I Live With My In-Laws. What They Let My 19-Month-Old Do Is Horrifying. (2025)

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Dear Care and Feeding,

I am a stay at home mom to a 19 month old baby boy. While my husband and I believe that a little bit of exposure to electronic devices is fine, we try to keep our son’s screentime limited. Due to cultural reasons I live with my in-laws. Both the grandmother and grandfather will whip out their phones just as my son approaches them. They let him watch videos on YouTube for hours and call it spending quality time with him. My husband and I have tried to explain to them, at times gently and at times firmly, that it’s necessary to limit our son’s screen time. They ignore all the points we make, and even offer it to him during mealtimes, when he is happy, upset or whatever. It has become a problem to an extent where I feel like I have no control over my child’s upbringing.

— Frustrated by phones

Dear Frustrated,

You need to educate your in-laws on the harms of screen time in a way that will resonate. I’m sure they wouldn’t smoke in the same room as your son and wouldn’t drive him around without a car seat. If they are YouTube fans, have them search for “screen time effects on kids” on YouTube. They’ll hear about dopamine production, stress level increases, concerning potential issues with brain development, and more. If reading is more their thing, try sending them information from the Mayo Clinic or the American Psychological Association.

You and your husband need a full-court press to convince your in-laws that they are actively hurting your child. If they won’t listen to you, bring in an expert (daycare teacher, pediatrician, etc). Treat the unregulated screen time like the harm it is. If you saw them blowing smoke in your son’s face, you would take him out of the room. They should start to pick up on how serious you feel about it pretty quickly.

I agree with you that a little exposure is fine. Screens shouldn’t be banned entirely. (The World Health Organization, for reference, recommends capping screen time for a 1-2 year old at an hour a day, noting that “less is better”). They are useful for tough moments when you want a kid occupied while you do something. But that something should be quick, and the content they’re consuming should be intended for their age group.It should not be any old thing off of YouTube.

Breaking your in-laws patterns won’t be easy, you will have to be firm again and again. Parenting (and grandparenting) without a screen is going to be more work. Try offering them age-appropriate toys or activities that they can do with your child to replace the phone. It might be a little easier on everyone if you offer them a stack of books they can read instead. You could even task them with picking out some titles from the bookstore or library themselves, so they feel some level of control. But I’m not going to sugarcoat it: this will be tough.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

We’re a family with 2 littles (2 and 4) living in Australia. They don’t have any cousins and our close friends don’t have any kids. It’s been hard to find parents we really click with and who have similar parenting styles. How do people make parent friends?

—Parent Friends

Dear Parent Friends,

Making parent friends isn’t easy, and threading the needle of finding ones that have a similar parenting style that you also get along with is even more difficult. Personally, I’ve found that two things will help stoke new parent friendships: proximity and recurrence.

Hit up those local playgrounds and play spaces and try to strike up conversations with other parents. Meeting other parents who live close by will remove the geographic barrier to your friendship.

If your kids are in any kind of organized activity or daycare, that’s also a great starting point. These are recurring events where you know you’ll see the same folks each week/day and can build a relationship.

It’s also worth asking yourself why you want friends who are parents at all. If you’re the first in your friend group to have had kids, you might be looking for empathetic folks who understand the pure chaos that is 2 and 4. Or are you really looking for playmates for your kids so that you’re not dealing with them 100 percentof the time? What you have in your head when you think “parent friends” might be an idyllic picture where the adults are getting along swimmingly and sipping wine, while the kids play peacefully, and everyone will keep in touch for decades to come. But a friendship doesn’t have to be perfect to be worthwhile, and figuring out your top priority here will help you expand your search.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

I have a 5-year-old son and a 6-year-old daughter. My daughter is fairly reserved, and is a thoughtful, sensitive, and kind child. My son is very silly (loves to repeat things for attention), can be very rigid (has a hard time sharing), and is highly talkative and emotional. He fixates and tends to want reasons for everything we do. In short, he’s a lot to manage for everyone in the family, including my partner, his dad.

I am growing concerned about how his behavior impacts my daughter. She is fairly stoic about his outbursts and general intensity (he tries to tell her what to do, tells her that the fantasy creatures she likes aren’t real, interrupts/steamrolls/talks over her, etc.). His dad and I don’t let him behave that way unchecked, for his own sake as well as hers. But she has become more vocal lately about her brother’s “naughtiness”, aka how much emotional space he takes up so much of the time, and how difficult he can be to get along with. I get it—it is very hard for me, too. I try to make his consequences just his though sometimes we have to leave a fun activity because of his behavior (and then I talk to my daughter about it, affirming her as a thoughtful, kind sister—then I take her out for one-on-one time, or something similar).

How much of this is normal, and how do I create a safe environment for both of them to grow? Is it part of my job to help her understand that some things about her brother might be things she has to live with, as long as she is close to him? I don’t want to go the route of dismissing his behavior for lame reasons (i.e. “boys will be boys”), but he’s not entirely controllable.

—Muddled Mom

Dear Muddled:

Your first question is an easy one: this is normal. If I think of the dozens of parents I know with two kids, this pattern is the case with 90 percent of them. Obviously, the age gap will make the other younger one always seem wilder by comparison, and in your family’s case, a lot of maturing happens in that year as kids progress from 5 to 6. But also, younger siblings have to do something to differentiate themselves from the older, more mature sibling, and acting out and being naughty gets the attention they crave. Your son might be on the extreme end of this attention-seeking behavior. It should abate as he gets older. If his behavior doesn’t improve, it’s worth talking to your pediatrician about a diagnosis, just in case.

As to how to actually handle this right now, it sounds like you’re doing all the right things. The balance to strike is in making sure your daughter understands how much you appreciate her stoicism without sowing seeds of disdain for her brother. Giving your daughter one-on-one time is a great reward for her having suffered because of her brother’s behavior.

One thing I didn’t get from your question was a sense of how your son is dealing with all this. Does he understand that his behavior has consequences? Make sure to give him positive reinforcement if he ever manages a streak of reserved behavior of his own.

—Greg

More Advice From Slate

My mother is a “my way or the highway” kind of lady and is offended at any suggestion that she might have room for improvement. I’ve recently had my first child (her third grandchild). She is very close with my brother in a way she and I are not, and he relies on her heavily for childcare, much of which takes place in her home, where she and my dad both smoke in the house. She also feeds my nephews tons of processed foods, leaves the TV on for them all day, and lets them have the iPad whenever they want. I’d love for her to be a part of my daughter’s life, but how can I maintain my boundaries?