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,
When I was pregnant with our first child, I cried my eyes out constantly when my husband and I found out we were having a girl. I confessed to my husband that I was worried she would hate me like I hate my mother. Let me clarify: I love my mother, but she and I are different in ways that keep us apart and similar in ways that drive us crazy. I know this is true for most mother-daughter relationships. As my daughter grows up, though, I’m realizing specific things my mother says and does to my daughter that rub me the wrong way and remind me of things she said and did to me.
For example, she’s always made comments about my daughter’s weight and how my daughter eats too much, even when she was just an infant. I’ve always struggled with my weight and body image, although I’ve come to love the skin I’m in and I know it’s very important to instill that in my young daughter as well.
Another issue I had was my mother constantly calling me sensitive as a child. Often when I got sad or upset about anything, she would snap back by saying, “Oh, stop being so sensitive!” She and I constantly had screaming matches when I was a teenager, and we often said terrible things to each other. She would tell me that I was too abrasive and that she couldn’t believe I had friends because of how I acted. A lot of the things she said still run through my mind and make me feel insecure.
I’ve been honest with her, and she’s opened up with me about her own upbringing and the tense relationship with her own mother. There is a certain part of me that understands this but still feels hurt by the things she has said and still says. How do I generate a healthy relationship with my daughter and avoid these pitfalls as she grows older? Am I destined to turn into my mother?
—If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother
Dear Not Your Mother,
I promise you with all my heart that you are not destined to turn into your mother. I am also so glad that you have been able to address these aspects of your upbringing with her, with positive results.
Generally, the single best way to avoid repeating a negative parenting example set by your own parents is to be aware of it. Watch for it. Talk to your partner about it.
Now, you gotta go to therapy (resources willing). You’re still processing a lot of crap, and if you can establish a good relationship with a trusted third party now, it will make exorcising some demons and learning new ways to parent a lot easier when the hard times come. Which they will! Oh, they will. But that doesn’t mean you have to respond as your mother responded to you, or as her mother responded to her.
Most parents, even the best parents, have moments where things leave their mouths they swore they would never say to their own kids. Most of the time it’s just “BECAUSE I SAID SO” (which, jeez, sometimes that’s the answer!), but those buttons reach all the way down into your soft underbelly from childhood.
You are asking the right questions. I also encourage you to go to the library and load up on books about parenting. I’m not going to recommend any in particular, because I want you to see how many different ways there are to be a good parent. Here’s a tip, though. Those many different ways still boil down to unconditional love, no abuse (emotional or physical), and parent the child you have—not the one you thought you would have.
I’m proud of you.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My 3-year-old daughter is (obviously) still learning how to write and draw. She switches hands but has clearly shown partiality toward her left hand. While that’s a surprise, since no one in either of our immediate families is left-handed, her dad and I don’t care. We’ll get her the left-handed scissors and help her erase smudgy pencil homework. The issue is my mother, who frequently watches her after school.
She has taken it upon herself to “correct” the hand my daughter uses, scolding her and even moving the marker from the left to the right. Every time we witness it, we tell her to knock it off, but it hasn’t stopped yet. I know “correcting” left-handedness was common in my mother’s generation, but it’s getting out of hand. My daughter burst into tears when I helped her draw a heart with her right hand recently—she just so happened to be holding the pencil in her right hand—telling me it didn’t feel good. I of course promised to stop doing that. I have to imagine this happens at Grandma’s as well, but Grandma clearly has not laid off. I have asked my mother point-blank why she does this, and she just shrugs it off. How do I get Grandma to stop?
—It’s 2019!
Dear It’s 2019,
This is unacceptable. It sounds like you’ve told her to stop on numerous occasions already, and she is clearly deeply entrenched in the bad practices of the past. In fact, it’s entirely possible that she herself was a lefty; plenty of people think “no one in our immediate families is left-handed” because it was beaten out two generations back. That wouldn’t excuse her ignoring your wishes.
I’m not a magician, and neither are you. Your mother will not get to watch your kid after school anymore unless she stops. I’m sorry if that creates a huge amount of difficulty in terms of finding alternate child care, but this is horseshit. Maybe the threat will do the trick. Make sure your daughter knows that she needs to tell you right away if Grandma keeps up the behavior, but I’m not optimistic; this is a person who has already shown she will roll over your wishes for your child. Right now it’s trying to force her to be right-handed, but it certainly doesn’t give me a lot of faith that she will take anything else you say seriously.
(Time for our usual chorus: Free child care ain’t free.)
• If you missed Thursday’s Care and Feeding column, read it here.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
I’m confused about a behavior my daughter is exhibiting. She is 8 and developmentally on schedule (for what it’s worth). My husband and I do our best to use positive reinforcement to teach, but somewhere down the line, she decided that the best way to get herself to perform better at tasks she struggles with is to cause herself pain.
We saw her playing a game, and after a few times she missed a jump, she became frustrated and started hitting and scratching her own arm. I asked her why, and she said she wanted to “teach herself a lesson” and that she “can do better than that.” I was floored. We have never hit her or hurt her to get her to do something. We don’t believe in “continuing the beatings until morale improves.” We have tried to get her to stop, but she never hurts herself significantly (no bleeding or bruising or hitting her head), and we can’t watch her every moment of playtime. Asking her to punch a pillow doesn’t work.
Is she just a strange sort of perfectionist? Where is this coming from? I can’t think of anyone I know who disciplines this way! Is it time for therapy? Will she quit on her own?
—It’s So Upsetting
Dear It’s So Upsetting,
It is absolutely time for therapy. This is a big problem. The faster you address it, the less likely it is to be a lifelong issue for her.
This is self-harm and, as such, immediately exceeds the level of parenting columnist question into therapist question. Ask for recommendations from your pediatrician, and if the first therapist isn’t able to help, find another. Do not drag your feet on this even a little in hopes she’ll “quit on her own.”
Dear Care and Feeding,
Our kids (4 and 6) have gotten really close to our new neighbor’s kids, who are 5-year-old twins. The family is Jewish, and we are big Santa people at my house. Obviously they are not!
None of them have said anything about Santa not being real (I think their parents are careful about that), but would it be incredibly rude to ask their parents to tell their kids to play along a bit? I just don’t want our kids to say “What did Santa bring you?” and to hear “Nothing”; I think it would be confusing and upsetting for them. But I don’t want to be rude or insensitive.
—Jingle Bells
Dear Jingle Bells,
No. No. No. Absolutely not. Do. Not. Do. This. It would be extremely rude, also anti-Semitic, also if you don’t listen to me and do this anyway and their parents reasonably freak out at you, please tell them that you contacted a parenting advice columnist named Nicole Cliffe and she said not to do it but you did it anyway and she told you this is what would happen.
—Nicole
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