He needs stability

The last thing you need this December is a cold criticism shower

it never gets any easier

Fur real?

Having your relatives stay with you is not always the most pleasant experience in the world, especially if they have kids. If you're anything like me, you value your space and privacy. You love your home and have worked to have it the way that you like it. Odds are, you probably don't take kindly to anyone coming in and disturbing your hard-earned peace. Some would say, though, that's what the holidays are for. You make sacrifices for the ones you love because you expect them to do the same for…

When you give your child a last place medal, don't expect them to drop everything when you need them.

Memory can be a slippery thing . They say that whenever you remember something, you're not actually remembering the thing itself, but rather the last time you remembered it. So by this logic, the quality of the information slowly degrades with time-- a photograph of a photograph for years and years until it's just fuzz. So it's not so easily relied upon. This is especially true when you're a kid. Memory is so hard to access from that time that someone could tell you a story about yourself and y…

What's a holiday without a little family drama?

Living with someone rent-free always comes with strings attached. Maybe it's a family member doing you a favor, and if so, you should be expected to contribute more of your fair share of chores, if you're able. When you're not someone's child, you don't get the privilege of being completely taken care of. This is one of the tricky things about living with family. You have to strike the right balance of being respectful and out-of-the-way. One man didn't quite have that balance nailed and ran in…

Such a precarious position

Hosting a party at your house is no small potatoes . It requires a lot of cleaning and preparation, being a little nervous about people spilling, and having to be the last one there. Hosting can take it out of you. This is why we usually reserve it for special occasions. We host parties because we want to-- there's a holiday we want to celebrate or someone special we want to honor. But if the house is ours, the agency is ours to say yes or no. That's why it's such an imposition to ask to host s…

Apparently, moms don't always know best.

please don't tell mom

Your primary focus should always be your family. Having stated that how would you respond if you discovered overt favoritism in the family? The sister who is frustrated is described in the story below. The original poster (OP) was helping her parents book a trip for the whole family. The parents voiced concerns about how they might not have enough money to pay for each sibling. Therefore, out of kindness, OP proposed that each child cover their own expenses, relieving her parents of the financi…

Don't knock what you... secretly want