Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Do you have a question about care and feeding? Submit it here.

Dear care and feeding,

My daughter, “Mindy,” has been married to “Carl” for just under eight years. Throughout this time, they also lived with another woman, “Noelle”. Everyone in their menage a trois is in their early to mid-30s. I have a 4 year old grandson, “Adam”, and two years ago Noelle gave birth to “Daniel”. The whole “family” visits us frequently, and I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’m always excited to see Adam, but not Daniel. I know this disappoints the adult trio, and Adam, who is a very perceptive child, has begun to notice and express that I treat him differently than his brother. I want to be better. But I also admit that I have never really reconciled myself to their tripod arrangement, nor understood how it is possible that my daughter seems perfectly fine sharing a man with another woman. And I don’t seem to be able to think of Daniel as a real grandson, even though everyone involved wants to, and intellectually I think it would be better. How can I fix myself?

—Old fossil

Dear old man,

Being old does not necessarily mean being fossilized. I I’m old – I’ll be 70 on my next birthday – and I’m also stubborn as hell. If I can invite new ideas into my aging brain, so can you. I promise. (Anyone can do it too.) You just have to be willing to do it.

You don’t even have to “agree with” or even understand your daughter’s willingness to “share”, you just have to respect her, which means accepting the basic fact that she is not YOU. If she is happy and you love her, it is up to you to find it in your heart to love the people she loves, and especially love the child – and all future children – she is raising, whether he or she is biologically related to you or not. You may be able to restart this process by recognizing that if you continue to treat these two children differently, your daughter and her family may stop visiting you and you will lose not only your daughter but also the child you consider yourself to be the parent of. grandmother. . The truth is, if you can’t “come to terms” with Mindy being part of a group rather than (as you prefer) a couple, you’ll end up losing her anyway. And there’s a bonus to gracefully accepting things that we don’t have personal experience with or that may seem strange to us: it opens our minds and hearts, making our own lives better. It also prevents us from fossilizing.

Dear care and feeding,

My mother is elderly and lives with me. Recently she met someone who had their little Shih Tzu dog with them while we were at the park. She fell in love with the dog and now wants a Shih Tzu for herself. My mother is 87 years old, has many health issues and limited mobility and uses a walker to get around. She needs help with basic tasks such as dressing, eating and bathing, which means all care of this dog would fall on me. In addition to grooming requirements, her desired dog breed can live 16 years or more. If we’re realistic, the dog would almost be guaranteed to survive it.

To begin with, I have never been a dog lover and I don’t want the burden of having to find a home for a dog after it dies. I have siblings, but they’re about as likely to help me take care of our mother as Donald Trump is, frankly. It’s gotten to the point where my mother is pressuring me daily to get her a Shih Tzu. How do I explain to him that having a dog is not a good idea for a person of his age with his health problems? She’s not one to be easily dissuaded when she wants something, to say the least.

—Hunted

Dear Hunted,

In my opinion, you have two choices, and neither of them involve “explaining” anything. You can tell her that she can’t have a dog because she lives with you and you don’t want a dog in your home, period. Which is the truth, right? Since you don’t care about dogs, you don’t want to have to walk a dog, pick up poop, etc. If she continues to bring it up, you remember that you already said no. Or you bite the bullet and leave your 87 year old mother, who wants a dog so badly, to have one, and out of kindness, compassion and love for her, you take care of the dog. If you go for door number two, get an adult or “senior” Shih Tzu, not a puppy, and save one. Older dogs, in particular, need a home, so you’d be doing two good deeds at once.

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Dear care and feeding,

My child told us he was non-binary at age 8, and everyone at home and school used they/them pronouns at their request. Kiddo recently announced, two years later, that she feels like her birth gender again and wants to use their pronouns. I have informed all parties. All this is big, beautiful and good. But as the relief of others is palpable, I have mixed feelings. I really just want outside validation that it was a good thing to believe my child and use the pronouns requested, and that changing pronouns can just be a part of growing and evolving with thought and self -reflection. Do you have any advice for supporting her in the future?

—Always traveling

Dear journey,

I’m happy to be the one to provide all the external validation you want. Of course you did the right thing. Don’t listen to the voices of judgment – ​​that is, real voices, in the media or those of misguided people you know; all the implicit ones, like the relief you feel among your family and friends now that their days seem to be over; and even your own loud inner critic, telling you that your romantic instincts were wrong. It wasn’t wrong. You listened to your child when she told you who she was; you trusted her and respected her. This is never the case, Never, the wrong thing to do. If only all children had parents like you.

Every human being who has been or who will be has the feeling of changing identity over time. I don’t need to tell you that gender is a social construct, nor that in our culture, until recently, any suggestion that viewing gender as anything other than a clear binary determined before birth was absurd. But the young children I know today don’t think that way: they know better. The fact that you raised a child who felt comfortable, safe, and loved enough to tell you how they felt, without fear of disbelief, judgment, or retaliation, is an indication that you did the right thing. towards your child. That this child feels differently now than she did two years ago does not mean that she believes it. SO was a mistake. What is wrong is to put someone in a box and insist that they stay there. And I’m not just talking about gender. I advise and supervise students whose parents are irritated by the change of major, career plans, politics, ideas, appearance, etc. The fact is, “changing pronouns” really isn’t a big deal: pronouns are just words, and everyone deserves the right to choose the words that define them, to experiment with the words that work for them, and to discover who they are. are (and there is no correct timetable for this!).

Life is big, complicated, and messy, and the reason we attach labels to human beings (she, him—or even bad at math, good at sports, or just like your Uncle Dave) is to make life more manageable. It’s an illusion. We are all several things at once, and/or one thing after another. In my opinion, helping children see themselves and others as containing all possibilities is one of the most important things parents can do.

—Michelle

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I think my child may be a little old for care and feeding (she’s 21!), but that’s a parenting question. We both worked to pay the bills while raising our children and tried to instill the values ​​that men and women are equally capable. Our older boys are fully launched and our daughter is a freshman out of college and participating in a competitive internship of her choice. She worked hard to be considered. Before this she had part-time jobs, but this is her first full-time job and I know it’s demanding. It sounds difficult, but it’s not unusual, although the transition to full-time work would never be fun. Recently, she has become very interested in social media content about how women are too delicate to be in the professional world and have a place in the home or in education.