Dear Amalah,

I assume you have answered this question before, but searching the site hasn’t brought anything up. I’ve googled and come up with a WIDE range of answers, but I have been reading your blog and advice column since my son was born and trust your advice exponentially more than those anonymous experts that pop up with a search engine.

I understand that what you pay a babysitter varies depending on a bunch of factors– where you live, how old they are, how many kids you have, etc. That may be true, but it’s not very helpful to me. Answers I’ve seen vary between $5-20/hour. My instinct says $8/hour or so seems fair and appropriate for what I need, but I just want to make sure I’m not WAY off the mark. I’ve probably been overprotective up to now, never hiring anyone to watch my (only) child and just using family or skipping things and staying home myself when I couldn’t get anyone, but he’s about to start preschool so I’m feeling ready to start letting go a bit more and expose him to a wider range of people. Plus, my husband is traveling more often now for work and situations are coming up often enough where I can’t just opt to stay home that I feel like I’m taking advantage of family members and I should probably just suck it up and find someone I can pay to watch my precious, energetic 4 year old boy. I’ve had lots of offers from friends and friends-of-friends, etc. to babysit, so finding someone shouldn’t be a problem, but we had our son young, so most of my friends do not have kids–while they are great for supplying babysitters, they can’t help much in the arena of the childcare pay scale. Last time I babysat anyone was the early 2000s and I generally got paid $5/hour for a typical evening of childcare.

My sense is that the price has gone up since then. Additionally, it seems like that rate would be inappropriate since most of our sitters are college-age or older. They probably won’t have child development-related degrees or anything, but they have or will soon have graduated from college and are supplementing their income or looking for a job in their field. As I said, I only have one child and, while energetic, he is well-behaved and easy to love and I’m not expecting anyone to do my laundry, drive him around or make him a four course meal or anything. I just need someone to keep him happy and safe in my home for a few hours here and there. We live in the Midwest in a fairly suburban area near a college town. Any pointers/guidelines you have would be appreciated. I would like to be generous with someone I’m trusting to care for my child, but not unreasonably so. Is there a secret excel spreadsheet somewhere that the more experienced parents are using to calculate their babysitting rates? If so, can you share? If not… could you make one?

Thanks a bunch!
Overprotective Mom of One

Try:

“How much do you charge?”

Or:

“What’s your hourly rate?

I assume you plan to interview any and all potential sitters (and check references!), and this is a perfectly reasonable, acceptable question to ask. Because the rate varies SO MUCH, even among similarly experienced applicants in the same geographic area.

Around here (near DC, where everything is HOLY MALTBALLS EXPENSIVE), $5 to $8 would likely be pretty inappropriate for anyone older than, say a junior high mother’s helper. The “going rate” is generally over $10 an hour, I’d guesstimate, but still depends. When we were interviewing part-time nanny candidates about three years ago, MOST of the rates discussed fell between $12 and $15. But that was for  a regular, long-term placement with a background check, two (then three!) kids, driving required, help with housework, etc. Every applicant I liked (generally former au pairs with a ton of experience) asked for the high end of the pay scale. In fact, I hired the most “expensive” sitter I interviewed, because I simply felt she was worth it and reeeeeally didn’t want to choose THIS particular expense to cheap out on. But the rate was discussed and negotiated and set in stone before her first day of work, so it was never me just kind of…handing over a vague-ish amount of dollars and hoping it was enough.

Before that, we had a few college-aged or fresh-out-of-college sitters for nights and weekends, and generally went with $10 an hour, but always rounded up generously at the end of the night. (Mostly because we wanted to be their first choice if they sat for other families and everybody tried to call dibs on the same Friday night!) Now we usually use our regular nanny or one of her friends (who are also former au pairs/fellow nannies/daycare workers) for nights and weekends and pay more per hour…but again, we have THREE CRAZY BOY CHILDREN, including a BABY, and I like coming home to find that the professional sitter has given them baths and cleaned the dinner dishes and cleaned up toys and ahhhhh, here’s a bajillion dollars. I don’t care. I love you.

But! Even that’s not directly relevant to you and your situation. $10 to $15 an hour here in DC might be highway robbery where you live, or maybe your college town has seen NYC-like inflation levels and everybody is asking for $20. You won’t know until you get out there and start asking. But you are totally allowed to ask, I promise. No, there is no secret handshake or spreadsheet we’re keeping from you about how much we pay our babysitters. You could certainly peruse the listings on your local Craigslist or Sittercity and see what rate is being advertised (on both jobs available and jobs wanted)…but you’ll also see that a lot of listings leave that information out. Or sitters will post a wide range that depends on the  job details (number of kids, driving, cooking, mom-at-home vs. solo gig).  Either way, the specific financials are discussed later, during the interview.

If there’s an upper limit to what you’re comfortable paying, that’s fine. Not every applicant is going to be a good fit for a variety of reasons, and money can be one of them. A college girl from a very small town, or someone whose experience mostly involved younger siblings, may charge less than someone from a big city or who is pursuing an early education degree, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t a wonderful, responsible babysitter. You can interview and check references and compare rates…but there’s still a lot of gut instinct “I like and feel good about this person watching my child” involved in the process as well.

And if you offer $8 and they counter with $10, I don’t think that’s going to cause anyone to turn the job down in an insulted huff: A good sitter will cut a first-time hiring mom some slack for not knowing the local “going rate.” If there even is one.

Photo source: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

Dear Amy,

First, I would like to thank you for always steering me in the right direction; be it love, eyeshadow, or how the heck to get those cloth diapers to COME CLEAN ALREADY. So, given that you’ve proven to be a font of useful knowledge, I thought perhaps you could help me with a slightly more sensitive dilemma.

Seven years ago, my husband lost his mother to breast cancer. He loves her dearly, and to this day, can rarely speak about her without tearing up. I never had the pleasure of meeting her, but know she must have been one hell of a woman because she raised a thoughtful, kind, loving man who is a wonderful father and husband.

My dilemma is that although we have been married for three years, we have never spent a Mother’s Day together, as he is a Merchant Marine and has always been at sea for this particular holiday. He’s always been thoughtful and tried to send a card or flowers if he was able (sometimes that’s a little difficult to do from the middle of the Atlantic), but this is the first actual year we get to celebrate it together! I am so very excited! My first two Mother’s Days were, well, less than desirable. Taking yourself out for brunch on Mother’s Day with just you and your baby, watching entire extended families at the tables around you toast their moms is probably not on the Top Ten ways to spend the day.

Now that we’re finally together for it, I would love to celebrate our little family by doing something nice. And, by ‘nice’ I don’t mean a huge, fancy brunch at a ridiculously overpriced restaurant–I’m talking more “grill up some tasty grub while spending the day playing horseshoes and sipping mimosas” kind of thing.

He is, however, less than enthused. He said he would invite people, but still hasn’t. He’s dragging his feet on making any decision about when, or with whom we’ll celebrate (if we do anything at all), and right now it looks like if anything is going to happen, I’ll be planning/buying/cooking for the whole thing. I know his reticence is coming from not having his mother here, and the very last thing I want to do is reopen wounds.

Am I horrible to want to do something special for Mother’s Day, which might be very painful for him? Should I just let it go and call it a wash in favor of sparing his feelings? Or, should I just ask that, “hey, it took me nine months to grow our little bundle of joy, I don’t think tossing some steaks on the grill in celebration of that, and of our little family, is too much to ask”?

I know you recently lost your dad, and I am so very sorry about that.Your posts about him have always been filled with love and admiration, and I have thoroughly enjoyed reading them. I hope this letter doesn’t bring up any more pain for you by reading it. I truly just need some help here in figuring out where the line is between being realistic and being selfish, and how to ask (or if I even should ask) that he really put forth some effort.

(I feel like I should note in here: most other holidays we really do tend to go all out and his behavior right now is pretty much an anomaly.)

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read this, and I wish you a very Happy Mother’s Day!

Truly,
Selfish Or Sane

Hmm. Unfortunately I am not a mind reader, and I really don’t know what’s going on inside your husband’s head — is this really about his mother, after seven years, plus after he apparently was at least quite capable to do what he COULD for you on the last two Mother’s Days, by sending cards and flowers? Does he have some “going all-out” surprise up his sleeve that differs from your suggestion so he’s acting deliberately obtuse about everything? Does he just not get that (despite not asking for the expensive meal out) this is really, really, REALLY important to you?

Obviously, everyone grieves differently. I fully admit that last Father’s Day — my first without a dad — was very hard, and not one of my best efforts for making sure the day was good for Jason. (Though it also didn’t help that it came a mere two weeks after I gave birth to a baby, and just a couple days before Jason’s birthday and gaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh too much too much system overload shutting down now, bye.) But I’d been celebrating Father’s Day for both my dad and Jason for quite a few years before he died, so the holiday had already been established as “both.” Losing my dad did not necessary mean losing the meaning and point of Father’s Day, because I still had the father of my children. (I plan to do a MUCH better job this year, I hope.)

Your husband’s situation is different, and while I don’t want to say what’s appropriate grief and what’s excessive, I also don’t think you’re being out of line here. You’re a mother now too. I completely understand wanting to celebrate the day, Hallmark or not or whatever. For him, it could be a new beginning, a new type of holiday. Something more like a second Valentine’s Day, I guess.

But really, the only way through this is to talk to him, not me. Be blunt and honest that you’re feeling a little hurt at his stalling and lack of effort, even though you’re doing your best to understand why. Is there something he’d like to talk about? A particular reason why his grief stings so hard this year? Is there something you guys could incorporate into the day’s festivities that would also honor his mother? Buying her favorite flowers, making one of her best recipes, sitting down as a family with a photo album and telling your toddler a funny story about his wonderful grandma? Or, if all that would make things even worse, is there a way you guys can focus on making this something completely new and your own? (Forget the calendar and celebrate on Saturday! Call it Wife Day! Vow to reschedule it randomly every year from now on so you’re never “alone” on Mother’s Day, because Mother’s Day is whatever Sunday you want it to be, whenever he’s home!)

What NOT to do, however, is to sit around and quietly seethe. Or go out and plan everything only to spend the whole party feeling vaguely pissed off because he made you throw your own Mother’s Day party grumble grumble silent treatment. Just…talk to him. Ask him if you’ve asked too much of him for Mother’s Day (maybe he’d be more comfortable just buying you a gift or a spa day certificate than negotiating guests lists and menus?), but also don’t feel like you need to downplay the fact that hey, honey, my feelings will be hurt if our first Mother’s Day all together ends up resembling the first two, because I was really, really excited about it. Can we talk about why you’re dragging your feet so much?

That said, the best Mother’s Day I’ve had was the one that started with breakfast in bed, and then I went shoe and lip gloss shopping completely by myself. Later we all took the kids out for pizza. IT WAS HEAVEN.

Hi Amalah! Big fan here. I am hoping you can solve this bedtime mess that I’ve gotten myself into.

I have a beautiful 18-month-old daughter that runs the roost around here, especially at bedtime. We do not go to bed until she does, usually around 9:00 if we are lucky. (I have to wake up before dawn because of a long commute, so this is late for me.) She has no bedtime routine, except that when she is tired, she crawls into my husband’s lap and stays there until she is good and asleep. Then he transfers her to the crib. Any attempt to rock her to sleep or put her in the crib while still awake results in a tantrum.

Overall, though, getting her to sleep is the easy part. What is slowly driving us crazy is the night wakings. Five to six nights a week, she wakes up and cries until one of us picks her up and puts her in our bed. I know that is the wrong thing to do, but she can not be calmed any other way. Back rubs just upset her more because WHY WON’T YOU PICK ME UP, MOMMY? and no matter how long you hold her and rock her (standing up, because she hates the glider), she will cry as soon as her head touches the crib mattress.

It wasn’t always like this. The first twelve months of her life she had a solid bedtime routine that ended with her falling asleep (quickly, peacefully) in my arms as I rocked her to sleep. I never succeeded at putting her into the crib “drowsy, but awake” as everyone suggests. But she slept through the night every night, unless a tooth or illness cropped up. The chaos started when I eliminated her bedtime bottle. She would not let me rock her to sleep without it, and she sleepily turned to her dad for comfort from the mean mama trying to make her go to bed.

So I guess my questions are:

1) Can this bedtime situation be saved?
2) Do you have any theories on why she is waking up so frequently at night? And what should I do about it?

Thanks in advance!

Ay yi yi, y’all. Is this not pretty much everyone’s worst nightmare? Sorry, OP.

So. You’ve got a bunch of nighttime problems here, but they’re all pretty much stemming from a singular source: That bedtime “routine.”

1) She’s going to bed too late, basically at her point of exhaustion from the sounds of it, whenever she decides she’s too tired to fight it any longer. Honestly, 9 pm is on the late side for an 18-month-old, even if she was sleeping through the night. Which she is not. Overtired kids are more prone to night wakings.

2) She’s never learned to put herself to sleep on her own. Even before things went completely bonkers, she was dependent on you to basically wait it out and put her down after she’s sound asleep. She still is. The problem is now even more obvious because a) she’s older, and these sleep disturbances SHOULD be a thing of the past, barring illness or the occasional growth spurt, b) she’s overtired and it’s taking a toll on her, and c) well, she continues to basically get what she wants at night, every night, as you guys blearily head to her room and retrieve her. Why mess with what works, yo?

Except obviously, it’s not really working. This is not a sustainable situation, for ANY of you. (Especially since I’m assuming long-term co-sleeping probably isn’t your bag, and you’d like her to sleep in her own room. Word to that.)

I had a come-to-Jesus moment when my third son, Ike, was eight months old and pretty much doing everything your daughter is — the endless bedtime, the wakings at 2…then 3…then 4 — when I suddenly found myself behind the wheel of the car, in the parking lot at my second son, Ezra’s, preschool, with absolutely no recollection of how I got there. I was so tired and I had NO business driving anywhere, much less through an elementary school crossing zone with multiple children in my car. And you’re commuting at dawn! Trust me, as awful and daunting as sleep training can seem before and during…I’d personally gladly trade some tantrums at home for a car wreck on the highway. Or a ton of missed days at work because you’re run down and sick. Or just generally unhappy all the time because your lack of sleep is robbing you of everything. Having a baby does not change the fact that you and your husband are still human beings who need sleep.

I would definitely recommend you at least check out Richard Ferber’s book (Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems). I think a lot of people have incorrect preconceptions about “the Ferber method” — preconceptions he frankly addresses in the latest edition, which I really liked. Ferber is NOT “let ‘em scream for hours at bedtime and don’t go in if they wake up.” Ferber is not hardcore Cry-It-Out (CIO), but more of the “gradual extinction” method, in which you (gradually) remove yourself from your daughter’s falling-asleep process. The theory is that once she’s putting herself to sleep initially, she’ll also learn to control those night-wakings before they actually, fully wake her up. And the fact that she won’t be so tired anymore will mean fewer night-wakings anyway.

However, even if you are anti-ANY AND ALL CRYING/TANTRUMS/DISTRESS, I’d still recommend reading Ferber’s book, because he lays out a logical, compelling case on why a good night’s sleep is crucially, vitally important to your daughter, as well. This isn’t a good situation for her, either.  I’ve struggled with bouts of insomnia my whole life — I can get to sleep just fine, but the minute I’m a bit stressed (HINT: ALWAYS) I start waking up at night for no reason, and am completely unable to fall back asleep. It sucks. Over the years I’ve found self-soothing techniques and mental relaxation exercises that allow me to shut off my brain and get back to sleep, but UGH. I hate it. So I’m super-sympathetic to your daughter here, because I know exactly the pissed-off, oh-no-not-again, MOM GET IN HERE AND HELP state she’s waking up to at night.

I think the Ferber book will lay out the right plan for you to move bedtime off Daddy’s lap at 9 pm and back to 8 pm in the crib. If you’re not sure, there’s also The Happiest Toddler on the Block and The No-Cry Sleep Solution For Toddlers. Both of which are highly respected systems that I know have worked for a lot of families. (No-Cry did not work for us, for Ike, but I admit it’s all about consistent, long-term execution and we were all over the place for awhile, especially since we had two OTHER children to deal with at bedtime. Ferber got us back on track in two nights. TWO NIGHTS.) Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child is another one you could check out.

Basically, I don’t necessarily care WHAT approach you go with, just that I want you to get serious, pick an approach and then STAY WITH IT. Stay strong and consistent. Your daughter is of course the most precious being in the world, but she is Not The Boss Of Bedtime Or You. Nor should she, because babies are ridiculous and make no sense, because YOU NEED TO SLEEP GAH WHY WON’T YOU SLEEP.

Dear Amy,

I’m stuck in a situation that I do not know how to handle. I am a preschool teacher at a private nursery. I do not have my Bachelor’s Degree yet but I’m in the process of completing it. I have a cousin whose son attends my class. My cousin’s son is 5 years old and he has a serious stutter. Through my education I know that his stutter needs some professional intervention. I do not know how to tell my cousin that this is a serious problem and should be checked out. My family really doesn’t see me as a professional and I’m afraid they might get upset if I say something. She is also a single mother and doesn’t have the money to pay for a speech pathologist. When I have suggested it before she just said, “Well I was like that when I was young, and I’m ok!” Which as a teacher when parents say that to me it means denial. I don’t know how to make her get help for my nephew. Please Help!!

Thank you!

Is there a reason the suggestion must come from you, personally? If your nephew does indeed have a severe stutter, other people at his school have surely noticed it, no? Does the school have any process in place for making “official” suggestions or recommendations to parents in regards to speech delays or other communication problems? Is there a way to get the school director/principal involved in the discussion (and remove yourself)?

I’m sure it depends on the preschool, but most schools offer SOME kind of feedback or report on each child’s academic progress and overall development. If your nephew is difficult to understand in class, the school should absolutely be communicating this to his mother and recommend he be evaluated, in a neutral yet official way that clearly separates your role as Auntie from the situation.

Of course, it’s possible that they have said something to your cousin about it in the past and were met with the same “oh, he’ll outgrow it” answer. And some kids do outgrow stuttering without any intervention at all! This is true, and the question of whether stuttering children need speech therapy — and if so, at what age — is actually quite hotly debated. (If it were MY kid, I’d still let professionals make the determination, but that’s just me.)

Since a large percentage of stuttering children outgrow the problem without any intervention, how do you figure out when to stop waiting it out? Here are the risk factors for a childhood stutter becoming a chronic problem that is less likely to resolve on its own, from the Stuttering Foundation’s website. They suggest that any child for whom two or more of these factors are true be evaluated by a speech therapist:

• Family history. Almost half of all children who stutter have a family member who stutters. The risk that the child is actually stuttering instead of just having normal disfluencies increases if that family member is still stuttering. There is less risk if the family member outgrew stuttering as a child.

• Age at onset. Children who begin stuttering before age 3 1/2 are more likely to outgrow stuttering; if the child begins stuttering before age 3, there is a much better chance she will outgrow it within 6 months.

• Time since onset. Between 75% and 80% of all children who begin stuttering will stop within 12 to 24 months without speech therapy. If the child has been stuttering longer than 6 months, he may be less likely to outgrow it on his own. If he has been stuttering longer than 12 months, there is an even smaller likelihood he will outgrow it on his own.

• Gender. Girls are more likely than boys to outgrow stuttering. In fact, three to four boys continue to stutter for every girl who stutters.

• Other speech and language factors. A child who speaks clearly with few, if any, speech errors would be more likely to outgrow stuttering than a child whose speech errors make him difficult to understand. If the child makes frequent speech errors such as substituting one sound for another or leaving sounds out of words, or has trouble following directions, there should be more concern. The most recent findings dispel previous reports that children who begin stuttering have, as a group, lower language skills. On the contrary, there are indications that they are well within the norms or above. Advanced language skills appear to be even more of a risk factor for children whose stuttering persists.

(Source)

So your nephew has a parent who stuttered, but who outgrew her own stutter. That’s good, except her odds were better from the start, being a girl instead of a boy. Your letter doesn’t mention how long the problem has been going on or when it started, both of which are really important factors.

If you know he’s been stuttering for a long time, or developed it later (after age three), then yeah. You’re probably right on, and should escalate your concerns to other people at the school. At age five, he should qualify for a free evaluation from the school district, in case it’s the price tag on private speech therapy that’s making your cousin extra hesitant. (Another question: What does your nephew’s pediatrician say??) And even though he attends a private preschool, the public school district can provide him with speech therapy, provided they conclude that he needs it after an evaluation.

There’s also the less-awesome option of sitting around and waiting for him to start kindergarten, and for a teacher there to refer him to the speech therapist for an evaluation, if the stutter continues and makes it difficult for him to communicate clearly in class. But that could be a costly decision for your nephew, just because everybody wanted to avoid a confrontation. I think you are in the better position now, being both a caring relative AND a concerned education professional, to make a more serious push/nudge in the direction of “heeeey, what’s the harm in getting this checked out?”

Talk to the other teachers or higher-ups at the preschool and mention your concerns. Ask them if they’re noticed the stutter (it’s possible there’a situational thing going on?) and said anything to your cousin. Ask what procedure or process the school has in place for making suggestions about developmental or communication delays. (You’ll likely see many other red flags in your career in early childhood education, so it’s good to know what you are expected to do when you suspect other parents are missing or ignoring potential problems.) Get the school to talk to her.

And then do your best to balance out your insight/guidance on what you’ve read about stuttering (“this is a great site/book/organization etc.”), while not letting your role as educator take over your interactions. I’m sorry it sounds like your family doesn’t fully respect your career or credentials, but I doubt ignoring obvious warning signs in hopes of not rocking the boat will help in that regard. (Think years later, if the stutter never improves, and everybody is wondering why you didn’t say anything.) But I’d still try to hand off the message to a non-related messenger, if at all possible. In the meantime, you’re his aunt and her cousin first, and you love them and support them both, no matter what.

Photo source: iStockPhoto/ Thinkstock

Hi Amy,

Firstly, I should warn you I’ve decided to write this in the heat of the moment in a blind panic…just when all the best decisions are made. But I read all your columns and you were the first person I could think of to give me some honest, blunt advice. As a bit of a back story, I’m not much of a drinker and come from a family that doesn’t really drink. My husband is from a family (and country) where drinking is a part of their lifestyle, holidays, dinners, everything. So over the years I have oscillated between thinking he may have a drinking problem to thinking his attitude towards alcohol is probably more the norm than mine. He is a great father and partner…responsible, engaged, hard working, who I am to judge if he wants a couple of beers with dinner?

We have a 7 month old son and I have just gone back to school part time. This evening, I got home from classes to find my precious baby on the bed in a dark room crying his little eyes out and my husband was D-R-U-N-K on the bed next to him not responding to his needs! He first told me that he hadn’t been drinking, then it was a bottle of white, then a bottle of red, then back to nothing. I sent him from the room to grab a nappy and pjs while I nursed the baby and he came back first with a towel and water bottle and when I repeated what I wanted he wandered around the kitchen aimlessly and then crashed on the couch.

All this to say, he was in no state to be caring for our child and I feel ill when I think of what could have happened.

Nothing like this has ever happened before and I’m at a loss for what to do. I have university in 3 days and have arranged alternate care for the baby but what about beyond that? Can I trust my husband to watch him ever again? I’ve left him with his father many times without a worry or second thought. Is he an alcoholic? (I know you can’t possibly know the answer to this but is this the sort of thing anyone other than an alcoholic would do?) Where do we go from here? I’m in desperate need of some advice!

From,
Middle Class Suburban Momma from a “Picture Perfect” Home

You know this column all began when I got the bright idea to write a “fake” advice column? I would solicit purposely ridiculous questions from my friends and then answer them with deliberately bad, boneheaded advice. It went on like that for awhile, and then I slowly started getting “real” questions, but always about lighthearted, non-serious stuff. Shampoo. Eye shadow. Shoes.

To this day I’m not sure how I ended up with an advice column that regularly gets questions like this. I’m not complaining, dear OP, but am just taking a few minutes to type some pointless sentences while my brain warms up enough to figure out what to say.

Okay, so I drink. My husband drinks, our friends drink, we like wine with dinner and cocktails at parties and beers at barbecues and all that. However, I have personally seen — with friends and family members — when the line between social drinking and a drinking problem blurs, and when it completely gets crossed. And it looks a lot like what you witnessed with your husband. I’m sorry.

Luckily, nothing bad happened. I mean, a baby left to sob alone in a dark room is pretty bad, but you know what I mean. He wasn’t injured or left outside or God forbid, in the backseat of the car when your husband decided to drive to a bar, or something. It is obviously of the utmost importance that nothing like that ever, ever happens. Your baby’s safety (and yours) is of the utmost importance.

What I’m wondering about is what happened the next day, after you wrote this letter, when he finally came to. Did he come clean about how much he drank? Was he horrified? Apologetic? Admit he needed help or agree to attend AA meetings or something? Give you any indication that the night before served as a wake-up call?

Or was he defensive or belligerent? Did he refuse to talk about it? Did he accuse you of exaggerating? Tell you to relax, nothing happened, what’s the big deal?

Did he once again drink multiple beers with dinner that night?

If any of the latter things happened, I’m sorry, he’s in denial and you have some very tough choices ahead of you. And a lot of alternate childcare to arrange, because no, you cannot and should not trust him. (Does your university offer any childcare for part-time students? Any friends or family you can confide in and lean on for practical help right now?)

But even if the former happened, he’s NOT off the hook or anything. Plenty of alcoholics can hit false bottoms and swear to change, but without help and support, they can backslide fairly quickly. Or simply become better at hiding their drinking from their loved ones. I would absolutely feel justified making some ultimatums here.

Please contact Al-Anon ASAP and soak up every bit of advice and guidance they can offer about what you should do next. How to help your husband help himself, while ALSO keeping your child out of the line of booze-related fire. Talk to other people who have been in similar situations with alcoholic family members, and PLEASE don’t let anyone try to shake you down with stuff like “oh, it happened ONE TIME, what’s the big deal, I’m sure it won’t happen again, nothing ‘bad’ happened, etc.” Whatever. One time, two times: the stakes are way, way too high to gamble with here. (If you haven’t already, please read this post and the accompanying comments from many other mothers and children who dealt with alcoholic spouses/parents. It’s…well, sobering.)

I hope everything works out for you, OP. I hope hope hope. Please keep in touch, because I will be thinking about you and yes, hoping for the best possible outcome.

Guess what? The cast is off and life as we knew it is resuming… but the SCREAMING and the WHINING are apparently here to stay. I’m working on some sticker charts (some success) and doing time outs, taking away toys, etc. but my question is actually a bigger picture one. When can you start teaching your kids about appreciating what they have vs. what other kids don’t have? I think this is what seriously frustrates me the most. My kids are super spoiled with attention, affection AND things (we do discipline and are strict on schedules—don’t worry), but I am ready to start showing her how some other kids have to live.

I have read awesome ideas about having older kids have birthday parties where their friends bring toys to donate and at the holidays cleaning out toy rooms with your kids to donate, but I still feel she is really a little too young to grasp that. How can I start instilling some of these values of appreciation and gratitude at this very young age?

Thanks!

PS Also how many times do you have to tell your parents and in-laws that we DON’T WANT ANY MORE TOYS? Money for their college accounts, please!?!?!? They are still not getting it.

Hmm. Yeah…she’s really on the young side here, in terms of understanding “how other kids live.” Toddlers are, universally speaking, pretty selfish creatures, but mostly because they’re just emotionally immature creatures. (As opposed to being inherently, unrequitedly, permanently selfish creatures.) Obviously, resisting and curbing the spoiling and toys!toys!toys! onslaught are noble and important efforts. Empathy and compassion must be modeled at all times, of course. But expecting a two year old to understand…poverty? To exhibit high-level empathy for the less fortunate? To understand just how “good she has it?” I dunno. The kind of comprehension you’re hoping for is still a few years off — a level of empathy most children aren’t capable of truly feeling until age five or six. (And even then, it’s a struggle.)

There are definitely things you can do with young children to start building a good foundation for awareness of the less fortunate. Encourage her to contribute items to a charitable donation bag. Start by going through your closet and have her put your items in the bag or box. Then baby-step your way into helping her select items from her own closet that she’s outgrown. Don’t zero-to-sixty your way into demanding she give away toys — even baby toys — or make her feel like you’re coming for “her things.” (What toddlers lack in empathy they more than make up with a natural sense of territorial possessiveness.) Have her help you go through your pantry for a food drive, or take her to the toy store to buy something new for a shelter.

But again, don’t expect this stuff to immediately “click” and result in fewer tantrums and less whining. She’ll probably have no real grasp on what you’re doing. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing, provided you have realistic, long-term expectations. You’re building a foundation, not shooting a magic bullet at the terrible twos and threes. Your daughter’s behavior sounds…well, pretty typical, for almost-three. As she gets older, you can start talking about wants vs. needs (that’s actually in the kindergarten curriculum around here), or institute a new-toy-in, old-toy-donated policy.

I want to caution you, however, from using the hypothetical “less fortunate” as a kind of…punishment? Or something scary or guilt-inducing for her? Or because you’re angry or frustrated because she’s taking her family’s security for granted?  Right now, focus on her behavior and her growing ability to be aware of/control that behavior. How that behavior ranks in the realm of First World Problems? Not so much. (You also don’t want to prematurely expose her to fact that the world is a terrifying, unkind place, or make her feel like her sense of security is false and can be ripped away at any moment, like so-and-so-down-the-street-who-lost-everything-in-a-fire-that-could-happen-to-you-so-stop-whining. Helloooooo anxiety!)

I mean, how many of us also heard the “there are starving children in Africa!” scold at dinner time growing up, and still…you know, refused to eat dinner or responded with a smart-alecky “I’ll mail them my green beans, then?” And hopefully we all still managed to grow up into decent, socially-conscious adults. Despite driving our parents crazy with our selfish, entitled moments.

I don’t remember how old I was (probably early-to-mid-elementary school age), but I vividly remember getting a comic book at Sunday School that included a panel about…well, a starving child in Africa. Just the night before I’d thrown a protracted fit over my dinner and refused to eat it. I was absolutely WALLOPED with guilt. I came home and cried, unable to shake the image of a starving cartoon. I talked to my parents about it and they suggested that we sponsor a child overseas as a family, via one of those international charities that allows you to pay for a child’s schooling and meals. And we did, for years. We put her picture on the fridge and read her letters and all that. I hope her involvement in the program made a difference for her (at some point in her teen years we were notified that she was no longer participating and our updates sadly stopped), but I know it made a big difference for me. BUT. It made a difference mostly because I was ready, because it wasn’t forced, because my parents modeled empathy and compassion as best they could and then allowed me to have my own lightbulb moment.

Right now, at almost-three, she’s really just learning that other people have feelings too. Next on her emotional maturity agenda is to realize that her behavior and words can impact other people’s feelings. And she’ll naturally test this out, quit a bit, in both positive and negative ways. But there’s a mature and compassionate human being in your future, I promise. Provided that you are a compassionate human being, of course.

Here’s another great article on empathy and compassion in children. The fact that your daughter is “spoiled” with attention will actually be key to her own emotional development:

Dr. Mark A. Barnett, a professor of psychology at Kansas State University in Manhattan, proposes that the route to caring for others begins with a solid sense of self. Just as biologists suspect that only those highly intelligent animals capable of recognizing themselves in a mirror can put themselves empathically in a fellow’s furry shoes, so a child must feel in control of his own identity before attending to the pleas of the larger world.

“A child whose own emotional needs are taken care of is more responsive to the emotions of others,” Dr. Barnett said. “A child who is insecure has difficulty vicariously experiencing emotions of someone else.”

And here’s a reminder for all of us that those charitable actions matter, even if our children are still too young to fully “get it:”

Beyond being loved, a child learns empathy by example. Empathetic parents generally rear empathetic children, said Dr. Barnett, particularly when those compassionate gestures extend beyond the members of the immediate family. Children figure out soon enough that parents who care only for their offspring in truth care only for themselves.

(As for the PS. Yeeeeeah, I’ve given up on trying to dictate how other people spend their money, even on my children. Giving money to college funds is never going to win out for a grandparent who wants to see the joy and smiles and squeals of a child ripping open a big ‘ol box of conspicuous consumption. If you want a college fund, skip the holiday shopping and put the money in it yourself. Let the relatives take care of having “stuff” to unwrap. And feel free to collect anything that underwhelmed or was left unopened and return it…or donate it.)

Photo Source: Sippy Cups & Chardonnay

Thank you to Equifax for underwriting this conversation about family internet security

My six-year-old recently discovered YouTube. And I discovered the perils that lie in those pesky lists of “Related Videos.”

After launching a harmless cartoon from within the Angry Birds app on my phone or iPad, for example, he would very rapidly start clicking on fan-made videos and parodies, and the next thing I’d hear was a string of filthy language and/or violence blaring from God knows WHAT he was watching.

I removed the YouTube app; I employed what limited safe search options I could…but again, he could easily launch videos from within his favorite games, and then a few stray clicks later and he was in a untamed frontier of Not Appropriate Stuff. Since I’d selectively employed YouTube videos as entertainment or distraction for YEARS (we probably are responsible for at least 2 million views of the Sneezing Panda video alone), it wasn’t really fair for me to simply declare NO YOUTUBE EVER AGAIN.

So we had our very first Internet Talk. Our first talk about what’s appropriate…and why there are many, many things out there that are NOT. FOR. KIDS. Scary stuff. Grown-up stuff. I gave him a set list of channels and users he is allowed to watch (the official Rovio, Nick Jr., the Muppets, etc.). I emphasized my need to trust him to follow the rules – even if I’m not there and he happens to find my phone – and laid out the consequences if I found him ever going down the rabbit hole of videos that I had not pre-screened for him.

He now knows to check who posted the video before hitting play. If it’s not on our “YouTube For Kids” list, he clicks away instead.

This talk will be the first of many, I am sure, as kids’ Internet usage is pretty much a fact of life now. (My kindergartner’s reading homework is all done online, already.) Right now, I’m focused on protecting them from strange content, the way I talk with them about strange people. But before I know it, I’m going to be trying to protect them from themselves.

Is talking about the Internet the new Sex Talk? Are your kids mature enough and ready for social networking? Say No To Drugs And Also Strangers In Chat Rooms Asking For Your Address? Don’t drink and drive…or overshare on the Internet? And no, I don’t care what your friends’ moms let them do, one out of every 10 of you kids is going to get your identity stolen, and it’s not going to be you if I can help it SO HELP ME?

I think about this a lot already, ESPECIALLY as a parent who blogs and uses an array of social networks and shares quite a bit about my life online. I’ve learned privacy lessons the hard way. (I once had an angry blog reader post my home address in my comments section in a vaguely threatening way, and I was lucky to notice it right before checking out for the weekend.) I’ve made mistakes and redrawn my boundaries.

Much like the decision to talk openly with your kids about your history with sex, alcohol and drugs, I’m going to have to figure out how much to share with them about my relationship with the Internet. The good, the bad and the close calls with creepy people or identity theft or just plain sharing a liiiiiiittle too much with an audience that is much, much bigger than you realize, sometimes.

I’d very much appreciate hearing from any of you who have had these discussions already. How much freedom do you give your kids on the ‘net? Where does your trust end and your supervision (and nosiness) begin? What dangers have you focused on? What solutions have you come up with now that it’s not enough to keep computers out of their rooms, when they can get online via phones and tablets and video game consoles? Does your own Internet usage reflect the boundaries you’ve set for your kids or are you guilty of the occasional “do as I say, not as I do” type of rule-setting?

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Thank you to Equifax for sponsoring this conversation on family internet security.

Amalah,

Getting back to a very serious topic: can we talk about hair removal systems? Specifically razors? I was at the local Costco with my sister the other day and she was buying more razors than I would think anyone would ever need in a lifetime. When I mocked her she said, “with three shaving girls in our house we go through a lot of razors.” Which made me think – how often are you supposed to replace your razor blades in your trusty shower tool? Am I not doing it often enough? Sure I don’t wait until its rusty, but I don’t have a written schedule of every two weeks, but maybe I should? Any insight?

While we’re on the subject, are more blades really better? Any science to the subject? Am I wasting my time with the razor and I should really just move on to creams/waxes/lasers?

Thanks!
R

Happy Friday, everyone! It’s been a really, really long week. I hope y’all can forgive me for hiding from the Very Serious Big Deal Brainhurty Questions you’ve sent in and picking this one instead. We’ll tackle bigger problems next week, promise.

So! Razors. Ugh. How complicated they’ve gotten lately. Between razors (and the accompanying shaving creams/gels/foams/lotions) and the deodorant aisle, you could realistically spend about two hours of your life contemplating all your options.

For starters, my razor of choice is a MacGuyvered hybrid: I use a Gillette Venus HANDLE, but not the blades. I use my husband’s Gillette Mach 3 blades. (They’re compatible, yes.) Why? Well, I like the Venus handle design — it’s definitely been made with the whole leg-and-armpit-shaving angles in mind, as opposed to the stick-straight styles of Olde. I rarely nick myself with the curvier handle, even though I always assumed that was more of the fault of the blades, or my shaving technique.

But I cannot STAND the Venus blades. Or any of the girl-y blades with the lotion strips or whatever those are. You still need a separate shaving cream or gel, and it seemed to me the strips accomplished little more than prematurely gumming up and dulling the blades. So I went through them faster and spent more money. (Also don’t get me started on the fact that each refill cartridge is INDIVIDUALLY packaged in a wee plastic pod, like a fancy Keurig coffee thing. So stupidly wasteful.) I like a nice, straightforward three-blade razor head that pivots. I have no idea how many blades some of the other razors are up to these days (five? six? 42?), but I like three. It’s probably a matter of personal preference — I have never come across anything of the non-marketing/advertising variety that definitively “proves” that more blades are better, or that even just one or two blades are woefully insufficient.

Basically: Are you happy with your razor, be it a jumbo bag of pink Daisy razors or something fancier? Awesome. Go with it. If you’re not, I’d recommend giving the men’s Mach 3 a try, especially if you already own a different Gillette handle.

Now onto the “how often should you replace your razor blade” question. That ALSO depends. It depends on how often you shave, how large of an area you’re shaving, and your body hair type. Thick and coarse and curly hair that grows super fast? You’re gonna be changing your blade a lot more than someone who is shaving fine peach-fuzz hair off every other day. (My leg hair is super-fine, but my bikini area is…uh, not. And will wreck a blade much faster.)

So there’s no set timeline! You’re probably doing just fine. You definitely want to pitch any blade that’s rusted IMMEDIATELY, or any blade that feels like it’s “tugging” on the hair instead of gliding smoothly across your skin. If you’re using a not-so-fresh blade and notice nicks or rashes or razor-burn bumps, toss it. That’s the dullness, and no amount of shaving cream is going to help it.

(Sidebar! For shaving creams, I use Alba Botanica Moisturizing Foam Shave. For super-sensitive/dry-skin types, Jason highly recommends Avalon Organics Moisturizing Cream Shave [Unscented]. I’ve used it as well and agree that it is uh-mazing, but since I’m shaving a much larger area than just a face, I go through too much of it, too quickly. [It's quite thick and concentrated.] But if you’re really sensitive and haven’t found anything gentle or moisturizing enough, try it! It’s like shaving with creamy butter lotion.)

Since those little disposable suckers are expensive, however, I definitely try to use them as many times as humanly possible. To help prevent premature rusting/dullness, make sure you REALLY rinse them well after use — get them completely clear of hair and shaving cream residue. Shake off excess water, then let them air dry, preferably upright. Use one of those wall-hang-y things instead of setting your razor down in a puddle on a shelf or soap dish.

I’ve tried the creams (can’t stomach the ingredients anymore) and the waxes (can’t seem to commit to the process long-term and always revert back to shaving and tweezing). And I have approximately seventeen million other things I’d rather spend my money on than laser hair removal. (Though again, I am not dealing with the level of coarse, dark all-over hair that some of y’all have, so NO JUDGMENT for anyone who simplifies her life through lasers.) I have no first-hand experience with the at-home permanent hair removal gadgets (anyone?) like this $500 thingamajig from Sephora, though I have been SORELY TEMPTED to buy this shower-friendly brow-and-bikini kit from Bliss on several occasions.

Sharing time! How often do you change your razor? If you even remember. Which I kind of don’t. And also, does anyone have any advice on how to stop missing the SAME TWO PLACES on the back of my ankle and the one part of my kneecap EVERY TIME I SHAVE? What in the world, self. You look like a hairy patchwork quilt.

First, Thanks for your advice previously. My darling kiddos never did stop taking off their diapers at naptime so we decided in January to go cold turkey and potty train. They were 26 months. (As a side note, naptimes they still take off their pants and underwear nearly every time, they just aren’t confined to cribs anymore, and so they trash their room and several times a week they use their carpet as a toilet. Lovely. So that didn’t help that situation at all.) We did a 3-day bootcamp, pants off, all-potty-all-the-time weekend and after the third day, they both totally got it. (#1 and #2, pretty consistently.) Sure, there were accidents, but that was expected and got better after the first week. They both did great for the first two weeks, we were able to discontinue M&Ms after about 4 days and the cheering and high-fives were enough incentive.

Sunshine and rainbows, right? Kid One has been awesome. No accidents in weeks, I would consider him fully trained. Kid Two, however, did great the first two weeks, then about 3 weeks ago started pooping in his pants. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. And on the possibly TMI realm, the kid poops several times a day. But here’s the thing. He will go into the bathroom, stand in front of the potty, and poop his pants without making so much as a tiny effort to go into the potty. He does this nearly every time. He is uncomfortable and immediately asks for clean underwear. He poops his pants a half dozen times a day. Every single time he repeats the mantra “Poopy Go in potty! It’s accident. Accidents Happen and it’s OK!” (We have Elmo and Grover to thank for that little piece of wisdom.) I read the column you posted previously about kids only going in their diapers, but that is not exactly our issue. He knows he needs to go in the potty. He cheers and claps when his brother goes. He goes into to the bathroom as though he wants to use the potty, he just doesn’t. We put away all the diapers, and he’s almost entirely pee-perfect. He even wakes up dry most mornings and even gets up in the night to go if needed. (Kid One wakes up wet every morning, never gets up in the night, despite a near-perfect record in the day.) So together they equal one awesomely potty trained kid. Awesome if they weren’t, in fact, two kids.

So far we tried the stickers/new toy incentive. Kid One quickly filled his sticker chart and got to go to Target with Daddy (By himself!) and pick out a toy. Kid Two totally covets the Cookie Monster toy his brother picked out, and keeps talking about how he is going to get Elmo as his treat. Except he has earned exactly ZERO stickers because he has not made a single poopy in the potty. Meanwhile, the sticker thing is motivating Kid One like crazy and he’s 1 sticker away from his 2nd treat in a week. We have tried to go back to the bootcamp, following him around without his pants, rushing him to the potty when needed. Always to the “Accidents Happen, It’s OK.” result. He has asked a couple times to “wear diapers like baby” which I have responded by building up how awesome his Buzz Lightyear underwear are and how he’s such a big boy. And how Buzz, and Woody and Elmo and Captain America and whomever else I can think of at the time all go poopy in the potty so he should too. I am out of ideas, but I am exhausted with changing his pants a dozen times a day, the laundry, oh the laundry, and I am dreading going into public because he is a ticking time bomb. I am running out of ideas. I know there may be nothing I can do, he just needs to figure it out on his own, but seriously, it’s going to be summer again soon and I don’t want to be reluctant to go out of the house and enjoy it because my kid poops his pants ALL. THE. TIME.

So once again, oh seasoned veteran parent of boys and collective brilliance of the internet, please fix my kid’s issue. Thanks a billion.

Okay, so I’m going to preface my advice — or soften the blow, depending on how you look at it — by saying that I was given this very advice, not so very long ago, about my adorable and delightful middle child. Who went through an extended potty training regression after the birth of my third child, especially when it came to poop. I brought it up to our pediatrician, having tried everything I could think of, including stickers, rewards, bribes, praise, ignoring, you name it.

“Put him back in diapers,” she told me. “Tell him diapers are for babies. And only babies poop in their pants. You’re not shaming him. You’re just telling him the facts.”

I felt uneasy, initially — we were SO CLOSE, I was SURE, and I was worried this would be kind of shame-y and defeatist and maybe we’d see even more of a regression if we let him take that step backwards. Especially since he seemed to welcome the return of the diapers and pull-ups. He was jealous of the baby! So maybe he wanted to be a baby! And would have no motivation to finish training, now that accidents were off the table, etc. etc.

But you know what? It was the right call. It saved my sanity (I did have that pesky newborn at the time, after all) to not be fighting the poop battle or cleaning up accidents, and it turned out the happiness over the diapers was incredibly short-lived. Maybe two weeks later? A month? He decided that he was not a baby after all and was tired of being treated like one, and that was that. He pooped on the potty one day and refused to even consider anything but his big-boy pants the next. Done.

So. Honey. Put that kid back in diapers.

I mean, when I’ve dealt with the halfway-there kiddos, we were dealing with one poop incident a DAY. You have a kid consistently having multiple accidents a day, every day, with or without diapers, standing in front of the toilet and making no effort. That’s not a halfway-there kid, I’m sorry. I mean, if you had a kid who could poop on the potty but peed his pants the rest of the time, you’d have him in some good absorbent pants, right? He’s not ready, either mentally or physically or something. And the fact that he’s asked for his diapers back means he probably knows it.

He’s still on the young side — especially for a boy, if I may engage in sweeping generalizations about maturity and that girls seem to train easier/faster than boys. He obviously gets a good amount of the process, but something just hasn’t finished connecting all the dots. Maybe he doesn’t get as much “warning” as his brother, or is getting a little too much fiber. Or he just can’t be bothered with stopping what he’s doing so many times a day to be bothered. I don’t know. And the truth is you’ll probably never know “why” either. But I can tell you that continuing to drive yourselves collectively crazy with HALF A DOZEN POOP ACCIDENTS ON A DAILY BASIS is not going to solve anything.

Call for a potty-training ceasefire. Since he’s doing great on the pee front, you could do pull-ups that let him hold on to that bit of independence. Or cloth training pants with a flushable liner inside to help make clean-up easier. Or you could go completely back to diapers, or do a combination. Either way, your priority now should be to stop the accidents happening in underwear, rather than pushing him to go on the potty. You should be able to leave the house. You have to be able to leave the house. So do whatever you have to do to be able to leave the house.

I promise you — PINKIE SWEAR PROMISE — that he will poop on the potty. At some point. Probably in a few months. I also promise that there’s nothing you can do to push that date up, realistically. Begging, pleading, bribing, training yourselves to plop his butt on the toilet every time you think his face looks a little weird…none of that works when you’re dealing with a kid who isn’t ready. And while your son shows some signs of being ready, none of them are quite as compelling as the whole HALF A DOZEN POOP ACCIDENTS EVERY SINGLE DAY thing.

You have twins, but they are two different kids — while the peer pressure can certainly be handy, it’s okay and normal if they train at different ages. (There was a six-month age difference between my first two children’s respective training ages.) Keep doing what works for his brother for now, then phase out the stickers/rewards when he’s done. And then don’t be afraid to bring them back in the future for your other son. When he’s ready. From the sound of him, he’ll probably let you know when he’s ready.

Hey there. I’m hoping you or your readers will have some straightforward advice.

I’m writing this at 5am. I should be sleeping, because I am 36 weeks pregnant and I should “sleep while I can.” Ah, well.

A month or so ago, my mother and I were discussing my labor and delivery and I mentioned something about scheduling her postpartum visit. She said, “I had been assuming I would be there for the delivery!” As in, at the hospital in the delivery room. Silence from me. It certainly hadn’t been what I was assuming nor necessarily what I wanted. She said that she was taken aback that I was even thinking about it and that it reflected on her importance in my life. It’s the truth in her mind, but arguably emotionally heavy handed.

Obviously, this is very important to her. My partner and I spent time thinking about what we wanted out of the birth experience and I conceived a plan that I thought would work for me. I would call her when I went into labor and someone would tell her when things had progressed enough at the hospital for her to join us. Essentially, she could come when I no longer cared who was in the room. I was trying to find a cooperative solution because I had heard enough stories from friends of alienating their mothers for years over this. (Turns out this situation is not uncommon.) I told her about this plan and she was agreeable.

Fast forward. My mom has just spent five days visiting and helping us paint the spawn’s room and generally being super handy. On one hand, it’s been great and extremely helpful. On the other, it’s been mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausting. After I dropped her at the airport I almost wanted to cry at the relief of being an adult again and not someone’s child.

It really made me reconsider my earlier decision. I don’t want her at the delivery. I don’t want to be her child there. My partner and I communicate better alone and we are doing hippo birthing (HypnoBirthing), so our communication is key. I don’t want to fear that she will give me unwanted advice or worry about her opinion. I don’t want to navigate her travel arrangements or figure out where she is going to hang out while waiting to come to hospital. (She will have to fly to get here.)

And now I have to tell her. We are relatively close and get along well, but I am extremely independent. I’m also 36, so am very established in my life and have a great community of friends around me. In general, she wants me to need her more than I do. So how do I deny her this life event and push her away while still making it clear that I love her and that she is important to me?

Hint: Saying “You weren’t there for the conception so why would you be there for the delivery?” will not cut it.

Thanks so much.

I guess I’m a bit confused here, as to why your previous arrangement will no longer work. The way I read it, you would call her when you were ready to have her there. You were not explicitly promising that that moment would come BEFORE your baby is born. I mean, in her mind, maybe that’s what she assumed would happen, but by choosing your wording carefully and definitely pressing the requirement that she STAY PUT, AWAY, until that phone call came, you could realistically wait until you’re settled in a room and then call her. Sorry, Mom, but…labor. Pushing. Birth. I was kind of preoccupied and my partner and I got so focused together that we seriously had zero time to think about anything other than what was happening in that room.

The last time we covered a similar situation (the OP who did not even want to let anyone know she was in labor), I sort of ruled on the side of her parents’ hurt feelings. A few commenters took issue with this because “no one has the RIGHT to be there for YOUR birth.” Which was not at all what I meant to imply. Of course no one has the “right” to just show up and barge in the room! Of course it’s completely, 100% up to you. I think your mother is WAY OUT OF LINE here. But if you’re asking me for the best way to avoid hurt feelings, I’d advise you avoid making the Big Pre-Labor Sweeping Pronouncements About How Much You Don’t Want Her There At All, if at all possible.

Another commenter on that post said what I WISH I had clarified in my answer: It wasn’t so much that there was something “wrong” or “mean” about her plan to not call…the problem arose because she announced it ahead of time, and then had to deal with the fall-out of hurt, shocked parents. If she had simply told a little white lie, when her dad asked her to call, “We’ll do our best to keep everybody informed when there’s something to inform,” she then could avoid the pre-birth hurt feelings and then do whatever she wanted to do when she went into labor. It’s an easier thing to apologize for after, when nobody can really blame you for staying in the moment and getting a little too…ahem…DISTRACTED BY LABOR AND CHILDBIRTH to sit there scrolling through your phone contacts and sending out Evites, or whatever. They don’t necessarily have to know that you had a calm, slowly-building labor with lots of downtime, or if everything progressed at a breakneck speed.

I personally find it hugely presumptuous that anyone, even a mother, would just “assume” her child wanted her there for delivery. (Calling to give a heads’ up over labor, eh, that I would like, I admit. Maybe a quick update or two, if it’s not too much trouble. But BEING THERE is completely different, and everyone in our families knew that Was Not Going To Happen In A Million Years.) And if you were asking me if I thought you were within your rights to explicitly demand that, I would basically say, “Yep. Absolutely. Giddy-up.” But you’re asking how to demand it…without hurting her feelings, which is a different challenge. She’s made it extremely clear that this is what she expects and wants and is willing to emotionally blackmail you about it. I…don’t really see any way to make a preemptive announcement ahead of time that won’t cause her to freak out. So I’d think about ways to simply avoid the discussion all together that still ensures that you get the birth experience you want.

If she does fly in for your due date, is there a fear that she’ll just “show up” at the hospital even without being told it’s okay? If so, tell your nurses and hospital staff that she is NOT ALLOWED BACK. Or “forget” to make her a rental car reservation. Or enlist a friend in the subterfuge to send her updates that oh, nothing’s happening, but everything is fine, hold tight and go about your business.

If I’m misinterpreting the end of your letter and you’re now saying you don’t even want her in the state at the time of delivery, or for any help postpartum, then…yeah, that’s a tough discussion to avoid. (Other than to wait and see if you go into labor ahead of your due date, or to hold her travel plans at bay by saying your OB exams are showing no progress, you’ll likely be overdue, blah blah, blah.)

If you’re simply looking for the perfect, eloquent words to explain your decision to her that are 100% guaranteed to resonate with her and result in her saying, “I never thought about it that way, I completely understand.”…I don’t have them. Maybe explain the hypno-birthing process and how important the connection you have with your partner is. That you love her so very much but she simply HAS to give you this space, this experience, this choice. I don’t know. I’m sorry.

If it helps, I am completely on your side here and honestly would support you even if you dropped all the passive-aggressive suggestions I’ve made here and opted for complete, brutal honestly. Only you know whether that would have super-awful, long-lasting effects on your relationship. (Even though, OMG, she has no RIGHT to demand to be there! GAAAAHHH.) Good luck, with all of it, and above all, don’t let this consume or distract you. Before, during or after the wonderful, awesome birth of your wonderful, awesome baby.

Photo source: iStockphoto/ Thinkstock