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Dear Care and Feeding,
My nearly 4-year-old daughter, “Z,” absolutely refuses to listen to me (dad) at all, and while she may listen to mom a bit better, she is trending towards not listening to her either.
Apparently, Z is an angel in preschool, listens to all of her teachers, and is a favorite among the staff. She is in swim class and gymnastics and listens to her coaches/instructors there as well. Outside of that, Z does not listen. She flat out ignores us (she’s really good at it, it’s like talking to a brick wall); if we ask her to do something she says no; if we are out in public or at the park and it’s time to leave, it usually ends up with her being carried to the car screaming and kicking; and at night the pre-bed time ritual has turned into a nightmare where it takes several hours to get her into her bed, let alone to sleep.
She uses every trick in the book to avoid going to bed—stalls on bath time by wanting to finish a puzzle, but dismantles the puzzle half way through and starts over, actively runs away as soon as the parent isn’t looking, flops on the floor kicking and screaming, and refuses to go into the bedroom for reading time, always wants a different book or one more book, needs to potty five times, the list goes on.
This results in both my wife and me being frustrated, exhausted, and irritated with Z and each other. It also results in us (particularly me) not wanting to take Z out and about because we know she won’t listen and will inevitably throw a giant tantrum. So my question is, how do Iget Z to listen to us, her parents, like she listens to other grown-ups in her life? I know kids won’t cooperate 100 percent of the time, but this situation has got to improve.
—Never Listens
Dear Never Listens,
The parenting queen Janet Lansbury once said something in a podcast that I took to heart. She mentioned that parents looking for her advice will often say “My child doesn’t listen” when they mean “My child does not obey me, or cooperate.” Ever since hearing that, whenever people say “She’s not listening,” a flag goes up. I think it can help, truly, to be honest in our language about what we mean. This is a struggle over parental authority, not just over the way a child’s ears and brain work, and if we can acknowledge that, I think it helps. (Here’s that episode, which is about a 3-year-old boy who sounds a bit like your girl.)
Of course dear Z is an angel at preschool and her activities. This discrepancy between school and home behavior in preschoolers is not, from what I hear, uncommon. There are definitive structures in those places, developed over years, to help kids her age move as a group through a day. The teachers are professionals at executing and enforcing the rules that make the schedule work. And there is peer pressure that comes into play—all the kids she spends her day with are doing the same thing at the same time, so your daughter goes along to get along.
Children save the “not listening” for home because they’re tired from having no control all day, and home is where they can push. At 7, my own child is now old enough that she will explain this to me: “I had to do what the teacher said all day. I never get to decide!” At 4 you might not get that much self-awareness, but I think the feelings are already there.
To minimize conflict between you guys and her, I would advise trying to scale back her non-school schedule as much as you can. Try to plan the parts of her life that are spent with you so that you won’t always need her to “listen” (obey). This doesn’t mean “let her do what she wants”; it means that maybe you scrap the activities—lessons (which she’s young for, anyway!) and planned trips, situations where you will need her to cooperate to dress and get out of the house, and then leave the playground, all on your timeline—and instead create more zones of unstructured time. Slow down, at least for a while.
Same idea for bedtime: Reduce the number of activities, so that there are fewer transitions, and fewer chances for her to resort to transition-frustrating behaviors like undoing the puzzle (everything about this bedtime hell sounds SO annoying; my sympathies). When babies are younger, bedtime can acquire infinite components, because you’re trying to establish a ritual. When toddlers and preschoolers get a bit older, the length of the ritual can start to be a hindrance, and can use some serious scaling-back.
I really think all this will help. I sense the idea of being “stuck” in the house with her, given how unpleasant it sounds like this dynamic has become, may not initially appeal. But if you can artfully prune even one “let’s get our shoes on now!” moment out of your typical Saturday, you may also find yourself unclenching, just a bit.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
I receive a Christmas card every year from someone in my high school friend group (we’re 40+) who I’m not as personally close to as others. I love a good family photo, but this family’s tradition is photographing just the children in diapers in a mess of white Christmas lights. So cute, right? Except now the boys are 5 and 8 and in their underwear, and it just feels off to me that they are sending these photos to hundreds of people. Am I the weird one? Should I just assume consent and get over it?
—Some Cards Aren’t Meant to Be Displayed
Dear Some Cards,
You’re pulling my leg! Are you pulling my leg? (That would make you the weird one!)
On the off chance you’re not pulling my leg, you’re not weird; these cards are, indeed, odd. Are kids these ages really able to consent to this? I’d advise seeing if any mutual acquaintances who are closer to this friend than you are might say something—the cuteness window on this tradition has long since passed.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
My older sister got pregnant (twice) and dropped out of school. She lives with our parents and works part time at a fast food joint. I go to college about two hours away. I love my family but I hate visiting. The house is always a mess, and I am stuck on the sofa because the kids have my room. Either the kids are screaming their heads off or my parents are fighting about bills or my sister is complaining how hard her life is. I juggle school, a full-time job, and my scholarship. I don’t even have time to socialize when I am there, which makes my weekends so precious. I still have a lot of friends in town and prefer to stay and see them rather than deal with the chaos at home.
My family finds this offensive. My mother claims it hurts her heart that I don’t want to “spend time” with them. And my sister makes snide remarks about me being a shitty aunt and not loving her kids. The minute I enter the door, my mother is banging at me to help clean up, my sister is shoving her kids at me so she can go out, and my dad locks himself in the garage to tinker. They don’t even ask me how school is going. I would just not tell them when I am visiting, but most of my friends either live at home or are family friends. The last time that my family found out I visited without telling them, I got the mother of all guilt trips. I love my family, but visiting them isn’t worth the gas every weekend.
—Visiting Woes
Dear Visiting Woes,
Ah, the old “tinkering dad” move. A classic! I think that, when you do come home for the weekend, you should stay with your friends—who presumably have at least a quieter sofa, if not a bed, to offer you. Make it clear to your family that you are coming, and would like to make plans to have dinner one of the nights, or lunch one of the days. Make plans with your friends for the rest of the time. Then stick to them. (These plans can also be fictional! I give you permission to white lie!)
You, on the family group text: “Great, let’s have brunch on Saturday at eleven. I’ll bring cinnamon rolls from the bakery. I will have to leave at two because I’m seeing Lisa Frankenstein at 2:30 with Becky.” While you’re at the house, you’re perfectly polite, attentive, and helpful with the dishes and the kids. Pour yourself into it, for those three hours.
Then—don’t feel guilty, don’t feel bad—beat feet when the time’s up. You’re out of there! Plenty of people handle family visits in this way. I promise, it doesn’t make you a bad aunt, sister, or daughter.
Dear Care and Feeding,
I have an 11-year-old nephew and a 9-year-old niece. My nephew has severe ADHD that my sister refuses to medicate him for despite the recommendations of teachers and doctors. As a result, he acts like a toddler on a caffeine binge. His attention span is zero, he can’t sit still, and will run around like a loon. We can’t go to nice restaurants without putting him in a booth between a pair of adults. Going to a movie is out of the question unless we are the only ones in the theater. The last time we had a family event, he wandered off into the woods and a neighbor brought him back in a truck. More worrisome was my nephew didn’t know the neighbor, just trusted him to say he knew our relatives. I am pregnant and not up to dealing with my nephew’s antics one on one.
The problem is that my niece is fine to deal with; she is well behaved and friends with my next-door neighbor’s two girls. They constantly ask if she can come over to play. It isn’t any big deal for me to pick up my niece for a weekend so she can visit her friends and spend the night. My sister thinks I am favoring my niece over my nephew. I think she just wants to get a break herself. I have already explained that there are no boys around my nephew’s age in my neighborhood and I would be stuck entertaining him, whereas my niece just wants to play with her friends. My husband travels, so it’s usually just me here alone. I can’t deal with my nephew. My sister keeps threatening to keep my niece from coming over. I don’t know what to do. She doesn’t have many friends, and neither do my neighbor’s girls. Our neighborhood is a bit in the boonies. What do I do here?
—Overwhelmed Aunt
Dear Overwhelmed Aunt,
I feel very badly for your nephew and, to some degree, your niece. Not so much for your sister, whose reasons for not dealing with your nephew’s neurodivergence medically can’t possibly be worth putting her son in this position. And also—I’m sorry, Aunt, I know you’re overwhelmed—not so much for you. Your nephew has only been on Earth for 11 years, and these are not “antics”; he’s struggling, and the mismatch between what his brain does and what the world expects is not his fault. Is there a way you could overcome your irritation at your sister, which seems to be clouding your response to him, and reframe? So you think of your nephew as a child who could probably stand to develop more genuine connections with allies who don’t see him primarily as a pest or a problem?
I also wonder if you are building up a “both niece and nephew” visit, a little bit too much, in your mind. It may not be as much of a chore as you fear. Maybe you could start by having them for a shorter visit. It doesn’t need to be a whole weekend, does it? (I don’t know how far away you live.) Could you have them for a day, or an afternoon? Then see how things go. Maybe your nephew will play with the girls fine. Maybe he can find something else to do at your house, that doesn’t try your patience or result in him getting in a truck with a total stranger. It’s possible it’s not going to be as awful as you think, and I think he does deserve a chance, even if your sister is being annoying as hell about it.
—Rebecca
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