Parenting advice: Sleep training disruptions from gramma.

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

Dear Care and Feeding,

My mom is planning to move in with us for about six months while her house undergoes major renovation. She’s always been an early riser—naturally awake by 5 a.m.—and my 2-year-old daughter has inherited that tendency, too. It took months of work (and tears and exhaustion), but my daughter will now finally stay in her crib until 6:15. When she wakes up early, she’ll sing or play with stuffed animals until I come get her. The problem is that my mom wants to upend this. She says that when she’s with us, since she’s naturally awake, she’ll just get my toddler up too and they can enjoy “special Grandma time” before the rest of the house is awake. She thinks it’s ridiculous for my daughter to be rolling around in her crib when there’s an adult happy to care for her. I say that when my mom goes back home, I don’t want to be left with a toddler who again thinks 5:05 is an acceptable wake-up time. Am I right?

—It’s Just Too Early

Dear Too Early,

I don’t know if there’s a clear right or wrong here, but I’d feel the same in your place. Toddler sleep routines are important, not to mention tough to reestablish once broken. Given the opportunity to sleep more, a lot of kids will (or will learn to). And, as you point out, you’re the one who would once again be living with a kid who wakes before dawn after your mom is back in her newly renovated home.

I get that your mother is eager for “Grandma time,” but there’s no reason she can’t enjoy that starting an hour or so later each day. And she’ll be staying with you for six whole months—it’s not like she and your daughter will be short on quality time together. I think it’s probably worth trying to hold your ground on this one.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

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 FIL 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?

—Wake Up and Smell the Narcissism

Dear Wake Up,

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.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

My family moved back to my husband’s hometown to take over the family business.Our 11-year-old daughter didn’t take it well and has been having trouble making friends. The only real one is her second cousin, “Macy.” The problem is Macy’s mom takes any invitation as an excuse to dump her other two children on us (they are not related to us). My car only seats five, so when the other two children come along, there is no room for any potential new friends of my daughter. She also never provides money for any activities—even things like mini-golf add up with two additional kids, especially hungry ones. My husband’s cousin is fairly useless in dealing with his ex over Macy. I have spoken to Macy’s mom and it goes in one ear and out the other. Her excuse is she can’t afford a babysitter, so Macy needs to stay home to watch her siblings. I feel this is brutally unfair to Macy, but I also resent being used like this. My daughter is turning 12 soon and wants to go see a Broadway play in the city with Macy. I am hesitant to buy the tickets because I know what Macy’s mom will say—that we have to pay for her other two kids, or Macy can’t come. What do we do?

—About Macy

Dear About Macy,

When it comes to the Broadway birthday celebration, I think you’ve really only got one play: Talk with Macy’s mom and explain that your daughter really wants to go to the city and have this special experience with her cousin on her birthday. Tell her that it is not possible for you to bring her younger siblings along. Macy’s mom might not allow her to go, which of course would be a bummer for your daughter. But you don’t want to include the other two siblings—which is okay sometimes!—and so it’s important to be clear about who the invitation is for. If her mom says yes, buy the tickets right away and let your daughter tell Macy about the plan. It’s no guarantee that her mom won’t try to change the terms or back out, but it will at least make it harder for her to do so.

Over the long term, it may not always be possible to draw such a clear line (it’s a bit easier with something like a show, because you can acquire a certain number of tickets and no more). It’s not clear, from your letter, how dire the babysitting need is—if Macy’s mom is at work and doesn’t have a partner or another older child at home, Macy probably is needed to help watch the younger ones sometimes. It might not be ideal or fair to her, but that could just be how it is right now. Her mom may not have the money for a regular babysitter. If she doesn’t, then you should try to be understanding about that, and invite Macy to go out and do things when she doesn’t need to watch her younger siblings—or perhaps your daughter can just go over and hang out with Macy at her house sometimes.

Dear Care and Feeding,

My wife (35F) and I have (39M) have been together for 10 years and have two kids. My wife—a driven, hardworking, incredibly smart woman—is on the high-functioning end of the spectrum (she was diagnosed with Asperger’s at 26 and) who has anxiety that is decently managed most of the time. My issue is her self-soothing. When we’re driving, falling asleep, or at home on the couch after the kids have gone to bed, she will rub her cuticles against the satin edge of a blanket she’s had since infancy. She says it’s something between a comfort mechanism and a fidget spinner—something that soothes and keeps part of her brain occupied so she can otherwise focus. It’s something she’s apparently done her entire life. Problem is, it drives me nuts. The small sound it makes when she runs the fabric against her cuticles is distracting and frankly annoying as all get-out. I’ve asked her not to do it around me several times over the years and she will stop for a while, but the habit creeps back in. It’s not a dealbreaker, obviously, but it seriously gets on my nerves. How do I tactfully remind her that it’s really irritating and to only do it when she’s on her own?

—Silence Is Golden

Dear Silence Is Golden,

You may already know that what your wife is doing is stimming, making a repeated movement that helps her regulate and, as you note, self-soothe. It has a purpose, helping to fulfill some need she has—maybe for comfort as well as sensory input—and it’s not harming her or anyone else. Yes, it makes a tiny sound and is annoying to you, but I just don’t think it’s right to tell an autistic person not to stim if they have to.

At any rate, you’ve already asked her not to do it, and she can’t stop. Even if she did manage to suppress it, another stim you don’t like might take its place, because the need the current stim is meeting would still exist. I think it’s probably not going to help if you continue to ask your wife to stop self-soothing in a way she’s done her entire life—it will just stress her out and possibly make her feel bad. (A lot of people, not just autistic people, have the urge to stim, by the way—you might have some habit or repetitive movement or way of fidgeting that bothers her, too!)

If you’re in the car with her while she’s doing it, start a conversation or put on music or a podcast for distraction. If it bothers you when you’re trying to fall asleep, maybe try a little white noise or some ear plugs. Or—I’m serious about this—when you notice it, try to think of it as a little opportunity to remind yourself of why you’re lucky to be with her. You’ve said this habit isn’t a dealbreaker for you, and she hasn’t been able to quit. So I think your only real option is to live with it, and do what you can to try to tune it out, deal with your reaction, or reframe how you think about it.

—Nicole

My father-in-law has always been difficult to deal with and certainly was abusive to my poor husband growing up. My husband’s response was to move across the country and keep his father at arm’s length, so we thankfully only see him three or four times a year. Each time, my father-in-law drives across the country to visit us for a weekend (he stays in a hotel). These weekends are extremely stressful since my husband, who has no interest in spending time with his father, works and only joins us for breakfast and dinner—meaning I spend the full weekend trying desperately to keep the peace between my father-in-law and active 3-year-old daughter. He yells at her for actions as simple as picking a flower or walking “too fast” with her wagon. … This past visit, his inappropriate disciplining evolved to a physical level that has me extremely upset.