Archives for November 2023

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”

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.

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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!

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

More Advice From Slate

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.

A local community is rallying around an 8-year-old boy, that is hard of hearing, whose family says he was recently the victim of a cruel prank.

The boy’s father said, while he and his son shopped at the Southington Target on Saturday, three men approached them, claiming to be from an internet show.

Gabe Lyles was tricked into thinking he was being given a free shopping spree and was crushed when he found out it wasn’t real. Gabe’s father says his heart sank when he realized his son had been duped.

“It devastated me because the very last thing I ever want to do is hurt him,” said TJ Lyles.

TJ said he and his son had been shopping at Target when three men approached claiming to be from an internet channel that rewards people for doing challenges. When Gabe told them he was hearing impaired, they said that’s why they chose him.

“The lead person out of the three immediately said, ‘That’s what we were looking for, somebody that had a disability,’” said TJ.

The three men asked Gabe and his father to take a blindfolded challenge. If Gabe could fill a shopping cart in 30 seconds, they would pay for it. But they were tricked.

“We had the blindfold on and at the 10-second marker, I hear footsteps running,” TJ said, explaining that his son was in tears.

Hearing about the situation, Southington’s Commission for Persons with Disabilities reacted.

“I got angry. If I’m being honest, very, very angry to hear that they would target this child,” said the commission chair, Melissa Lapila.

“The first thing we said was, ‘What can we do?’” said Commission Vice Chair Mary Barbagallo.

Advocating for the boy, they bought a Target gift card. Target matched the contribution and together they were able to present Gabe with $400, providing a real shopping spree.

“It made me happy when they gave me the gift cards,” said Gabe. “I was almost crying in my head.”

Gabe’s father is also appreciative.

“It made me cry,” he said. “They are such fantastic people.”

With the gift cards, Gabe once again filled a shopping cart and says he brought home games, water balloons, nerf toys and lots of stuff for outside.

Is it appropriate to call the three members of the sketch comedy group Please Don’t Destroy “boys”? They are grown men, in a sense, with jobs ( Saturday Night Live writers) and, one assumes, growing 401(k)s. They’re in their mid-to-late 20s, six years into a career that started at New York University. Yet in other ways they are very obviously still tweens, gangly and silly, still figuring it all out. They’ve been known to sign emails to reporters “The Boys.” (This was revealed in a Vulture profile headlined “Boys, Interrupting.”) Their comedy depends on the kind of hothouse riffing in which boys stuck together in a room will always engage. (That room started as an Upper West Side living room, and is now usually their office in Rockefeller Center.) Most of all, the Please Don’t Destroy boys are boys , in the sense of yelling “Ma boyz!” upon walking into a room and seeing ya boyz. The boys are Ben Marshall (the redheaded one), Martin Herlihy (the one with glasses), and John Higgins (the other one). You have probably seen their rapid-fire sketches on YouTube or Twitter, where they first came to prominence with a sketch about a shady COVID vaccine (not Pfizer or Moderna, but [ Eastern European accent ] Dumbrekka), or on SNL , where their pre-taped bits (“Three Sad Virgins,” “Dawg Food”) are so obviously highlights of the show that no one really even gets annoyed that two of them are the children of former SNL writers. Those sketches explore absurd concepts (there’s a new type of dog, Martin and John have a secret family) through ever-heightening gags, often delivered so quickly that you might try not to laugh at one because you’re certain to miss another. Now the boys get out of the little room and into the great big world in a new movie, Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain , directed by SNL ’s The Treasure of Foggy Mountain made me laugh so hard I missed a number of jokes. The not-a-boy, not-yet-a-man world of friendship and one-upmanship has long been fertile ground for contemporary comedy, never more than in the mid-2000s heyday of Judd Apatow, whose arrested developers, constantly hungry and horny and high, were dragged, kicking and screaming, from teenagerhood into growing up. Please Don’t Destroy are not even really teenagers—when they meet real teenagers, the teens bully the boys into buying them beer—and Foggy Mountain , also produced by Apatow, allows the boys to explore a gentler, doofier terrain. They are not the man-boys of Knocked Up . They are not the raging ids of Step Brothers . They are nice boys. Misguided, foolish, lazy, yes—but basically nice guys with an emotional age of, say, 12. John (Higgins—the boys don’t even bother changing their first names) looks forward to nothing as much as “Flyday Friday,” when the buddies drink hard seltzers and fly together in the wingsuit chamber after closing up Trout Plus, the outdoors-themed store where they all incompetently work. Martin is too afraid of his girlfriend breaking up with him to tell her, for example, that he doesn’t want to be adult-baptized. And Ben wants to take over Trout Plus from his dad, who’s played by Conan O’Brien. His disbelieving dad reminds Ben that he doesn’t even like the outdoors. “Remember Boy Scouts? The only badge you got was in Diversity and Inclusion.” (“It’s really important,” Ben protests.) The Treasure of Foggy Mountain is an adventure story that takes our three heroes on a quest for a bust of Marie Antoinette hidden in the woods by a 19 th -century explorer, who … well, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that when the boys were little boys, not grown-up boys, they discovered an old compass up on Foggy Mountain, and now they’re off to the woods to find the treasure! It’s so simple-minded it might as well be a Hardy Boys book, or an old Jack Handey-written SNL sketch. In the forest, the boys are chased by a hawk, fall off a cliff, and sing in sweet three-part harmony. They meet two park rangers (Megan Stalter and X Mayo), one set on stealing the treasure, one set on stealing John’s heart. Even when the treasure makes them rich and drives them apart, we can tell they are still little boys who just want to play. “I am de captain now,” John proclaims, and the others instantly reprimand him—obviously not for the first time—“Don’t you do that. Don’t quote Captain Phillips .” An absurdly suited Ben stops in the local diner and orders what he thinks a rich guy would order: “Sausage platter, black coffee, and a double whiskey, neat.” Throughout, the movie is studded with the kinds of very short, very funny set pieces that are Please Don’t Destroy’s stock in trade. John’s flashback to the catastrophic middle-school talent show where he set his penis on fire but also met his best friends. Martin demanding that his priest eat the walnuts his girlfriend puts on his salad, because Martin’s never told her he’s deathly allergic. Ben’s inability to make his bird whistle produce a sound other than the strangled shriek of a frightened man. It all comes together as the boys battle a cult led by Bowen Yang, who, between this and Dicks: The Musical , is making himself the guy to hire when you need someone who’s game for whatever to fly in to your film set for a couple of days and sprinkle some star power over everyone. “We’re in our 20s, you guys,” John tells his friends, early in the movie. “This is our time to have fun and hang out with our friends.” The Treasure of Foggy Mountain is an ode to having fun and hanging out with your friends, even to a possibly unhealthy extent. When Ben points out that they’re getting older, John scoffs. “Next thing I know, you’re gonna, like, go to bed at 10 p.m., and pay your taxes.” “Do you not pay taxes?” Martin asks. “You don’t have to pay taxes under a certain bracket,” John replies with serene confidence. I know Please Don’t Destroy will have to grow up eventually. But I hope they stay 12 as long as they can.

Napoli star Khvicha Kvaratskhelia was left stunned by Inter Miami main man Lionel Messi’s gesture at the 2023 Ballon d’Or ceremony, with the Argentina legend going out of his way to greet him during a break. Kvaratskhelia, 22, burst onto the scene in one of Europe’s top leagues, Serie A, helping Napoli win the Serie A, as well as reach the last eight of the Champions League. The Georgian scored 14 and assisted 17 in that historic campaign for Napoli, starring alongside Nigerian goal machine, Victor Osimhen. His exploits earned him a 17th-placed finish in the 2023 Ballon d’Or and a seat at the ceremony in Paris, last month. And he happened to be sat near the 2023 winner, and now eight-time Ballon d’Or winner, Lionel Messi. Kvaratskhelia had always admired the 2022 World Cup winner, 36, as a footballer – but he didn’t know Messi as a person. But his curiosity about Messi’s character off the football pitch was satisfied there and then. Messi stood up during a break at the ceremony and sought out Kvaratskhelia to shake his hand, leaving the Serie A star stunned. “Maybe you wouldn’t believe me if I told you the story,” the player told journalist Andro Kheladze. Follow us on X for the best and latest in sports news “Messi changed completely for me after that as a person. Of course I knew him as a player and it is very difficult to find a player like him in the whole history of soccer.” He added: “Well, we were sitting at the gala during one of the breaks in the ceremony. He was sitting on my right side. Leo suddenly stood up and I had no idea why he did that and where he was going while we were there. We had been warned to remain seated during the breaks. But he walked straight toward me. “I didn’t know what was going on, and suddenly, he held out a hand for me to shake. I was so confused that I instantly stood up and shook his hand. After this, he waved at me and walked back to his seat. He earned my great respect after this. For a player like him to stand up to salute…it was crazy. He’s an amazing person, and I respect and appreciate him a lot.” For all the latest on news, politics, sports, and showbiz from the USA, go to The Mirror US . The 2023/24 season, however, hasn’t been as productive for Kvaratskhelia and Napoli. Kvaratskhelia has managed just three goals and five assists across all competitions, while Napoli sit fourth and ten points behind top-of-the-table Inter Milan in their Serie A title defence. Napoli lost their last league outing 1-0 to Empoli but their Champions League performances have been significantly better. They’re on course to reach the knockout stages in second behind Real Madrid in Group C. Napoli has seven points and are four points above Union Berlin with two games to go.

Raffi Ahmad dan Melaney Ricardo baru-baru ini diketahui menjadi MC dalam sebuah acara pernikahan Ryan Harris dan Gwen Ashley Widodo yang digelar di Surabaya. Dalam postingan instagram suami Nagita Slavina ini ada pula video salah satu member girl grup The Pussycat Dolls, Nicole Scherzinger sedang bernyanyi di acara pernikahan tersebut. Tak hanya itu, ada pula Brian McFadden yang merupakan mantan member boyband Westlife. Raffi pun sempat memberikan selamat atas pernikahan pasangan Ryan Harris dan Gwen Ashley Widodo. Seperti apa kemeriahan pernikahan yang disebut-sebut sebagai Crazy Rich Surabaya ini? INTIP 22 FOTO DETAIL NIKAHAN VIRAL SATU INI. DARI FERRARI DIDEKOR PENUH BUNGA, SAMPAI SUVENIR HERMES Ini adalah unggahan Raffi Ahmad pada 18 November 2023. Dalam unggahannya, Raffi juga menuliskan caption bahwa pernikahan ini adalah Royal Wedding.