Our Son Is Going to Be a Teen Dad. We’re Debating the Terms of His Punishment.

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I am incredibly disappointed in my son. He is 16 and was casually dating a girl and got her pregnant. We had done all of the things—had multiple conversations about sex, provided condoms once he was old enough, and talked about the importance of care and respect and (hopefully!) love before sex. And yet this happened.

We have a college fund for him, but now I don’t want to give it to him. For one thing, we’re now on the hook for child support we never budgeted for. We are financially comfortable but we saved for his college at the expense of our retirement, and at this point in our lives, we wanted to focus on saving for that. But I know I’m not seeing this clearly. I am so angry! He had one job—not to have a child himself—and he couldn’t do that. My husband thinks we should take the child support out of the college fund and let him have the remainder to help him pay for college. I know that he needs a post-secondary education, but I can’t see past my rage at his bad decision-making. Help!

—Unhappy (Oh My God) Grandma

Dear Grandma,

I’m sorry. I can imagine how upsetting this is. But there’s a lot you haven’t told me (like, anything about the young woman who’s pregnant, her family, her decision to keep the baby and how she’s planning to do that—on her own? Living with her parents, with their help?—or whether you have been told anything about a plan, and what role, if any, your son will be playing in his child’s life other than providing financial support). So I feel like I’m flying blind here. But I can tell you a few things for sure, and ask you some questions you’ll have to answer before moving forward.

First up: The fact that you’re going to be a grandmother prematurely, shocking as it is for you, is of less significance than the fact that your child is going to be a parent prematurely—and that the child who emerges at the end of this pregnancy is going to have teenaged parents, at least one of whom may not be a part of that child’s life except financially.

Second: This is a life-changing event. It is a many-lives-changing event. You need to take a breath and consider the big picture. And you need to be talking through that picture not only with your son and the mother of your future grandchild (whom you’ve barely mentioned), but also with the other set of grandparents.

Re your anger: Presumably your 16-year-old did not do this on purpose. When men and women—or boys and girls—have intercourse with each other, even when they reliably use condoms, pregnancy can result. Condoms are not 100 percent effective at preventing pregnancy. I’m not suggesting that you grill your child—or the other sets of parents’ child—about their use of contraceptives when they were dating (by the way, is that “casual” relationship over or not?), because obviously it’s too late for that—but both sets of parents might consider that their kids could use further education about contraceptives going forward.

Even if you know for sure that this pregnancy occurred because your son “forgot” to use a condom as instructed (it’s hard for me to picture him telling you that, but I guess one never knows), please keep in mind that he did not have “one job—not to have a child himself.” I mean, yes, he was supposed to avoid baby-making, and yes, I understand that you’re exaggerating for effect. But reducing his life to this (this was the only thing that mattered and you screwed it up, you idiot) does no one any good. His “job” was, and is, a lot more than that. I hope you know that. I hope you’re thinking, “Well, I didn’t mean that literally.” Then don’t say it, especially not to him.

Now, for that college fund: If refusing to let him have it means he won’t be able to go to college because there is no scenario in which he can afford to put himself through college (say, community college and then two years at the lowest possible cost four-year public institution) without going into crushing debt, you would be making sure his life continues to go awry from this point on. If punishing him by shutting down his future is the goal, then go for it. (If you even can! If this fund is a 529 plan, for example,  withdrawing funds for anything except education will cost you a tax penalty. If by “college fund” you mean money you’ve set aside for his education, in a separate account, that you’ve promised yourselves you wouldn’t touch because it’s money for college, then yeah, there’s nothing to stop you from spending it on whatever you want to. Whether this is an ethical choice I leave to you to decide.) But if you hope that the rest of his life will not be derailed by this accidental pregnancy, I urge you to use that “fund” as planned—though if I were you, I would direct him away from the priciest private colleges and toward the best public one he can get into. Any money that remains, if we’re talking about a 529 fund, can be used for his child’s education—i.e., the beneficiary can be changed.

I will say that I’m confused by your husband’s plan, since “child support” will go on for 18 years after the child’s birth. Does your husband mean to figure out what 18 years of child support will cost, take that out of what you’ve got in savings, and let your son have the rest for his education? Or does he want to pay child support only until your son starts college, let him have the rest of it to pay for college, and then leave it to him to figure out how to proceed from there? That seems short-sighted. Maybe not quite as short-sighted as this young couple’s contraceptive failure, but still ill-advised.

Want Advice on Parenting, Kids, or Family Life?

Submit your questions to Care and Feeding here. It’s anonymous! (Questions may be edited for publication.)

Dear Care and Feeding,

My 8-year-old daughter, “Daisy,” is intelligent, does well in school, and has a close friend group she’s known since pre-K. But she struggles with the mildest of pressure or decision-making. So while she’s danced onstage in front of hundreds of people, has sung and recited poetry at her school festival, and held up like a champ when a sudden family health crisis meant I lived essentially in the hospital for over a year—and when my mother-in-law’s rapid-onset dementia meant she suddenly had to move in with us and be supervised 24/7, Daisy gave up her bedroom without a complaint—she completely falls apart at small, run-of-the-mill, daily stresses. I know we’re lucky and I shouldn’t complain, because she’s an unbelievably good kid when it comes to big asks, but her distress over minor everyday matters is very concerning to me. If you give her a standard heads-up, like “dinner in 15 minutes,” her breathing becomes rapid and panicky, her hands shake, and she drops things as she scrambles to put away her toys or finish her homework. Even if you speak to her gently, she reacts as if a drill sergeant has just screamed in her face. She also falls apart with small, unimportant decisions—like what to wear, choosing an ice cream flavor, or picking out a birthday card for a friend. This morning I asked her if she wanted toast or a bagel for breakfast, and I thought she was going to have a panic attack.

After the long hospitalization/health crisis period of our lives, she started going to a “feelings group” at school, for kids who have undergone major stress. The teacher who runs it has noted that Daisy doesn’t have these panics at school because there is little opportunity (or requirement) for her to make her own decisions. I don’t know how to help her cope and learn to be comfortable with little stresses.

—Sweating the Small Stuff

Dear Sweating,

The thing about “overreacting” to little stresses—or what seem to others to be little stresses: toast or bagel, this shirt/movie/activity or that—is that those stresses don’t feel little. You can’t teach someone to be comfortable with what feels extremely uncomfortable. The real issue is: Why does decision-making (or knowing you have to be finished doing what you’re doing in a specified short time frame—or anything else that it seems clear to you is no big deal) feel so terrible to Daisy?

As I so often feel obliged to remind advice-seekers, I am not a trained mental health professional—I’m just a novelist and mother with a lot of years on most of the people who write to me, who offers commonsense advice based on a lifetime of close observation of human behavior (occupational hazard), life experience, book-learning, and a zillion years of therapy—but I would venture to say that Daisy’s extraordinary ability (the appearance of ability, anyway) to handle extreme situations comes at the cost of her inability to handle supposedly minor ones.

I think 1) she’s used up all her resources, 2) freaking out about bagel versus toast feels to her like a safe way to express her anxiety and fear, which has to come out somehow, because she couldn’t allow herself to express how she felt—or couldn’t access her feelings, or maybe couldn’t even let herself feel—when someone in the family was hospitalized and as a result one of her parents was unavailable to her for so long, or when her grandmother with dementia moved into the house and into what had been her room (because she intuited, and/or perhaps was even told, that she had to “be a big girl” about it), and 3) if this isn’t addressed now by therapy—and assessed by a psychiatrist—this may turn into a lifelong problem. It’s even possible (not to be an alarmist, but I want you to understand that this isn’t something to trifle with) that it’s an early sign of a mental health disorder that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. It may be that her panics over “little things” are “just” escape valves—but even if that’s so, the steam that needs to escape requires therapeutic action.

Catch Up on Care and Feeding

· Missed earlier columns this week? Read them here.
· Discuss this column in the Slate Parenting Facebook group!

Dear Care and Feeding,

I am an 18-year-old (male) who has a 10-year-old half-sister, “Lucy.” I absolutely adore her. She has ADHD and anxiety and has a hard time interacting with her peers other than her close friends. She is taking swimming lessons now, which I drop her off for and pick her up at, since the lessons are early on Saturdays and I’m a natural morning person (and my mom works on Saturdays and my stepdad sleeps in). She’s described being “mistreated” by the other kids in the swimming class, but it sounds to me like what’s going on is essentially bullying.

She’s given me a few specific examples, especially centered around one kid who sounds like an absolute nightmare, who has mocked certain ADHD behaviors that Lucy has, like needing things repeated because of auditory processing, or moving her body for regulation (stimming). Other kids join in too. Apparently, the only thing this one girl has done physically is hiding my sister’s glasses while she was changing, but that’s still a pretty big deal, as she can’t really see at all without them. I asked what the instructor does when this “mistreatment” happens, and Lucy said she seems kind of unobservant. The problem is, she doesn’t want me to tell our parents. She says this is because she’s afraid they’ll pull her out of swim lessons if they know, and every year my grandparents host a bunch of people at their cabin on the lake and Lucy wants to finally be able to swim with all the cousins. I’m just not sure what to do here. Like, I like that my sister trusts me, but at the same time, she’s asking me to keep a pretty big secret from my mom and stepdad (her mom and dad).

—Swimming with Sharks

Dear Swimming with Sharks,

You have two choices, it seems to me—and then so will Lucy. Since it doesn’t sound as if she doesn’t want someone to step in and help her and I’m taking her at her word that what worries her about telling your parents is that they won’t let her keep taking swimming lessons, one of your choices is: Tell Lucy you have to tell Mom and Dad, but that you’ll also tell them that she adamantly wants to keep going to her class, that what she needs from them is help figuring out how to deal with a problem she can’t manage on her own (and I’ll admit it disturbs me that she is so sure—from past experience?—that they’ll simply pull her out of class instead of finding a solution). Your second choice, since you mustn’t stand by and do nothing while your little sister is being “mistreated,” is for you to be the grownup who helps her deal with this. Strategize responses with her, talk to the instructor yourself, and if it comes to it, talk directly to the girl who seems to be the bullying ringleader. I know you must feel powerless, but I am pretty sure an 18-year-old guy telling a little kid to quit picking on Lucy will have an impact, especially if it’s coupled with Lucy feeling a bit more empowered (a couple of good comebacks can go a long way) and the instructor being alerted to the dynamic in her class. Of course, this will mean your stepping up and taking on a more adult role in Lucy’s life before you feel ready to be an adult, but is that so bad? She already trusts you, and she depends on you to do some things her parents can’t or won’t. Maybe you can let her know that she can count on you for more than that.

As to Lucy’s choices: If you’re willing to take on Option 2, let her know that. Then let her choose between your reporting what you know to the certified grownups or being the ad hoc grownup yourself. If you can’t see yourself in the latter scenario, then Lucy doesn’t have a choice. Which isn’t great, especially since she may see this as a betrayal—even if you promise her that you’ll make sure she gets to keep taking lessons—but it’s still better than doing nothing at all.

Dear Care and Feeding,

My husband suffered a great deal of family loss early in his life (both via family deaths and estrangements) and has very close relationships with his remaining relatives, all of whom are very nice people who have been through a lot. The problem is that he is absolutely inflexible about his determination to celebrate all holidays with them, and because we are an interfaith family, there are a lot of holidays to celebrate! We have two kids, one with high needs, and we both have demanding jobs, and I’d like us to have some quieter or time-alone holidays, but whenever I’ve suggested taking a trip for Christmas, or doing a small Passover dinner at home, he tells me that his family relationships will never recover if we abandon them for the holidays. (However, siblings and cousins have at times backed out of a holiday for a vacation or other commitment. We’re the only ones who steadfastly show up for every event, every year.) This has made me dread every single holiday because I feel so trapped by these obligations and unable to ever choose what’s right for us at any given time. But we can’t have a conversation about this, because he cuts it off by saying any change to the status quo will destroy his connection with his remaining family. What do I do?

—No Ho Ho

Dear No Ho,

This is not a how-do-we-celebrate-holidays problem, it’s a marriage problem. Your husband’s grief and fear do not justify his inflexibility and his unwillingness to hear you out or consider your feelings. If you have not yet framed this in terms of your understanding that grief, acknowledging his fears, and wanting to do whatever you can to help him heal, that’s your first task. But he is still unlikely to budge until he deals with those feelings (you will not be surprised to hear me suggest therapy). In any case, this conflict will not be resolved until he recognizes that your feelings are important too, and that he doesn’t get to make unilateral decisions (about holidays or anything else). You two may need help communicating with each other, particularly if he won’t get help himself. If he balks at seeing a marriage counselor—and he isn’t able to pay attention to what you need and want without that help—you might tell him what I’m about to tell you: This marriage will not be sustainable over time if you don’t work this out. And by “this,” I don’t mean only where, how, and with whom Christmas, Hanukkah, Passover, and Easter are celebrated.

—Michelle

More Advice From Slate

I’m a 29-year-old straight cis woman. I have no kids, and in spite of all I read in this column, I’d still like to be a parent in the future. My question is about getting on the same page with my partner about this. He’s a 28-year-old straight cis man who says he’s neutral on having children. Honestly, I don’t think he ever thought about it until we started dating five years ago.