I Promised to Pay My Son’s Tuition With No Strings Attached. I’ve Changed My Mind.

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

Dear Care and Feeding,

My wife and I have two sons, both in college. We made a deal with them that we would pay for their undergraduate educations, no strings attached. “Ian,” our younger son, is about to complete his first year at a college on the East Coast, where he was recruited to play soccer. Soccer doesn’t pay for his entire tuition, but it reduces it significantly, which is a huge help. While he has no desire to play professionally, one of his dreams was to play soccer in college. “Hannah,” his girlfriend since their senior year in high school, followed him to the same school. Hannah is a nice girl and very bright, but she’s extremely immature and, among other things, comes across as hyper-sexualized. She’s made inappropriate comments to us about what she and Ian do together, is demanding of Ian’s time, and has driven away some of his closest friends. We were hoping he’d find himself and “his people” at college, but we feel like Hannah is holding him back.

They have both decided to transfer after this school year. We ultimately agree that Ian’s school isn’t the right academic fit for him, though he tried to make it work—but Ian’s decision didn’t come about until after Hannah had made her decision to transfer and pushed Ian to do the same. Ian entered the NCAA transfer portal and has offers to play soccer next year from three excellent schools across the country. He did apply to them, but we found out recently that Ian and Hannah have been applying to transfer to other schools, separate from the three who offered Ian for soccer. Some of these have extremely high costs of attendance that would most likely not be offset in any way. This may not be a big deal for Hannah, but it is a big deal for us as it would force us to take out Parent Plus loans, which we’ve managed to avoid until now. What this all means is that Ian is considering quitting college soccer so he can continue going to school with Hannah, which will not only present an unexpected financial burden to us, but also feels like he’s abandoning his dream and his potential.

My wife and I don’t know how to feel about this. On the one hand, Ian is an adult and can make his own decisions. On the other hand, we really don’t want to pay full freight for them to continue going to school together. The offer to pay for the boys’ college didn’t come with any contingencies, cost or otherwise. But when we made it, we didn’t envision a scenario like this where we felt like one of them was making bad decisions. We realize that we run the risk of alienating Ian if we say to him that he’s on his own if they plan to go to school together next year, but we don’t support that decision and don’t want to pay for it. But then the old adage comes up, “You can’t help who you fall in love with.” So, should we go with it, whatever Ian decides? Or should we establish our position and risk potentially alienating him, at least for a little while?

—Tuition or Not Tuition

Dear Tuition,

Let’s put the issue of Hannah aside for a while. You say that Ian’s dream was to play soccer in college. He’s technically done that. Is there a possibility that he has decided he no longer cares about that, or that he’s learned, having done a year, that it’s not for him? It feels potentially problematic to talk about his “potential” in an activity that was never going to be long-term for him, or to assume that his dreams can’t change.

Regarding the financial situation, I get the impression that you can afford the expense, even if it means taking out a loan. (If you couldn’t, you would have put limits on your original offer, right?) Given that, is this financial shift ideal? No. Is that Ian’s fault? I don’t think so; you never told him he wouldn’t have free choice in all this. Changing the terms of his tuition now feels like a bait-and-switch, and it’s hard to see how he would view it as anything other than a punishment for not living his life the way you envisioned. I don’t think that’s the tone you want to set.

Finally, let’s talk about Hannah. She sounds like she has a lot of growing up to do and may be holding Ian back. I completely sympathize with your fear that he may choose to prioritize his romantic life over his passion for soccer or his academic priorities. If he decides to follow her to a soccer-less school, he may very well look back years later and wish he had made different choices. But they are his choices to make—a truism you made clear with your open-ended college offer. I can’t see how financially threatening him would help him learn anything, other than to be wary of accepting help from you in the future.

Use this application review time to talk to Ian about what he truly wants regarding soccer, school, the relationship—all of it. Really try to understand his point of view and see if he has considered all the repercussions of his choice. And in the end, support him. Pay for college wherever he goes and grin and bear Hannah’s presence. College is a time to learn how to be an adult—in more ways than one. Helping him make a choice, and accepting that it might be the wrong one, is about an adult a lesson as you can get. If he comes to regret it later, he’ll still have the knowledge that his parents trusted him to take a leap.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

I have a 4-year-old tabby mackerel. Stormy’s well-behaved, but mostly seems to just tolerate me. I work from home and take her out on her harness for walks, which is how I met “Lara” and her mother “Fiona.” Lara is 6, and Fiona often takes her to the park after she comes home from school, around the time I usually take my afternoon break. Stormy absolutely loves Lara. Starts purring as soon as she sees her, often runs right over to her, and either brushes up against her legs or scrambles up into her arms. Her harness leash is long enough that if I stand under a tree she can climb up into the branches, and Lara will scramble up after her and the two of them will sit on the branches to watch the birds.

So, I suppose it was inevitable that Lara would ask if she could keep my cat. Fiona’s okay with having the animal in her house, and it seems like it would be best for everyone involved, but I can’t shake the feeling that it would be wrong to just give away an animal, especially to a small child. But I don’t have any clear reasons for it, and I’ve always distrusted that kind of inchoate gut-reaction decision-making. How can I splice out my own feelings to get to the bottom of this? Or should I just give my cat to Lara? I’m sure they’d treat her well.

—Untangling Myself

Dear Untangling,

Six-year-olds ask for all kinds of things, so I wouldn’t ascribe too much weight to Lara’s request. That said, it sounds like you are concerned that your cat might be happier with Lara, but you feel irresponsible just giving away a pet. I think this is a totally reasonable hesitation. Animal adoption is, essentially, a promise you make to a living creature. You are promising to be their family and companion, with few to no conditions. To break that promise, even if you feel it’s in the interests of the animal, feels like going back on your word, even like abandonment. You might be worrying that it makes you seem like you don’t care about Stormy, which isn’t the case.

When I am stuck on decisions like this, I try to gather more data. What if you let Lara and Fiona borrow Stormy for a few weeks? See how Stormy does with their family, whether Lara loses interest, and whether you and Stormy miss each other and are happy to be reunited. That might give you the insight to make an informed decision. You might uncover unequivocal evidence that Stormy was meant for Lara’s household and decide to let her go. You might discover the opposite. You might even find that Stormy’s visit went well, but that you ultimately can’t just give up a cat on a whim, which is still a perfectly reasonable choice.

Whatever you choose doesn’t have to be the end of any relationship Stormy has. If you keep the cat, maybe you’d have Lara and Fiona as options for pet-sitting when needed! If you give Stormy to them, maybe the same is true, but reversed. I don’t think there is a right or wrong way to act in this situation. If you can confidently say that either home is a safe place for Stormy, you can rest easy with either option.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

My husband and I are both white, mid-40s professionals who work for social justice non-profits, and we’ve worked hard to make anti-racism a family value. We talk a lot, and comfortably, about white supremacy, our privilege, and our own and our extended family’s implicit and explicit biases, and how to confront them. We’re far from perfect, but I’m really proud of our kids (ages 12 and 14) and how they’re making their own choices around these values as they grow up.

Lately, however, I’m concerned that one of my husband’s techniques for calling out bias might be a little harmful to my kids. When we’re watching a movie or TV show with a young white woman in a lead role, he will frequently comment about how silly it is that we’re supposed to feel bad for a “skinny white girl” because she’s “feeling bad for herself.” Except…we have a skinny white girl teenager who is often feeling bad for herself because she’s a teenage girl! She’s a terrific kid who is kind and thoughtful with a strong sense of social justice and compassion—and she’s also a teenager who has friend drama and school pressures and is self-conscious and all the things that are a part of growing up! I’ve tried to gently point out that everyone feels bad about themselves sometimes, regardless of race or body type, and that’s OK; he responds that it’s important to point out that these shows and movies prioritize whiteness at the expense of others. I don’t think he’s wrong about that, but I also don’t think we need to be dismissive of who our kid is and what she’s experiencing in the world. What do I do?

—She Doesn’t Even Go Here

Dear SDEGH,

Nice Mean Girls reference. I think it’s great that you are doing the work of raising your kids with an anti-racist lens. So often, there is a fear that we might not “do anti-racism right,” and that fear can often stop folks from even trying. I see your point about how, in an effort to show how Hollywood is prioritizing cis white females as the dominant narrative, your husband is inadvertently invalidating a perspective that may be meaningful to your daughter. If I were writing to him, I would respectfully suggest that your daughter can know that a story about a “skinny white girl with problems” is not the most important story for everyone, but still feel it’s an important story for her. Those two things can coexist, and you and your husband need to make space for that possibility.

Moreover, by ending the argument at “There are too many white-centric stories in Hollywood,” he may be accidentally glossing over the deeper implication of that phenomenon, which is that the cis white experience is often considered the default in Hollywood, and any other lived experience is thus seen as a deviation from that default. That’s a perspective that is much more complex and nuanced than an offhand commend disparaging white-centric stories. Through that lens, you and your husband might be able to have a conversation about whether his current approach is accomplishing what he thinks it is.

I do want to raise a flag at another potential pitfall I see in his approach, which is that by minimizing the problems of white girls, your husband might be inadvertently implying that the problems of BIPOC girls are much more serious. That kind of overcorrection can actually cause harm itself—especially in regards to Black women, who are very often depicted as victims, and in the way that stories of Black pain are told more frequently than stories of Black joy. I don’t know if that subtext is occurring in your conversations, but it’s something you want to be acutely aware of.

These pitfalls are articulated in a series of fact sheets put out by Think Tank for Inclusion & Equity (TTIE), in collaboration with Color of Change, the Geena Davis Institute, and others. These are easily digestible resources for critical thinking about all kinds of media tropes related to race, sex, disability, and more. Maybe looking at these resources can give you and your husband a shared framework and vocabulary for how you want to continue talking to your kids about race and media. Good luck!

Dear Care and Feeding,

My husband and I have two kids—a 15-month-old girl and an almost 3-year-old boy. Since each was about one year old, they have pretty successfully fallen asleep on their own and slept through the night nearly all the time. Right now is an exception to that. Our daughter is intensely teething as the last four teeth work on coming in. She wakes up multiple times a night, sometimes wanting milk, but mostly seeking comfort as she grabs at her gums. I usually just go hold her, give her some pain meds as appropriate and a cold teether or washcloth to chew on, and put her back down in her crib once she’s asleep. At the same time, our son seems to be starting to have nightmares some nights, waking up crying and telling us about something scary that had happened and needing help to get back to sleep (usually just sitting with him in the chair in his room for a couple of minutes then putting him back in bed). The two in combination are becoming exhausting, but I know the phase for each will pass and they’ll mostly go back to their good sleep habits.

My husband, however, thinks we need to take a cry-it-out approach to get the kids back to sleeping independently. A co-worker told him that’s how they got their kid sleeping through the night and whenever he has a bit of a setback and starts waking up again, they just repeat the process for a few nights and he goes back to sleeping independently. I think we just need to support our kids through a tough transition for each where they need a little more love and attention. We never did cry-it-out to get either of them sleeping on their own and I don’t think it’s appropriate for where they are now, either. Because of this mismatch in how we think the situation should be approached, my husband refuses to get up with either kid at night. He says if I don’t want to cry-it-out, it’s fine, but I will need to be the one that gets up with them since he thinks we should leave them. On top of the exhaustion of sometimes multiple wake-ups a night (again), I’m also starting to feel resentful toward my husband for basically “tapping out” on his parenting responsibilities (as I see it). I’ve brought it up to him and he sticks with saying I don’t have to get up so many times, I could just choose to do cry-it-out and we’d all be getting better sleep sooner. Any suggestions on how to approach this with him, or how to deal with my angry feelings towards him until this is through?

—Hold them Versus Cry-It-Out

Dear Versus,

Sleep drama doesn’t make anyone their best version of themself; I’m sorry that you and your husband find yourselves at loggerheads on how to move forward. I’m not going to place my thumb on the scale of this argument, both because it’s such a charged issue and because there are so many resources out there that discuss various sleep interventions. That latter part is really where my recommendation lies; from your letter, it sounds like your husband is irritated and looking for a solution (fair) and he’s latched onto a friend’s recommendation (also fair). You’re not comfortable with the method. Have the two of you sat down together and done some reading so that you can make an informed decision together? It doesn’t seem so, but I think that is your best bet for moving forward. You need to approach this situation as a fact-finding team: What are the specifics of cry-it-out? Is it recommended as a remedy for pain or acute sleep issues like nightmares? I don’t remember that being the case (I might be wrong), so that’s something to look for. If you keep talking about this as if you’re in opposition, you’re setting up a situation where one of you is destined to lose. As frustrated as you might be, I don’t think that’s a dynamic that either of you wants to cultivate.

That said, you might do all your due diligence and still disagree. If that’s so, maybe your husband has a bit of a point that if you’re going to parent this situation “your” way, you should shoulder the burden. BUT, marriage is still a partnership, even when you disagree, so maybe in exchange, he can pick up some other parenting duties—like cooking the dinners so you can grab a nap before bedtime.

In an ideal world, you will find a way to think of this sleep debacle as a trial you’re facing as a team. If that vibe is hard for you all to strike, think about ways you and your husband can do some relationship repair work once the sleep issues subside. A few well-timed date nights, a weekend away, or reading some relationship books together are all ways that can get yourselves back on the same page after being at odds. This isn’t the first time you’ll disagree on how to handle an issue, but with communication and trust, you’ll hopefully get better at surmounting conflict each time.

—Allison

My daughter just turned 7, and she is very neat and tidy for a little kid. When she was younger, we had her tested for autism because she had so many different routines and other things that needed to stay “just so,” but other than that she showed no signs of autism. Her toys have to be in a certain alternating order, one pillow has to be fluffed three times, and she always ties her shoelaces three times before leaving the house.