Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My brother’s family is moving about 500 miles away this summer. Their oldest child, my niece Olivia, is a junior in high school and desperately wants to stay for senior year. I completely understand—your friends are everything to you at that age, and applying to colleges is easier with recommendation letters from teachers who actually know you. Olivia is a nice, responsible kid. She has a car and is busy with school and sports. After hearing about how distressed Olivia was, my husband and I offered to let her live with us so she can finish high school here. She was thrilled and said yes. She’s so grateful that she offered on her own to pay us rent out of her savings. (We turned her down.) Her parents will give us $200/month for her groceries.
Then we got some great news: After two years of trying, I am finally pregnant! The baby is due in December. How do we navigate having a new baby at home along with our 18-year-old niece? We are first-time parents, so living with children of any age is brand-new for us. I am most concerned about the newborn phase, when we’ll be up at all hours. Our house has three bedrooms but is only 1300 square feet.
The ground rules we had set with Olivia before finding out we’re expecting were: 9 p.m. curfew on school nights and 1 a.m. on weekends, unless it’s a special occasion. Olivia will do her own laundry. Once a month, she’ll be responsible for vacuuming and cleaning the bathroom. She’s always welcome to eat the dinner we make, but she needs to handle her own breakfast and lunch and is responsible for adding foods she wants to the shopping list. We need a heads-up if her friends are coming over. Her parents still need to be her main sources of help for college application stuff. What, if anything, should we change now that a baby is on the way?
—Excited But Nervous
Dear Excited,
I don’t think a whole lot about your arrangement needs to change up-front? Just be as flexible as you can, and be honest with Olivia about how this will be new for all of you (talk about experiencing the extreme ends of child-rearing at once!). Make sure Olivia understands going in that things will be very different once the baby arrives. There will be completely new household schedules and routines, and it will be a serious adjustment for all of you.
There will be days when you might not be able to cook dinner—if Olivia doesn’t cook, her parents should make sure she’s always got emergency takeout money. There will be nights when the baby will be up a lot—she should invest in good noise-canceling headphones, and maybe a white-noise machine or loud fan for the room she’ll be sleeping in. If she’ll be coming in late on the weekends, teach her to enter the house quietly so she doesn’t wake you or the baby. Remind her not to let the baby have anything she doesn’t want in its mouth. Share other things you’re learning about life with a newborn, and make sure she has the opportunity to ask questions before and as things change.
Your niece is highly motivated to make the living arrangement work, and she is very grateful to you and probably won’t want to “complain,” but hopefully there will be space for her to be honest and say if it all becomes overwhelming for her. On the other hand, she may be excited to help out with the baby from time to time, which could be a plus for you. In that case, just make sure she doesn’t feel like the live-in babysitter, even if she is happy to pitch in when and how she can.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
I have been in my stepdaughter’s life since she was 5 years old. Her mother walked out on her when she was a baby, and only got back in touch when my stepdaughter turned 18. The contact was hit or miss. My stepdaughter is now 22, and her mom unexpectedly died last year. She keeps claiming that she is “fine,” but then she takes her anger out on me. Every conversation is a field of landmines. Every question is “intrusive,” even if it is as simple as asking how work went. If I back off and communicate through her father, I am acting like an “ice cold bitch.” I understand she is still dealing with the complications of grief, but she refuses to acknowledge that or go see a counselor. I am tired of getting screamed at. I am tired of the slamming doors and snide remarks. I am tired of the accusation that I’m trying to play a pretend parent to her. For a long time, I was a mother to her—I kissed her boo-boos and took her to piano practice, nursed her through her first broken heart and went prom dress shopping. She only stopped calling me “Mom” after she turned 18 and started pulling away. It hurt, but I respected her decision. Now she is hurting and takes that hurt out on me. She only gets worse if my husband intervenes.
I don’t know what to do here. I am not made of stone and the stress of the situation has started to negatively affect my health. We all live together, so there is little escape for either of us. I am very much considering temporarily moving out to live with my sister. My husband tells me that is too extreme, but “it will get better” is ringing hollow to me. I love my stepdaughter but I can’t keep living like this. Please advise.
—Hurt in Hartford
Dear Hurt,
I have a lot of sympathy for your stepdaughter, who’s been through a lot. But her grief and difficult history with her mother isn’t an excuse for her to keep lashing out at you. I’m sure it’s hard not to take it personally, especially given how much you care about her. For your own sake, try to remember that her attacks likely have very little to do with you, and everything to do with the pain she’s in.
You’ve already told your husband that you are considering moving out, which really should have signaled to him how serious this is and prompted him to act. I do think it’s worth trying to talk with him about this again, before you pack your bags. Pick a time when the two of you are alone and things are relatively calm, so he can’t downplay it as reactionary in the heat of an argument. Let him know that while you love both him and his daughter, the current situation is unsustainable—it’s affecting your health!—and you all need it to change somehow.
If your stepdaughter is going to live with you and her father, she needs to be able to treat you with basic courtesy, even if she’s not particularly loving or friendly toward you. She also clearly needs more support in dealing with her grief, or she risks causing herself more pain than she’s causing you. Start at home: Is she able to talk to her father about her grief? Can she share how she’s honestly feeling with both of you, or does the difficult history with her mother or some other aspect of your relationship / family dynamic interfere? Does she have any sort of larger support system—friends, other family members, etc.—who can also help her process what’s happened?
Grief is so unwieldy and unique to the person grieving. You can’t necessarily tell someone in that kind of pain how to mourn or force them to accept help. But you can try to establish basic rules around what kind of treatment you will tolerate. If your stepdaughter refuses to get the grief support she needs, let her family and others help her, or at least find some way to live peaceably with you, it might be time to discuss how you and your husband can help her find a living situation that will be better and healthier for all of you.
In the meantime, I don’t think you should have to leave your home. But if you badly need a break from the stress and nonstop conflict, you can choose to stay with your sister while you all think about your next steps. It’s possible that you temporarily moving out would also be the wake-up call your husband needs. On the other hand, if he watches you leave for your own health and sanity but does nothing to try to change how he’s dealing with or supporting his daughter, that will be very hard, but telling, for you.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
I’m 29 years old, live in my mom’s basement, and have had trouble holding down a job my entire adult life. I want to try my hand at college again (I dropped out at 21 because of mental health concerns that have since been managed) so I can try for an office job, but everyone in my family has already decided that I can’t do it, and they say I should instead apply for SSDI again for the mental health issues and a recent mild physical disability (that wouldn’t stop me from sitting at a desk for several hours). This feels like giving up to me. When my grandparents were alive, I focused on taking care of them, but now I’m left adrift—do I follow my heart and go deeper into debt for something when I’m the only one who thinks I can handle it, or do I resign myself to living off my family’s handouts and pity for the next 50+ years?
—Two Roads Diverged at a Community College
Dear Two Roads Diverged,
There’s nothing wrong with being on SSDI, living with your parents, or not working a traditional 9-to-5 job. But if you really want to change your situation and believe you can do it, there’s no reason not to go back to school. It’s good to know what you want and set goals for yourself. Once your family sees you making progress, I hope they will get on board and do what they can to support you. In the meantime, know that this is your decision to make, no one else’s—what you want your life to look like matters, and you know better than anyone what you’re capable of.
Dear Care and Feeding,
How do you deal with messy bedrooms? Our 11-year-old is responsible when it comes to a lot of things, but keeping her room clean isn’t one of them. I could deal with general messiness, but her floor is just covered in clothes (both clean and dirty), skincare products, school stuff, etc. It will get to a point where she cleans it up, but within a week it’s a disaster again. She doesn’t seem to be embarrassed when friends come over and honestly doesn’t understand why we care so much. What’s the best way to not only keep her room clean enough so I don’t have to avert my eyes when walking past, but also have it so this isn’t an ongoing battle?
—Where’s the Floor
Dear Floor,
I guess my first piece of advice is to try to separate yourself emotionally from the whole (literal) mess? Don’t turn it into a character flaw, or a sign that your daughter isn’t responsible. It’s pretty normal for a kid her age to not notice or be particularly bothered by clutter.
If it really upsets you to look at it, then don’t constantly monitor its status; check only as needed.
My mom used to have a refrigerator magnet that read “Creative minds are rarely tidy,” and I think about it every time I glance into my artist child’s chaotic room. I would prefer it if she noticed, cared, and cleaned it without being told, but it’s just not a priority for her, and arguing with her about it just annoys us both. I wish I had a magic solution for you, but I just … tell my daughter to pick up her room every couple of weeks, usually when the rest of us are working to clean other rooms. I’m a big fan of the routine, because then it’s not an impromptu order or parental power trip—it’s just that time when we clean whatever is messy. (Those of you who clean your house more than once or twice a month: I’m super happy for you.)
Of course, I know that her room will soon be messy again. But she also knows that she’ll be tasked with picking it up again. It’s the expectation—and a slightly frustrating cycle, I grant you—but not an ongoing fight.
—Nicole
More Advice From Slate
My wife and I have a wonderful 3½-year-old daughter, “Mallory,” who is doing very well at pushing our boundaries. We’ve both done our share of reading and understand that this is her “job” and that it is our job to recognize that. For instance, my wife loves to sing, but Mallory won’t let her. She loses her shit at the first note and screams “NONONO!!!” Capital letters and exclamation marks are not sufficient to express how loud this kid can yell.
