We’re Hosting Thanksgiving. One Guest Will Sow Chaos. You’ll Soon Understand Why I Can’t Disinvite Him.

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

Dear Care and Feeding,

I am dreading Thanksgiving because my sister and her husband are coming with their toddler, whom they refuse to supervise! Every time they bring him somewhere, the host(s) always end up having to make sure he doesn’t wreck something and/or kill himself while his parents gab away or play on their phones.

My husband and I will be hosting 12 other people besides them, and we have no desire to play babysitters while trying to pull off making/serving two turkeys plus sides. The kicker is that if I tell my sister she can’t come, she’ll stir the pot with our parents, since she’s the precious golden child, or she’ll claim she and my brother-in-law will watch my nephew, only to go back on her word. Any ideas other than tying him to something?

I guess you’re not crazy about toddlers. Or even this one toddler in particular—your own nephew. Toddlers are a lot, it’s true. They don’t stay toddlers forever, though, so try to keep an open mind as he passes through the tiny tornado stage, even if you have to grit your teeth at the same time. It’s fun to be an aunt or uncle! It’s an easy job with a big payoff.

But I get it: Right now you’re mad and worried.

My first piece of advice won’t help you this year, as you have already offered to host—but I hope it will help at other family-wide get-togethers while your nephew is still very young and his parents seem to consider these occasions a rare chance for them to take a break from hands-on parenting since there are so many other adults around: Do not offer to host your whole family. If you know your sister is going to leave the tornado-watching to others, and as host, you neither want to be responsible for your nephew hurting himself nor do you care to put your belongings in jeopardy, the solution is not to exclude your sister and her family from a family occasion (that would be rude, hurtful, and downright cruel). The solution is to refrain from having the whole clan over to your place until tornado season is over.

For this Thanksgiving, obviously, that ship has sailed. (If I were sitting across from you over coffee, I’d ask why you’d said you’d host in the first place, given your anxiety about your nephew’s presence and behavior. Did you sign up for this before his birth? Or when he was a precious, quiet-in-his-parents’-arms baby? Is there a family-wide rotation of holiday-hosting, and now it’s your turn?) Since the event you so dread is now a matter of days away, and it’s too late to back out, I have two suggestions for you. I urge you to pick the one that will cause the least furor in the rest of the family (you know them; I don’t. Mileage may vary).

The first: Identify the adults in the family whom you trust and to whom you are closest (another sibling? A cousin? A beloved aunt or uncle or two?), tell them you’re worried, and ask for help. Don’t pick just one person: If you’re asking family members to help you out by keeping an eye on the little wild child, have them take shifts. Give yourself a shift, too (maybe yours could be the post-meal one). The second: Forget the favors. Instead, discreetly offer to pay a 12- to 20-something member of the family to watch the child like a hawk throughout the entire afternoon/evening. (Younger teens and tweens may jump at the offer. Indeed, if more than one teenager will be in attendance, quietly put them both in charge.) The pay should be generous. I suggest you consider that expense part of the total cost of hosting.

If there is no one in your family to whom you’re close enough—and feel comfortable enough with—to ask for help, and there is also not even one young person who’s going to be in attendance, I’m afraid you’re probably SOL. Do your best to put away or out of reach anything breakable, fragile, irreplaceable, or potentially dangerous, and hope for the best.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

I am hosting a special family Christmas Eve dinner with 18 of our close relatives, both adults and children. My oldest sister, who is single, wants to invite a friend—a stranger (to the rest of us)—and texted me that she was going to do so. This friend is new to the area and has not met a lot of people yet. I’m not particularly close to this sister and feel railroaded, and really do not want to include her friend, whom no one knows and who we will probably never see again. I would really like advice on this matter, as it’s bugging me that my sister is so presumptuous. How can she just assume it’s OK to invite her friend to my house?

While it’s true that for an occasion that is invitation-only (and perhaps in particular a sit-down dinner at which everyone else in attendance is a “close relative”), as opposed to a more casual gathering or party, it’s not good manners to take it upon oneself to invite a friend. If your sister had asked if you’d mind if she invited a friend, rather than simply announcing that she was going to, I wouldn’t find any fault with her at all.

But something tells me that she didn’t ask because she knew you’d say no. And that she 1) did not want to attend Christmas dinner—at which, perhaps, all other adults would be coupled up?—alone, 2) does not enjoy such “special family dinners” as a rule—even if no one in attendance is part of a couple—and has been particularly dreading this one, at the home of a younger sister with whom she isn’t close, 3) hates to think of her friend, so new to town, home alone and lonely on Christmas (i.e., she is a good person), and/or 4) is something more than a friend to the woman she has by now invited, but is aware that the family would not welcome a same-sex romantic partner and thus is misrepresenting their relationship, understandably.

So if I were you, I’d ask myself: If any or all of the above might be true, can I find it in my heart to be generous, inclusive, and gracious to my sister’s friend? It’s Christmas, after all. Can’t you take the high road? Or can you take a middle-high road? Something on the order of, “I wish you’d asked me if it was all right to bring your friend, rather than simply telling me you planned to. It makes me feel taken for granted. But of course, you may bring her! And if you’d asked, I would have told you so.” (Yes, that response includes both a complaint and a white lie. But it still allows you to do the right thing.)

Also, it is decidedly unfriendly of you to insist on the designation “stranger” in this situation. The woman in question is your sister’s friend. (Have you never heard the welcoming phrase, “Any friend of yours is a friend of mine”?) It is, further, churlish to declare that you are all unlikely to ever see your sister’s friend again. Who knows? You might warm to her; you might find her charming. You might even like her better than you like your sister.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

My partner and I decided to have our wills done since we now have two young children. Money is tight, and we were complaining about the cost to my sister and her husband, who is a partner at a law firm. My brother-in-law suggested that we contact his office and that he’d “take care of us.” We did—and were surprised to get a bill for the full price. It’s just as expensive as all the other places we looked. I know we should have discussed the price beforehand, but we took his offering to “take care of us” to mean that we’d get a family-and-friends discount. We paid the bill, obviously, and I think we should just move on and take it as a lesson learned. My husband is taking it harder, and it shows at family events. I worry that no good could come of bringing up the matter with my sister and her husband. What do you think?

—Thanksgiving Should Be Fun

I too would have heard the words, “I’ll take care of you—just call my office,” said in response to your worrying aloud about the steep cost of having these documents prepared, as meaning, “You have a lawyer in the family! I can help you out with this process at a rate you can afford” (or even—foolish innocent that I am—“I’ll draw those pesky documents up for you for free because we’re family”).

Yes, you should have asked him in the moment to clarify, to spell out for you exactly what he meant. But your brother-in-law should have said what he meant, without you having to ask. I cannot imagine what he was thinking when he said what he said (unless he was thinking, “Why should some other firm get that money when you can keep it in the family?”—in which case, ugh). Your husband’s unhappiness/anger about this is understandable. But you are not only right—no good will come of talking this over with your sister and her husband, who will become defensive and perhaps accusatory—you also have the absolutely right attitude. You’ve learned a lesson, it’s over, and in the interest of family harmony, it’s worth putting behind you. (Regular readers will be surprised by my advocating not to talk something through. The exception that proves the rule.)

See if you can persuade your husband to look at this your way. Talk it through with him. If he can’t get there, I hope he can channel his feelings about this into some other activity. Perhaps kickboxing, sprinting, or screaming into a pillow will do the trick.

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