ArcaMax

Any advice?

– Miserable Grandma

Dear Miserable: You could cope with this better if you understood and accepted that your daughter is making a series of choices. Her choice to martyr herself to a husband who sounds like a selfish deadbeat must seem puzzling to you, but your role here is not to fix her life.

In fact, unless your daughter comes to you with complaints, or for advice and financial gifts or bailouts, there is no need for you to weigh in at all. A complete lack of pressure or (expressed) judgment or shame from you might actually inspire her to take a long look at the reality of her life.

Your daughter has already established that she can run a household as a single parent. In fact, she sounds impressive.

She has options, and she can make changes if she wants her life to be different.

Don’t agree to anything if you are going to resent it and then make her “pay” in other ways.

You might offer to take the kids for an overnight on Fridays (a very helpful gesture), but otherwise let her know that unless it is a true emergency, she will have to make other arrangements for childcare.

Ballet lessons might make a nice special-occasion gift – but with unemployment at a low 3.6 percent, if the children need shoes, then perhaps their able-bodied dad can figure out a way to provide.

Establish respectful and loving boundaries and focus on maintaining a positive relationship with the children.

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