My Parents Have No Clue What My Siblings Watch on YouTube. It’s Worse Than They Can Imagine. (2024)

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

Dear Care and Feeding,

I’m 15, and have two siblings, aged 7 (my sister) and 10 (my brother). Both of my siblings spend loads of time watching YouTube on the TV (think 3 to 4 hours a day, just on a school day) and it’s really bothering me, but our parents refuse to do anything about it. According to them my siblings watch the TV to “relax,” and so limiting their screen time any further wouldn’t be necessary. My siblings have screen time “limits” of an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon but these limits are barely ever actually enforced.

My brother tends to watch somewhat educational content, or at least quality stuff (art videos, science experiments). I am more worried about my sister as she has taken to watching terrible vloggers. Our mom and dad put my concerns down to me just not liking what she’s watching, but some of this is, like, actually harmful…

Most if not all of these videos include people saying racist and hom*ophobic slurs, and almost all of it is sexist clickbait. I don’t know what to do about this considering my parents don’t have a problem with it (they aren’t monitoring what my sister watches and therefore aren’t concerned for some reason). What should I do?

—Want to Protect Her From the Garbage

Dear Garbage Protector,

It’s wonderful that you feel so protective of your younger sister. But you’re right that if your parents don’t have the interest (or perhaps the time) to monitor your siblings’ screen use, your options are limited. You can always specifically chronicle a day’s worth of slurs uttered by your sister’s favorite vlogger, present it to your parents, and hope they’ll be spurred into action. But they simply might not have the time or energy to do much about your sister’s screen time right now—or might just feel that the situation as it stands is better than some unknown situation in the future.

You do, however, have one great tool at your disposal: You’re their older sibling, and there’s no doubt that the 7-year-old and 10-year-old think you are great. I bet they hang on every word you say. So utilize that bully pulpit! Tell your sister why you don’t love those vloggers; dial up some better YouTube options for her; maybe even sit and watch some of your old favorites with her to get her hooked on something a little less crappy. Or, better yet, find a non-screen activity the three of you can do together, even for half an hour now and then. Yes, this is creating work for you—but you’re the one who seems to care about this issue, so you might be the one who has to take action.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I have two girls, 11 and 7. They constantly bicker and are mean to each other. They also have days where they play and get along really well. I find myself losing my temper more and more when they fight about insignificant things and it throws off our entire day.

Here is an example: My 7-year-old, “Stella,” had several Valentine’s parties for school, dance class, and Girl Scouts. She got a ton of candy. The 11-year-old in middle school, “Blanche,” got far less. This morning, Blanche asks for a gummy candy from Stella. Stella teases her, saying, “No, you can’t even eat it because of your braces.” Then Stella accuses Blanche of stealing her other candy. Blanche denies.

Voices are escalating. I’m getting ready for work. I walk into the kitchen and ask them to stop fighting. Both then start yelling at me about what the other one did. I ask them again, calmly, to stop. They don’t. I lose my temper and yell. The morning turns to sh*t. I start lecturing and everyone is crying. In anger I take Stella’s Valentine’s bag and put it in my room. I make them apologize to each other and to me.

Now we are all upset. This type of morning happens about once a week and I hate it. By the afternoon, everyone has forgotten about it and life goes on until the next petty argument.

I just want peaceful mornings so we can all start the day on a good note. Why do they do this and how do I get it to stop?

—Moaning in the Morning

Dear Moaning,

Oh, man, you’re singing my song of woe. I remember those mornings so well—standing in the bathroom brushing my teeth and hearing my kids get louder and louder and louder, knowing that everything was about to go to hell—always about something absolutely stupid. For a while we kept a piece of construction paper taped to the wall titled DUMB ARGUMENTS on which we wrote the most inane things our kids got into fights about. “Who gets to sit on the bench,” etc. It’s still a treasured keepsake.

There are two problems happening here. One is that your kids argue about dumb bullsh*t. The other is that you try to keep your cool and eventually can’t take it any more—and you make things worse. The first problem is not unsolvable but there are definitely limits to how completely you can stop children from acting like children. You can continually remind them to speak kindly and respectfully to each other, but that doesn’t mean they’re gonna. You can separate them at the first sign of trouble, but you have to leave the room to brush your teeth sometime. To some extent this is out of your control.

What is within your control is how you respond. Each time you blow your top, not only are you making the immediate situation worse, you’re modeling for them the exact behavior you wish they would stop engaging in. “STOP YELLING AT EACH OTHER,” you are, essentially, yelling at them. I’m not a subscriber to any one particular respectful-childrearing philosophy, but there are a lot of authors out there who have written books with the aim of helping parents keep their cool in times of stress, and there are lots of parents who have benefited from these books. Some examples: How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlich (who’ve also written Siblings Without Rivalry); The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, by Philippa Perry; and Angry Parent Angry Child, by Carrie Khang. It’s less important which particular book you read than that you pick a strategy that works for you, and stick with it. Good luck.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I’m a single dad. My daughter is 11. She has a prosthetic leg, so already kind of stands out and attracts attention, which she really doesn’t like—no preteen likes unwanted attention in general. She also has a noticeable scar on her face; with the way she wears her hair now and her glasses, most of the scar is hidden, but some of it is still visible.

She starts middle school next year and really wants to put on makeup to hide it every day. She’s very candid with me and has told me in the past when people were being rude to her over being “different”—this isn’t about people being mean to her or her scar impacting her social life, she just doesn’t like people asking her questions about it.

I’m really not sure how I feel about letting her do this. On the one hand it might make her life easier, on the other it feels sad that she has to hide part of who she is to fit in. She used to be very proud of that scar. It’s a souvenir from the same incident that caused her leg to be amputated, but when she was younger she’d make up stories about getting it in a duel with pirates or that sort of thing.

—Is This What Middle School Will Be Like?

Dear Is This,

Yeah, unfortunately, this is the deal in middle school. You hit the nail right on the head in your letter: No preteen likes unwanted attention. Once upon a time, as a younger kid, she basked in the attention—or at least was willing to cannily use it as an opportunity to deliver fanciful tales. You could feel slightly reassured that at least she was facing her challenges with cheerful resilience. Now, she’d prefer not to have to talk about herself at all. That’s natural, and you should resist the temptation of thinking that she handled it “better” in the past or is handling it “worse” now.

I think you should let her go ahead and experiment with makeup. Will she succeed? I doubt it. She might find that there’s no great way to hide the scar without long, detailed work each morning; she may tire pretty quickly of having to protect that makeup job during gym class, on hot days, etc. But maybe what she’s really looking for is a way to de-accentuate the scar, rather than hiding it entirely. Either way, this is just a thing she’s going to have to figure out herself as sixth grade approaches.

Even if she somehow zapped that scar away, with a magic wand or something, she could still remain true to “who she is”—which of course has less to do with a traumatic incident many years ago and more to do with her personality, her work ethic, her kindness, etc. Those are the characteristics that you should be helping her to protect during middle school. That’s the best support you can give her. Good luck to you both!

Dear Care and Feeding,

I am trying to decide if I should reveal to my adult children that my husband has cheated on me. We have been married for 35 years. He confessed to infidelity including swinger parties, paid sex workers, sugar babies (puke!!), etc. that has gone on for the duration of our relationship. He is bisexual (I have no issue with that) and this included cheating with both men and women. He frequently got tested and treated prophylactically for STDs but never warned me. He suffers from mental illness and trauma.

I was blindsided and I’m not sure if I’m leaving him (he is desperate to stay together but that could be just to prevent being outed). I am estranged from my own family and have a tough time not having any support. If I had a loving relationship with my mother I’d definitely want to know if she faced something hideous like this. Can you tell me what I might not be considering as far as the repercussions to my children of revealing this about their father?

—Reeling

Dear Reeling,

I’m very sorry this has happened to you. Yes, you should tell your adult children about what you’re going through. It’s up to you how much detail you want to go into—maybe they don’t need to know about the sugar babies—but they are your family, you need their support, and pretending that nothing is going on while you are actively considering dissolving your marriage is going to hurt even worse. Also, they are definitely going to find out eventually.

Repercussions? Well, they’re going to be really freaking angry at their dad. But some people do things that are so sh*tty that they deserve to have people they care about be mad at them for a while. I have my doubts as to whether you two will ever rebuild your relationship—even if he gets the help he needs for his mental illness—but it’s possible that your children, down the road, can find reasons to rebuild their relationship with their father. View being honest with them as the first step in their road toward doing so.

—Dan