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 don’t like my teenage stepson. At all. I work with kids his age, so for the purposes of this letter, I’ll ask you to trust that his level of rude, ungracious, and mean-spirited behavior has gone beyond the pale. I’ve tried to be mindful of where this is coming from: Before I married his father (and when he was a sweet kid), I was in and out of his life a few times, he now has a younger sibling, and his mother is an alcoholic. A lot of his acting out comes from my husband’s and the mother’s abject inability to co-parent. While my dislike for this kid has been increasing over the last few years, until recently I managed to put on a happy parent face, remained calm in the face of the almost-daily outbursts, and attempted to help my husband navigate behavioral issues behind the scenes. Then last week, the last straw.

My stepson told me and my husband that he felt we weren’t financially supporting him enough and announced a harebrained plan to sue us. My reaction to that pronouncement was rather less than reserved, and since then, all my anger and resentment for this kid have welled to the surface and show no signs of subsiding, even though his behavior is noticeably somewhat less odious now that he’s in college.

Is it OK that I can’t stand this kid? Can I get over it? Should I? Can I do something different to improve my outlook? Thanks for your insight.

—Can’t Stand My Stepson

Dear CSMS,

I’m so sorry, this sounds so difficult. Since you describe your stepson as both a teenager and in college, it seems like you are smack dab in the middle of a transition that can be hard on everyone even under better circumstances.

I strongly recommend getting yourself an individual therapist (a couples therapist, potentially, if you feel that your marriage is being negatively affected by disagreements about your husband’s son, which is unclear from your letter) and focusing on ways to emotionally detach and set boundaries for yourself and your home.

If he is living with you while going to school, which is not the immediate sense I get from this letter, then you and your husband need to sit down and hash out (first together, and then with the young man in question) what your baseline is for acceptable conduct to live in your home. If he’s not living with you, then you can joyfully kick him out if he’s visiting and becomes disrespectful.

I’m so sorry that your husband and his ex have made such a hash of co-parenting. It’s too late now to fix that and pointless to assign blame. What matters is this: He’s on his way out the door, and if you can keep that flashing EXIT sign in the forefront of your mind, it may very well make this time more tolerable.

You do not have to like him. It sounds like you used to like him, and then things went south over the next decade or so. I want you to feel free to focus on yourself and your own right to be treated with respect, and to be transparent with your husband that these are your current goals.

His threat to sue you is almost certainly just a dick move, but my nonprofessional advice is: Should you actually get served, even if it’s blatantly ridiculous and will be tossed out on sight, you need to show up and act like it’s serious. Too many people wind up with default judgments against them because they ignored a frivolous lawsuit.

Hang in there, friend.

—Nicole Cliffe

From: My Husband and I Can’t Agree on Whether Our Son Needs a Behavioral Diagnosis. (Dec. 3rd, 2018).

Dear Care and Feeding,

My 3½-year-old has an imaginary friend, let’s call her “Olivia.” She’s been through lots of metamorphoses in the nine months or so that she’s been with us, but now she seems to pretty consistently be an older teenager or young adult. My son brings her up pretty frequently, often to connect himself to the subject of conversations (i.e., “Oh, Olivia and I did that last week”) though he doesn’t usually act like she’s physically around. However, he does try to use her to his advantage; for example, if we’re out and about and I want him to use a public bathroom, he’ll say, “No, Olivia lives pretty close to here, so I can just use her bathroom when we walk past her house,” or he’ll tell me Olivia already gave him a bath when it’s time for him to get cleaned up.

My concern is about where to draw the line on playing along when it comes to safety. We’ve recently had him begin learning our cellphone numbers after a scary incident that involved getting separated in the park. Whenever we practice the cell number song, he wants to add Olivia’s number, which of course never has seven digits and always changes (though I do think we have him pretty well convinced that he needs to offer Mom’s and Dad’s phone numbers first in case of an emergency).

Recently, we were on a walk when he stopped in a driveway and turned around to tell me something. My mother had to grab him out of the way of a truck backing out. We talk all the time about not stopping in driveways or going in the street without a grown-up because he’s too little for drivers to be able to see. He says, “Oh, it’s OK, because Olivia was standing next to me.” I said that if I can’t see Olivia neither can drivers, and he must always be with an adult who is visible to other adults, and he seemed to take that under consideration. I’m totally fine playing along with Olivia’s existence, but I’m a little concerned that in an emergency he might try to rely on her for help. Is this concern overblown? When it comes down to it 3½-year-olds know the difference between real and imaginary people, right?

—Can’t See the Solution

Dear CStS,

When I was between the ages of 3 and 5, I had a few imaginary friends that would rotate in and out of my life after a few months of companionship. The one that I remember most is Peter Venkman from Ghostbusters II, who was portrayed by a then 35-year-old Bill Murray. I didn’t find him attractive, nor did he remind me of my father or anyone else. I just thought he was hilarious, and I suppose I wanted that sort of energy around me.

I offer that for little other reason than to hopefully make you feel just slightly better by making it plain that “Olivia” is hardly the strangest figment of a young child’s imagination—though it does seem that you’re doing a great job of allowing your little one to enjoy this fantasy friendship without judgment or policing.

Most small children have an imaginary playmate of some sort, with eldest siblings and only children being most likely to dream up such a companion. As this fascinating read from the Globe and Mail points out, while experts once believed these relationships to be the mark of a lonely introvert, there is now research that suggests that kids who have them may be more creative and imaginative.

That creativity and imagination is likely at hand when your son claims that Olivia has his back when he’s not been mindful of his surroundings, or when he explains that she already washed and dressed him for bed. That’s part of the game: She’s his get-out-of-jail-free card. No need to chastise me, Mother Dear—Olivia is already on this! If he were experiencing some sort of delusions regarding his buddy’s existence, they’d show up far more frequently and not just when he thinks he can get out of something (or, in the case of the phone number memorization, when he knows he can get under your skin a little bit).

However, there’s nothing wrong with constantly reminding him of Olivia’s limitations and setting some boundaries about how she exists in your shared world. “If I ask you to do something, ‘Olivia already did that’ is an unacceptable answer.” “When we are talking about your safety, we are not talking about Olivia. Only you can see her, so there isn’t any way that she can protect you when you’re in danger.” Make it clear that homegirl is welcome in your home as long as she—and your son—respect the rules that you’ve made for her presence. You wouldn’t allow him to bring around a human buddy who constantly went against your wishes or served as a partner-in-crime when your kid misbehaves, so let him know that Olivia is subject to the same standard. If he doesn’t want you to get out the proton pack and make her split, then he’ll likely adjust … and even if he doesn’t, I wouldn’t worry about him being out-of-touch with reality until he starts bringing Olivia into all of his human interactions or holds on to her after he’s turned 5. She’ll likely join Invisible Peter Venkman in the Imaginary Friend wing of Shady Pines before he finishes pre-K. Good luck!

—Jamilah Lemieux

From: Our Problematic Neighbor Kids Are Constantly in Our Business. What Should I Do? (July 17th, 2019).

Dear Care and Feeding,

Our son is 19 months old. Until a month ago, we would have described him as sweet, silly, extremely adaptable, and spirited yet low-key. In the past few weeks we have entered the “Johnny do it!” phase with a vengeance. He is nearly unrecognizable. He won’t drink milk he didn’t pour himself. He won’t let us put him in his high chair, get him dressed, bathe him, even open a string cheese for him.

Obviously he can’t do any of these things himself, so our mornings and evenings (he’s in a wonderful day care—they say he hasn’t changed at all) feel like one long meltdown. We are working hard to help him through this phase. Showing him the steps to complete everyday tasks like putting on his Velcro shoes; giving him every opportunity to do things independently and praising him like crazy; modeling asking for help. Still, we end up in these awful meltdowns multiple times a day.

We know this is a normal developmental phase. What we’re struggling with is: Where is the line between (a) giving him as much freedom and independence as possible to build confidence and avoid meltdowns, and (b) setting boundaries so he knows he doesn’t just get to do whatever he wants for himself? Are we crazy to be letting an 18-month-old pour his own water from the kitchen sink and drink from the cup without a lid, since that’s the only way he’ll drink water (yes, he spills a lot)? Should we just be filling his sippy cups for him and letting him freak the hell out about it until he gets the message and falls in line?

—JOHNNY DO IT

Dear Johnny’s Parent,

It’s remarkable, isn’t it, how little comfort “this is completely normal, developmentally speaking” is when you’re in the freaking shit. You know what else is completely normal, developmentally speaking? The slow physical decline of your body followed by death and putrefaction, and few of us find comfort in that, either.

I think you’re handling it pretty well already, but my general advice is to hold firm on doing the tasks both a) that you know he cannot manage and b) for which the consequences of the task being done terribly will involve injury or a colossal mess. (By this metric, no you are not crazy to let him get his own water. He’ll improve soon.)

Make sure he helps you with any of the messes that result from his ridiculous overconfidence, of course. That’s going to be a big help in ultimately getting his reach back in line with his grasp. May I also cautiously encourage you that the kids who put parents through the “ME DO IT!!!” mill will be, in a few years, a great comfort when other people’s perfectly-capable children are still standing around limply insisting that someone else put their coats on and open the car door.

—N.C.

From: Our Toddler Wants to Do Everything Himself, So He’s Constantly Melting Down. (February 4th, 2019).

Classic Prudie

I am a college student just wrapping up my junior year. This school year has been incredibly stressful for me. I had to undergo a series of rabies shots after being bitten by a bat, my mother’s house was burglarized, and two close friends have been imprisoned. The house I live in attracts numerous unwanted critters and is far enough away from campus that I have lost touch with most of my classmates. Because of these factors, I have been experiencing severe bouts of depression and emotional instability, and I recently succumbed to these feelings and sought out an escort online. However, she was an undercover police officer, and I was charged with solicitation.

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