My Kids Have a Complaint About My "Attitude." Uh, I Think They Have the Facts Wrong.

Our advice columnists have heard it all over the years -- so today we're diving into the archives of Care and Feeding to share classic parenting letters with our readers. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I am the mom of two truly wonderful boys, 6 and 8 years old. Recently, my husband was sick and so I was on parenting duty solo. No big deal, but it was a tiring day juggling my work, their afterschool activities, and their care. I truly feel that it was an uneventful day. I didn't feel particularly grumpy at all. When I was tucking the kids into bed, they told me that I never smile, I am grumpy all the time, and I snap at them every day. They said I am not nice, and that their dad is much nicer than I am. I know that kids sometimes say hurtful things when they are mad, and I want to reiterate that they didn't seem mad at all. They were relaxed, seemed happy, and were not reacting to any particular incident. After they said this, I apologized to them and left their room, and immediately burst into tears.

I feel like their comments were at least partially unfair. I am by nature a very smiley person and I smile all the time, especially at my boys because they bring me so much joy. I think I am like many parents, I am sometimes a bit grumpy (there is so much to do!), but I try hard to be positive, upbeat, and encouraging. I certainly snap sometimes, for example: "Why are you still playing?!? I asked you to put on your shoes!" This isn't an everyday occurrence, and I do have to push them out the door to school and to their various activities. But this is how they feel, so I also don't want to completely invalidate their feelings.

I am having a hard time moving on from what they said. I try to see the very best in my kids, and I feel like they see the worst in me. Like most parents, I am putting in a lot of effort into parenting -- playing with my kids, getting involved in their interests, listening to them, and adjusting my work so that I can spend as much time with them as possible. Should I back off in effort a bit, in the hopes that I am more relaxed and less grumpy? I feel like my parenting life may be divided in two, before this conversation and after.

I obviously cannot know what you're really like as a parent, but even if you had been having a legit grumpy day, it's probably not fair or accurate for your kids to tell you that you're like that all the time. Kids, like us, are not always fair! That said, I think it can be good for any parent to think about how we're routinely speaking with our children, as there may well be some negative communication patterns we haven't fully acknowledged or tried to remedy. I'm curious about whether you talked with your husband about what your kids said -- and, if you did, how he responded? Did he think there was any truth or merit in it, or did he think they were mostly feeling nagged / blowing off steam?

From your letter, it sounds as though a lot of the actual childcare and child-rearing tasks fall to you -- and certainly did that day your husband was sick -- so I just want to point out that it's pretty easy to be the cheerful, fun, "nice" parent when you're not the one on call all the time. If you're the parent doing the lion's share of the work where they're concerned, of course you're going to be the one pushing and prodding and trying to get them to put their toys away and get out the door. Is it possible that you aren't the mean one so much as ... the only one asking anything of them? (And really, who smiles when trying to get a resistant kid to put on their shoes and go to school?)

I'm not quite sure how to answer your question about backing off. There is no great way to lean out of parenting. I don't think that doing less with or for your children is in itself the solution. What may be worth thinking about is what you actually need -- do you feel like you're struggling in any way, and would anything help you feel better? I know it can be really hard to focus on or take care of yourself as a parent, or say that you need help or are feeling overwhelmed or just want a break from handling everything/always being on duty at home.

But if you have by some chance been feeling this way, and that's some of what your kids are picking up on, talk to someone about it -- starting with your husband, if you feel able to speak with him about it, and going from there. It's not all on you to figure out how to meet all your kids' needs and keep the household running and make sure that you can get rest and take care of yourself and feel okay, too; that is shared labor for the two of you.

My husband and I live in the Pacific Northwest about 3.5 hours from his parents. I always knew his parents were somewhat challenging, but since we relocated slightly closer to them, it has become very clear that my father-in-law is a narcissist. He has been passive-aggressively belittling me for years, but I have coped with it by simply not engaging with him. My husband's home life when he was young was hard. My father-in-law was verbally and physically abusive, but everyone in the family seems to excuse the behavior as "in the past." My husband refuses to acknowledge my FIL's personality disorder and claims he is just difficult. Our young children are getting older, and I'm worried he will negatively impact my children. My husband says we just need to "manage the kids" so as not to "set him off." How can I help my husband see the writing on the wall about his father?

Whether or not your husband agrees with your armchair diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder doesn't seem like the most important thing right now; it might be better to focus on why his father's behavior is a problem, as opposed to what you call it. It's worth pointing out, for example, that it's ridiculous and unfair to expect your kids to constantly tiptoe around their grandfather so as not to "set him off." And while we all have to compromise on occasion, and work to "manage" some of our more challenging familial relationships, you absolutely shouldn't have to put up with being belittled by your father-in-law.

I get the sense that you want your husband to clearly see and name what's going on in the hope that he'll then set better boundaries to protect you and your family. Ideally, yes, he would be able to recognize the unhealthiness of those interactions with his father. But I think it's very hard to break the patterns of a lifetime, especially when they have been developed in part for survival. If your father-in-law truly is what you say, he is unlikely to change or be open to considering anyone else's point of view, and the rest of the family may well be in the habit of appeasing him to try to avoid a larger conflict -- it may be all they feel they can do.

I don't know if your husband has ever gone to therapy, or if he'd be willing to go now? Depending on how substantial a conflict this is creating in your marriage, you may also want to consider seeing a therapist together. In any case, until you and he can get on the same page, you have the right to set boundaries for yourself -- you're already doing so, in a way, by choosing not to engage with your father-in-law sometimes. It's also okay if you decide to see him less often, perhaps skipping some visits. If you ever earnestly believe that the relationship is harming your children, you can try to restrict their time with him and/or insist they not see him without a parent present. Your husband may one day feel that he has more agency within his family -- that there are other choices he can make, too, even if he can't change the way his father is -- but in the meantime, it's still worth thinking about what, if anything, could make the situation more bearable for you.

I have a fiancé who has a son in his early 20s. The son is my fiancé's sponsor for citizenship, and I feel as if he uses the sponsorship, and his dad's guilt from his divorce, as a tool to manipulate his dad. Since I have lived with them, I have had to endure the son swearing, threatening to stab us, stealing, and lying to us. He cannot keep a job for more than a month and is obsessed with making custom Nerf guns, which I find a creepy hobby. He says weird things to me and threatened to kill himself when he recently lost his job. We got into an argument about him cutting my dog's hair once, and he took my cat and cut her whiskers when we all were getting ready for bed. He also trashes the house so bad and my fiancé just cleans up after him or blames me for the mess. His son has wrecked one of his cars and keeps getting tickets, continues to swear, lie, steal, and trash the house. I want him kicked out, but I also feel horrible about the sponsorship situation. Before my fiancé's son started acting out, we never argued. He supported me when I didn't have a job and has always been there for me, except for this issue.

Don't marry your fiancé. It will be the best decision you ever make, and if you write me in 10 years and say you regret having walked away from this relationship, I will give you $1,000.

My daughter-in-law "Ayanna" is a wonderful wife to my son and loves my grandchild "Kaya" very much. She is a sharp woman with so much respect for me and my husband, and she gives us time to be involved in our granddaughter's life. But I'm worried about one aspect of how she's raising my grandchild. The problem is that Ayanna runs an Instagram channel where she posts racy photos of Kaya in inappropriate clothes -- she's only 4!