and feel ashamed of myself. But I’m even more grateful to be “in recovery”—to have given up trying to be the Boss of the World.)
But I digress. What I would like you to do—and I know it won’t be easy—is say, “Thanks, Dad, I’ll think about that,” “I appreciate the work you’ve done to figure out what I should do, Dad,” “That gives me food for thought for sure,” and “Thanks for all the help, Dad!” And then do exactly what you want to do. If he follows up with questions later, you can say cheerfully, “Oh, I’m still considering that!”
There’s no question that your dad would be a happier person if he were able to back off. But that’s his problem to solve, not yours. You cannot fix him. If you try, you’ll end up fighting with him about something you know he can’t help doing, and what’s the point of that?
So hear him out, and then go ahead and take care of yourself in the ways you believe are best for you. Your father’s not the boss of you. You are.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
My 19-year-old niece, “Anna,” is living with my family of three because she is estranged from her father, “Ethan” (my brother-in-law). She also holds her mother, “Nicky” (my sister), at a distance, but they do keep in touch. The estrangement from her father dates to Anna coming out to her family as nonbinary. Ethan pushed back. He believes that if you have XX chromosomes, you are female and if you have XY, you are male. Nicky is generally more open and accepting, but she and I grew up in a more binary world and she is not completely comfortable with the idea of a gender spectrum. She also wants to keep the peace, not only for her own sake but for the sake of her and Ethan’s two younger children.
My husband, my daughter, and I are in NYC and we’re very much “you do you” people, so when Anna needed a place to live for a few months, our home was the logical choice. Ethan and Nicky continue to support Anna financially and will be paying for college starting this fall. For this reason, Ethan thinks he has a “right” to a relationship with Anna. As part of this, he wants to ask Anna to “articulate what she needs from him.” He emailed me to this effect, asking me to forward his email because Anna has blocked him. Is there a way to reconciliation? What needs to happen?
—Loving Aunt
Dear Aunt,
What needs to happen is between Anna and your brother-in-law—and no one else. I wish Ethan hadn’t used you as an intermediary (though I understand why he did, if his child is now living with you). He could have written a proper letter (there’s no blocking postal mail!) or found some other way to reach Anna. I see no harm in your telling Anna that Ethan wrote to you and asked you to forward the email, and asking if that’s OK to do. But if Anna says, “No! I don’t want to hear from him!”, then abide by that. The way toward reconciliation, of course, is for Ethan to listen to his child, take what he’s told seriously, and stop telling Anna what he believes to be true. When your 19-year-old child says, “This is who I am,” the loving response is not, “Sorry, no, you aren’t.” It’s, “I love you for who you are.” It’s, “I believe you when you tell me who you are.” It’s, “Thank you for telling me who you are.”
Until Ethan can do this, there will be no reconciliation. Spelling this out for him is the only thing you can do to help this happen. I doubt he’ll be able to hear it, act on it, and rise to the occasion in the way that’s required—but if you want to give it a shot, go ahead. It can’t make things any worse between the two of them. (It may make things worse between you and your brother-in-law—and maybe even between you and your sister. You’ll have to decide how much this matters to you.)
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Dear Care and Feeding,
I have a 3-year-old son, “Finn.” Finn is generally well-behaved, although very strong-willed. He doesn’t have that vagueness that I associate with toddlers, and he has a pretty long attention span for a child his age. Because my husband and I both work, he’s enrolled in daycare, and generally, he does well there. But there’s one thing that is concerning to me.
The other day I was able to go to work a bit late, so I hung around and watched for a little while as he started his day. I saw Finn gather up all the toys for his little group, and then go around distributing them (apparently based on some system of his own). I asked one of the caregivers if he has done this sort of thing before, and she said yes, in fact, he does this two or three times a week, but that since the other children don’t mind, they’ve decided to just let things be. He doesn’t hoard the toys, I was told, but he does seem to find it very important to decide who gets to play with what on certain days. That evening, I asked Finn why he doled out the toys, deciding who got which. He very calmly explained that if he didn’t do it, a bunch of the other kids would fight over who got what, so he did this to keep everyone calmer. When I asked how he managed to get the other children to accept his decisions about what they could play with, he said that he just had to use his “grownup voice” and they wouldn’t object. (When I asked, he did try to demonstrate what the grownup voice was, but outside of standing a little taller and straighter than he usually does, I couldn’t distinguish a difference.)
Is this the sort of thing I should be concerned about? It’s weird, for sure, but nobody seems to be getting hurt and it’s not like the daycare staff even thought to let me know about it—I only observed it by chance. My husband thinks we should let sleeping dogs lie and that 3-year-olds are strange by default. But I worry that this behavior might indicate a problem and that maybe we should do something to get ahead of it. I have noticed that he’s a bit more focused than a lot of his age peers, so I’m wondering if it’s a wider-spread thing than just taking charge of toy distribution.
—Possibly Overreacting
Dear Possibly,
I think Finn is going to grow up to be the president of the United States.
I’d say the only things for you to do in this case are 1) raise him right, so that—in addition to his natural leadership skills, decisiveness, and proactive peacemaking—he grows up to be compassionate, empathetic, open-minded, curious, creative, honest, and honorable, and 2) don’t do anything illegal or scandalous yourself (because you know that’s going to come out during his rise to power).
Otherwise, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. He’s a bit of an oddball, but he’s using his powers for good, not evil. And I suspect that he’s very smart, which likely plays a part in what makes him eccentric (even for a 3-year-old). If his eccentricities begin to interfere with his day-to-day life—his play, his sleep, and so on—then you would be wise to have him evaluated. But for now, enjoy him. He sounds like the kind of kid I’d like to have around.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My husband and I live in Manhattan and are expecting our first child (a girl) in the fall. I am a white woman from California; he is Southeast Asian and has lived in NYC his entire life. When he was in elementary school, he and his younger sister were part of a scholarship program at one of the city’s best private schools that gave them full tuition as first-generation students being raised by a single immigrant mother. Thanks to the extensive support they received, they were able to attend top universities on full scholarships, and my husband still credits his school for setting him up for success in the tech industry. He has said that when he attended, he “always dreamed” that one day he could give his child the same experience he had. He wants us to put our names on the list for the feeder preschool his sister sent our nephew to, which I understand is necessary to do now because of the high demand for the elementary school.
Our nephew did thrive at the preschool and is now absolutely loving second grade, and I’ll be honest, he’s having experiences that I could have only dreamed of at my underfunded public school. We could also likely afford to send our child to this school, but I feel hesitant about it. The public schools we’re near aren’t great, but they’re more economically and racially diverse, and I really don’t want our child to be an out-of-touch private school brat. On the other hand, I have heard horror stories about the public high school and middle school admissions programs in the city and the toxic culture at even some of the best public schools. I feel like sending my kid down the private school pipeline is not at all in line with my values or how I envisioned raising a child, but the alternative worries me. I just don’t know what to do.
—School Dazed in NYC
Dear Dazed,
I have a lot of thoughts, but I don’t have an answer. Because there is no good answer. I was committed to sending my child to public school: She started out in a magnet elementary school in our urban school district as a kindergartener, and eventually graduated from a magnet high school after four years there. (To give you an idea of what our school system is like, the “alternative” aspect of that high school—to which, like all the magnet schools here, one must enter a lottery to gain entrance—was, and still is, “academically oriented.”). In between those public school bookends, however, there was a lousy private school (which we picked because it was more affordable, nearer home, and way less exclusive than other private schools—and also because it took a while for us to understand how lousy it actually was) and a period of homeschooling. As committed as I was to keeping my kid in public school, I had to take her out of it halfway through first grade—at the urging of her own teacher!—because the school was in chaos after its fragile stability came undone. (Long story, obviously. For a fuller treatment, you can read the chapter titled “Enough Friends” in my 2005 nonfiction book The Middle of Everything.)
I tell you this because I feel your pain. Our public school system, nationally, is broken. The situation in NYC is particularly impossible, infuriating, and heartbreaking (I’m from New York; I was educated in that public school system, in Brooklyn, lo these many years ago, during its so-called Golden Age). And I hate everything about private schools. I couldn’t wait to put my kid back into a public one. If I had a do-over, I would try another public elementary school before giving up. (But I might have had to give up anyway, I recognize that.)
I don’t know what you should do. But I do know that you have to make the decision that you believe will be best for your child in the long run, taking every possible factor into account. I get the feeling that you’re leaning toward your husband’s plan but that you feel guilty about it—or that you don’t feel like you’ve got a good enough argument to counter his. I will say that an argument about the importance of your child being in an economically and racially diverse environment should not be understated—it is hugely important. I believe that my own kid, all grown up now, is the admirable person she is in part because she did not spend her entire life pre-college surrounded by people whose life experience was like her own—because for so much of her education, she was a white girl in a majority-Black school, a college professor’s kid in a school where the majority was eligible for an income-based free lunch program, a kid who’d lived in the same house all her life who had friends whose families did not have stable housing. But I also remember the period of time when I felt that our public school system could not be trusted to educate her.
Part of what I’m saying is that whatever decision you make now need not be a permanent one—that, indeed, few decisions are irrevocable. But I’m also saying that you and your husband might think broadly about all the possibilities and all your reasons for proceeding as you eventually choose to do. And that you should be open to changing your mind if that decision doesn’t end up sitting well with you.
—Michelle
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