TOTALLY GEEKED!

Q. Family day care woes: I am retired with two grown children, who each have two young children of their own. A few years ago our daughter lost her husband in an accident, and she has struggled financially ever since. I offered to watch her children while she works, because the cost of child care in our area is prohibitive. Her oldest is now in first grade and the youngest will go to preschool next year, so we are almost done with doing daily child care. However, our son has started expressing that he would like me to watch his children as well. He and his wife both work and are financially solid, but he constantly bemoans the cost of day care and that his sister doesn’t have to pay for it, and that our daughter’s kids get the benefit of being cared for by their loving grandma while his kids do not. He’s begun telling my husband that we aren’t treating our grandkids fairly and he doesn’t like that his sister’s kids are prioritized. The complaints have gotten to the point that my husband wants me to stop watching our daughter’s child and secretly pay the cost of sending our grandchild to day care, to shut our son up about how they aren’t being treated equally. I think our son is being callous to suggest his sister somehow cheated the system by being a widow with two small kids, and I want to tell him so! But we don’t want to damage our relationship with either of our children and any of our grandkids. Do we owe our son free child care? How can we end this argument?

A: Your son is being an absolute ass, but I commend your desire to break the news to him gently. No, you do not owe your son free child care. You offered to help your daughter because her husband died unexpectedly young and she could barely make ends meet. Your son isn’t remotely in the same situation, for which he is, presumably, very grateful, and if he isn’t grateful, he ought to be. He doesn’t like the fact that his sister’s children are “prioritized,” but they probably don’t like the fact that their father is dead. It often happens that life is not arranged to our liking. Your husband’s proposed response is both cowardly and duplicitous, and he should be ashamed of himself for suggesting it. You should be ashamed of him too—the men in your family aren’t about to win any awards for self-sufficiency, honesty, or compassion. Here’s hoping this is an extremely out-of-character lapse in judgment for both of them, rather than part of a larger pattern.

In circumstances like yours, I think the truth is enough to condemn your son’s behavior without adding too much in the way of commentary. Tell him, “I’m not going to stop helping your sister just because you think it’s unfair that she was unexpectedly widowed at such a young age. You can afford childcare; she cannot. You have a partner who can help you look after your children; she does not. When you snipe at me because you think your sister has somehow “lucked out” by losing her partner and having to do her best as a single parent, it diminishes my respect and affection for you. If you continue to see her widowhood as some sort of ‘advantage’ she has over you, I’m afraid your misguided self-obsession will prevent us from having the warm, loving relationship I would like to have with you.” Do not give in to your husband’s milquetoast suggestion that you secretly pay for your daughter’s childcare costs, as if you had been doing something shameful. Do not allow your son to convince you that by turning down his request, you are somehow “damaging” your relationship with him—he is the one doing the damage by making incredible demands on your time and energy. He has seized upon the fact that you did a wonderful, kind thing for your bereaved daughter as some sort of justification that you now “have to” do the same thing for him. You do not.