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Dear Eric: I’m the oldest of three. My middle sibling has routinely been to the home of our youngest sibling to pick up a niece for childcare. This middle sibling recently shared with my parents that the youngest sibling’s home is in a state of unsafe disarray.

The home has always been cluttered but apparently, it’s gotten to a point of concern.

The last time I was at the home I saw the same conditions but looked at it through a lens of “most generous interpretation” and figured they’d had a busy season. Neither my parents nor I have been there in quite some time, partly because it’s always such a mess.

How do we proceed? There are children in the home, our sibling works full time and appears to do all the cooking, and their spouse is a stay-at-home parent who we know struggles with mental health concerns.

The sibling who brought this to our attention isn’t comfortable bringing it up directly (our family is deeply non-confrontational and private but loving and connected). There is concern for everyone’s safety, including our in-law’s mental health, concern that our sibling will become defensive, and concern that the limited family time we have with them will become more challenging.

– Torn Family

Dear Family: There are a couple of components to this, each of which should be addressed separately.

If your sibling has concerns about unsafe conditions in the home that endanger the children, they have to speak with the parents. This can be done gently and fairly. It should involve specifics and suggested solutions. For instance, “I noticed that there are boxes blocking the back door and that’s a safety hazard. Can I help you move those to a closet so it doesn’t endanger your kids or any emergency personnel that might need to get into the home?”

Yes, the youngest sibling might get defensive, but the safety of the children has to supersede everything else.

Now, if there aren’t safety concerns, but rather quality-of-life concerns, you might instead gift the family a few sessions of housekeeping or a consultation with a home organizer. They do have to choose to make use of them, but this would remove one barrier.

As to your sibling’s spouse’s mental health, again if you have specific concerns, intervene. But if your concerns are more general, start with the question “how can I help?” And be prepared with suggestions, including the two above.

It’s important to respect that this is still their home and they can run it how they see fit. But you can make yourselves available to relieve some of the burdens or remove some of the obstacles they may be facing.

Dear Eric: A same-age friend of mine has a grown, married son who lives out of town. He and his wife are very gregarious, interesting and kind. They have in the past asked to visit when they were in town. That seemed to work out just fine.

However, since my husband died, this son has started phone and text communications. I am certain he means well, but I am not interested in his daily life, and I have no desire to share my daily life with him.

In other words, I do not want a friendship, only an acquaintance. I know you always say to simply communicate with people, but this is very complicated as I do not want to offend either this young man or his mother (who can be very sensitive about things like this…).

I am sure she wants me to be friends with her son. Any suggestions?

– Less Talk

Dear Talk: A few options – first, you can frame your request not to chat as much as being less about the friendship he wants and more about the volume of communication we all receive. More simply put, you can tell him that you’re not in a place to respond to texts and calls as much. It’s perfectly understandable when someone says, “I’m not a phone person” or “I don’t like to text as much as I once did.”

As a gregarious person, he may struggle to accept this, but one hopes his empathy and self-awareness is greater than his desire for social connection.

Another option is to simply mute him. This may seem unkind, but he won’t know he’s been muted. You can check in on the text thread once a week or whenever it occurs to you and reply if you’d like. You’re not required to pick up every time he calls. In the old days, the call would just go to an answering machine. Or, before that, an answering service if a person had one. If they didn’t, the phone would just ring and the caller would hang up and try again another time. No harm, no foul.

(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.)

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