My Wife Is Furious Over Her Family’s Go-To Joke About Our Daughter. It’s Not That Serious.

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,

The running joke in my wife’s family, for at least a year now, is that our older daughter, who’s 8, is actually “an old lady.” Why? She wears bifocals, she can often be found curled up reading a book, she loves baking with her grandmother (with whom she has a very close bond), and her favorite music, thanks to Grandma, is music that was popular in the 50s and 60s. She’s blond, with hair light enough that it sometimes looks white, and she’s missing her front teeth. And while she’s certainly not serene, it’s true that when compared to her very hyper younger sister, she can seem that way. So my in-laws teasingly refer to her as “the old lady” or ask if she’s “playing bingo tonight.”

My daughter often laughs off these jokes, and sometimes she even makes them herself. I personally think the joke has gotten stale and wasn’t ever really that funny to begin with, but our daughter seems to still find it amusing. My wife, however, just told me that she hates it when her family says this. We live in her hometown, where most of her family still lives, so we see them a lot, and she thinks this sort of teasing is changing the way our daughter thinks about herself. Am I crazy for thinking that she’s reading too much into this? It’s not like anyone’s treating her like she’s 70. She has friends at school. She understands this is a joke. I know my wife was bullied a lot in middle school, but I think if the object of the joke laughs at it too, then it’s not harmful. My wife keeps asking our daughter how she feels about it. What I want to know is: Is this as big a deal as my wife makes it out to be? Should I try harder to convince her to let it go, to stop bringing it up with our daughter when she’s obviously fine?

—Dad of an “Old Lady”

Dear Dad,

First: If your wife is unhappy about this—or about anything, for that matter—you have no business trying to convince her not to be. It’s insensitive at best. And it doesn’t work, ever. Second: The fact that your kid laughs about being teased in this way doesn’t mean she’s “fine” with it. She might be, I suppose. But she might just have learned already that joining in on the joke is a good way to pacify bullies (it sounds like you might have taught her that?).

It seems to me that the people with whom this should be brought up are the ones making the idiotic joke, not their object. Even if your 8-year-old isn’t at all troubled by it (which sounds unlikely to me), it’s not a great way for adults to interact with a child. I wouldn’t encourage any interactions with children that focus on their physical appearance. And teasing is rarely fun for the person being teased, about anything. They should knock it off. And you should quit being so dismissive of your wife.

Submit your questions about parenting and family life here. It’s anonymous! (Questions may be edited for publication.)

Dear Care and Feeding,

Earlier this year, I unexpectedly got pregnant and practically had a nervous breakdown while trying to decide whether I should keep or terminate the pregnancy. I have a 5-year-old daughter, “Jane,” and would theoretically love another, but my husband and I aren’t financially sound enough so that a second child wouldn’t be a burden. To complicate matters (emotionally), I found out that my brother, with whom I have an extremely strained and angry relationship, was expecting his second child with his wife. I miscarried the pregnancy on the very day my sister-in-law called to tell me her happy news. It was a lot. While I was grateful for, and relieved about, the miscarriage, because it saved me from an impossible decision, I’ve also been grieving. I can’t be around babies without breaking down, and seeing pregnant women often sets me off. I’m working on it with my therapist, but it’s rough.

My niece was born a few weeks ago and I told my sister-in-law that I’m not ready to visit yet, which she accepts. Unfortunately, when the baby was born, various members of the family started blowing up my phone with pictures of her. I’d end up hiding in my office bathroom so I could weep in secret because most people don’t know what happened to me earlier this year and I don’t feel like sharing that information widely. “Elaine,” my father’s wife, is someone who knows, although I didn’t tell her myself (I told my father, asking him to keep the information to himself, but he didn’t respect that), and she kept texting me pics of Dad with the baby. After a while, I responded, “Please don’t send me baby pictures, it makes me uncomfortable.” She did not answer the text. Then, when I saw Dad and Elaine over the weekend at a relative’s gathering and said hello to her, she gave me the cold shoulder. She’s also avoiding Jane, whom she usually dotes on. She was cold to her that day, and she has been refusing to come to the phone when we FaceTime my dad in the evenings. This is the second time in the past year that she has pulled this sort of childish behavior. The first time was when she found out, after the fact, that I had taken Jane to the theater without inviting her. It was my kid’s first theater experience, and it hadn’t occurred to me that I should invite anyone else. Elaine refused to speak to me (or Jane!) for weeks.

I prefer to keep her at a bit of a distance, and I certainly don’t feel as if I should be responsible for making her feel better when she’s angry that I, a woman experiencing grief over a lost pregnancy, asked her not to send me pictures of my brother’s new baby. I also don’t have a ton of tolerance for one of Jane’s grandparents taking out their anger on her, especially after my actual mother, who has a personality disorder, has made it clear she doesn’t want my daughter in her life. I’m trying not to drown in grief, but how do I handle Elaine? I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to share with her the details of what I’m going through, as I’ve long had the sense that she rejoices a bit in other people’s difficulties. But I’m afraid of the rift it might cause if I try to call out her BS. She is literally the gatekeeper to my father: She won’t leave their apartment without him and he’s not well enough to go anywhere without her support; she’s gotten angry in the past when we ask to spend time with him alone. Is it OK to just ignore this until she gets over her pique? Or am I being the asshole for not making her feel better?

—Emotionally Drained

Dear Drained,

There are too many threads of family disunity and dysfunction here for me to sort and separate. So I’ll just say this:

I’m sorry for your loss. It’s OK to ignore Elaine.

It’s pretty clear you don’t like your father’s wife, so after this latest unpleasantness passes, stick to being polite (so that you don’t lose access to your dad), but nothing more, going forward. You can’t really have it both ways—i.e., making sure Jane has a close, loving relationship with Elaine (at least in part to make up for your mother’s absence?) and keeping Elaine at a distance from the two of you.

Catch Up on Care and Feeding

• If you missed Friday’s column, read it here.
• Discuss this column in the Slate Parenting Facebook group!

Dear Care and Feeding,

I’m not sure how to help a sibling with financial troubles. My parents have asked me not to get involved. But my other siblings feel that there are mental health and marital issues that coincide with the financial difficulties. I want what is best for everyone—without betraying confidences—but it seems that I’m going to have to be the one who takes action since we know this sibling will not take our much younger siblings’ advice seriously, and their current relationship with our parents is strained. Is it worth getting involved and possibly burning family bridges?

—Wavering in Washington

Dear Wavering,

Take out of the equation what your younger siblings have told you. You don’t have to bring up these confidences with your sibling who is struggling or your parents. And your parents don’t get to tell you what to do (well, they can tell you, but you don’t have to do it! You’re not a child anymore, and parents don’t necessarily know better than their grown children do). If they feel that offering financial help to your sibling is not the right thing to do (perhaps they believe that helping would mean they were “enablers” of problem behavior), that’s their affair. They may even be right. But there’s no way for you to know that. If your sibling is in trouble and you believe you can help—and you want to—then help. I would add only this word of caution, since you mention that this sibling is unlikely to take advice from the younger members of the family: Don’t offer any advice unless your sibling asks you for it. It’s easy for the bestower to confuse unsolicited advice with help, and just as easy for the recipient of that advice to take it as criticism. And don’t offer money with strings attached, either, because that’s not help—that’s manipulation.

In other words, if you do decide to get involved, keep your eye on the prize: making things better for someone you love who is suffering. That’s more important than keeping the peace.

Dear Care and Feeding,

My daughter “Maya” (age 2) has some slightly weird development patterns, but the pediatrician reassures us that she doesn’t see anything to be concerned about. Basically, Maya hits many development milestones on the late side of normal, and then experiences big bursts that often carry her through the next few milestones early. For example, she was late to start speaking, but now is extremely verbal and already ahead on complex speech. And she was one of those kids who never crawled or cruised on furniture—which worried us—but then she jumped straight to walking, way earlier than is common. Her social development has been average, and she seems happy and engaged at home and at daycare. But my mother-in-law will not stop commenting on Maya’s delays or the leaps ahead—either harping on how we need to get her assessed for delays whenever she’s behind, or talking about how Maya is going to get bored and needs to be assessed for being smarter than the other kids whenever she’s ahead. My MIL used to teach elementary school, so she always starts with, “I know kids,” but I can’t stand this! We see her often because she’s physically disabled, so we’re there to help out, and she’s otherwise not too bad. Just pushy about this (and nearly every other parenting topic). My husband just ignores her, but it’s driving me up the wall!

—It’s A Bell Curve!

Dear Bell,

I feel you. Unsolicited advice is high on my list of things I deeply dislike. And unsolicited advice about parenting is one of the varieties of it I dislike most. When that advice comes from someone who insists they know more than you do and who is also an in-law, it’s a trifecta of infuriating. But here’s something I often tell readers—and also people IRL (when they ask me)—about dealing with difficult people, or even just one supremely irritating aspect of an otherwise OK person’s behavior: You cannot change the way others behave, so it’s pointless to try. All you have in your power is how you respond to it. (A bonus is that sometimes—but by no means always, so one should never count on it—the way we respond does end up inspiring the other person to make a change in how they treat us.)

Now, I recognize that “change your response” is way easier said than done. Your mother-in-law is driving you mad, so how can you stop being driven mad? As I see it, you have only two options. One would be to stop spending time with her—which it seems clear you’re not in a position to do (and you don’t seem to want to, either)—or, a less drastic version of this, to leave as soon as she starts down this road. Since you’re there specifically to help her, I imagine it would be uncharitable to do this. Which may mean you have just one option.

Learn to ignore her when she says such things. Tune out (I mean intentionally, planning in advance, maybe even having at hand some particular thing you’ll think about instead: I wonder where we should go on vacation? And run through some possibilities in your mind. Or, What shall I watch on TV tonight/cook for dinner/read next?). Don’t tune back in until she stops talking, when you can murmur something innocuous/unintelligible and change the subject: “So, are you watching The Golden Bachelor?” Repeat as necessary. But if tuning out feels beyond reach (it’s very hard for me), try interrupting her. As soon as she starts talking about getting Maya evaluated, cut her off. Ask her or tell her about something you’re pretty sure will interest her. And if neither of these tactics works, it’s time for the direct approach—which I offer as a last resort only because it’s the one most likely to offend her. Say, “This isn’t something I want to talk about.” Respond to protests with, “As I said, this isn’t something I want to talk about.”

While I’m here, I’ll let you in on a secret that’s not much of a secret. The remarks that infuriate us most are the ones that give a voice to our own anxieties. When it comes to parenting, that isn’t hard to do, as most of us have plenty of anxieties around it. That’s one reason the temptation to argue with the infuriator is so strong: It feels like it gives us a chance to shout down our own clamoring-to-be-heard insecurity. But I can tell you that it doesn’t help in the long term, even if sometimes it makes us feel a tiny bit better in the moment. Instead of giving in to the urge to remind your MIL that the pediatrician has assured you that Maya is just fine, and that she knows what she’s talking about because she’s the expert, have a little talk with yourself, before these visits to Grandma’s house: Maya is fine. Maya is great. Not every child goes through their developmental stages in precisely the same way. As long as you know that, the hell with what your MIL thinks.

—Michelle

Our daughter (17F) sat us down last night and explained that she was in love with the (16M) neighbor next door. Instead of being delighted, as we’ve known the boy since birth and they’ve been friends almost as long, my husband threw a fit and forbade her from seeing him ever again. An argument ensued and our daughter accused my husband of being racist (we’re Filipino and the neighbors are Black.) When he shared his reasons for reacting the way he did, my world changed forever.