Care and Feeding

I Disagree With My Daughter’s First Parenting Decision. Big Time.

A smiling mom touching her smiling daughter's pregnant belly.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by monkeybusinessimages/iStock/Getty Images Plus. 

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

Hi advice readers, I’m Logan Sachon, a new associate editor at Slate Advice, and it’s my great pleasure to be filling in on Care and Feeding today. 

I have a 4-year-old son, but the real reason I feel confident responding to your letters is that I am my mother’s daughter. My mom, Pat Sachon, gave me compassionate, beautiful guidance for all the years we were alive together. She died last year. But she got to see me be a mom for three years, and for three years, she told me I was a good mom countless times. She always meant it, and I always needed to hear it. I still need to hear it, and I do, her voice in my head, forever. Knowing she believed I was a good mom helps me believe I’m a good mom, which makes it possible and true. I’m honored to try to pass on a tiny bit of her wisdom and comfort with you here.

Dear Care and Feeding, 

My daughter and son-in-law are expecting their first child in September. The trouble is that the name they have chosen is absurd. When I first learned what it was going to be (via email), I thought I was seeing a bunch of typos; I had to call my daughter to ask how to pronounce it!

I think they are making a terrible mistake here and setting their child up for a lifetime of having to explain to people how to say/spell their name properly. What can I do to convince them that while they may like the name, they aren’t doing their future child any favors?

—A Rose by Any Other Name Won’t Sound as Sweet

Dear Rose, 

I have bad news and good news for you, and they both are the same: You can’t convince your daughter and your son-in-law to reconsider their baby name! Bad news: The name is the name. Good news: The matter is settled, it’s out of your hands, and there’s nothing you can do.

You already took one swing when you called your daughter to ask how to pronounce the name. No matter how diplomatic you think you were on that phone call, the message that you don’t like the name was delivered and received. Any further attempts to add to your argument won’t work and will damage your relationship with your daughter.

Please drop it! And try to make peace with the name. Practice saying it confidently and correctly, with a smile on your face. Share it excitedly and diplomatically—no eye-rolling! (If you must, pick one confidante you can slag it off to so that if anyone else raises their eyebrows at the name, you can be cool.)

While we’re here: This is the first parenting decision your daughter has made that you disagree with—there will be many, many more. I implore you to choose to support her as she learns how to be a mom, even if that means letting her do things differently than you would. It will be such a gift to her, and to your relationship, to let her make her own way. It will be hard! But it will be worth it.

My own mom gave me this gift when I was a new parent. She still offered guidance, of course, but she really made an effort to tamp down her opinions and let me figure things out. And she lived across the hall from us for much of my son’s first year (another gift), so she was holding her tongue near-constantly at my bad swaddling; my confident (and wrong) proclamations; my classic new-mom hubris and mistakes. A saint!

It took a few years before I was able to appreciate what she’d done for me. When I asked her about it, she told me that when I was born, her own mother had criticized her every move and dashed her confidence. She was determined to do better by me. So she very deliberately told me I was doing a good job, that she was proud of me, that I could feel good about my instincts and abilities. Sometimes she’d ask if I wanted her opinion; very often, I did. Sometimes, I didn’t, or would ask for it, and then disagree.

Even when I disagreed, I often would later realize she’d been right. I regularly have these little moments of realization, where some long-forgotten piece of advice I’d disregarded or pushed back on suddenly rings true. Thankfully, I was able to share many of these “you told me so!” moments with her in the three years she was able to see me be a parent, my small gift to her. (An example: From my teen years on, whenever I spent any time around kids, I’d call her after and say, “I! Am! Never! Doing! This! Why does anyone have kids?! It’s impossible!!” And she’d say, “You don’t have to have kids. But you should know—it’s different when it’s your kid.” I rolled my eyes at this every time! And, of course, it is different when it’s your kid.) I expect to keep having these moments of revelation for the rest of my life.

I hope you choose to do for your daughter what my mom did for me. And I hope one day your daughter understands what you did for her, thanks you, and tells you were right (probably not about the name, but about most other things). Until then: Thank you, from me.

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Dear Care and Feeding, 

I have a sweet, energetic, personable, social, distractible, and did I mention energetic 4-year-old. We are agonizing over our decision on whether we should start him at public pre-K in the fall or keep him in a private preschool. We recently made a big move and pulled him out of his beloved preschool, as we were leaving the area.

The intention was to get him started at a public pre-K class in a school he would stay at through elementary school. Originally, the district said they were full for enrollment across the board, then ended up adding a couple more classes, one being at our neighborhood school. However, at the open house for his school, I kept hearing teachers and staff discussing how they added this pre-K class, and everyone seemed to be in a tizzy and stressed about the logistics and how it would work out. No teacher has been hired to date. We also had a really awful interaction with the pre-K teacher’s aide.

My 4-year-old is such a sweet kid, but I think there is a good chance he may eventually be diagnosed with ADHD: Transitions are really difficult, and he has already been diagnosed with sensory processing disorder, among a few other things. I was already nervous about starting him in a new pre-K, but now I’m really anxious about it!

Financially, it makes a huge difference for our family to put him in public school versus preschool. His 2.5-year-old sister is now attending preschool this fall, and we have a new, wildly expensive mortgage payment. For what it is worth, I’m very appreciative of our teachers, and think they are angels on earth. What is your overall opinion on more formal pre-K vs less curriculum-based preschool for high-energy, difficult-to-focus children like mine? Am I making this a big deal when it’s not? Does anybody ever feel ready to send their baby to school?!

—I Birthed a Golden Retriever Puppy

Dear Golden Retriever Mom, 

Some people do feel ready to send their baby to school, which I only know because I’ve met a few of them. While I find these parents fascinating and theoretically aspirational, I know their path is not my path. My brain was made with the worry switch turned “on”—yours too, it sounds like. That’s OK.

Last year, I was in a similar state as you, deciding between giving my 3-year-old another year at a beloved cooperative preschool or starting public school. My main worry had been the schedule: His preschool had been three hours a day. The public school would be six hours, which seemed like such a long time for a little kid! My mom empathized with my anxiety—she was one of us, too—but she had no doubt that full-time public school was a good move for him. She was confident in him, but she also thought that “being ready for school” was not a thing. All of the kids in his class would be doing this new thing for the first time, and they’d all figure it out and adjust. Kids are resilient! He’d be fine—great, even, she said.

I still worried terribly for months. I finally accepted that it was all working out a few months into the new school. None of the things I’d worried about had come to pass. My feelings weren’t facts. (I hope this realization comes much quicker for you!)

Here are the facts: You have a spot for your son in a pre-K class in the (free) neighborhood public school that he’ll likely attend for the next several years. Alternatively, you could send him to a private preschool, also new to him, for which you’d have to pay a meaningful amount of money. The public school has some unknowns: The teacher hasn’t been hired yet, and the curriculum is more formal than in his previous preschool. Would it be better if you knew the teacher’s name now? Sure. But $20,000 a year better? No. Is a more relaxed or formal setting better for “kids like your son”? Unknown—there are no “kids like your son.” There’s just your son! No one—not his old teacher, his pediatrician, or a child psychologist—can tell you definitively what environment will be best for him. Some kids who are energetic, personable, social, and distractible thrive with structure; some thrive with no structure. Most, I’d think, can thrive wherever they end up. You know that at age 3, your son loved his private, unstructured preschool. Maybe at age 4, he loves his public, more structured pre-K. There’s only one way to find out. You need to show up to school and see how he does.

As for the bad interaction with the teacher’s aide, I wish you’d shared more, but since you didn’t, I’m going to assume that you mean bad as in ”awkward or uncomfortable” and not bad as in “violent or abusive.” Try to dismiss it as a misunderstanding or a bad day. Once your son is in class, you’ll have more interactions with her and can decide whether the first exchange was a fluke or something you need to address. (If it’s the latter, write back and we’ll have a columnist who is more comfortable with confrontation tell you how to play it!)

I think your hunch that he’s neurodivergent is another reason to feel good about trying the public school. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) gives every kid in the U.S. the right to a free educational evaluation and a free and appropriate public education (FAPE). This means that you can ask for an educational evaluation from the school, and if the evaluators do find that he has a qualifying learning difference or disability, he may get an individualized education plan (IEP) and services in the public school. (You can get the evaluation even if you do send him to private school, but getting services can be more complicated—check with your district.)

The nonprofit Understood has several pretty good guides explaining your son’s rights and the general process; you can find out info specific to your city by searching for “IDEA” or “special education” and your city name or by going to the local DOE website. If you think your son may need accommodations in school, you can refer refer for him evaluation him yourself and get the process started now; the evaluation process may take a few months (public school!). But you can also wait and see what his teachers think once they get to know him. No bad choices here. Just choices, and then information, and then the possibility of making different choices.

You’re a good mom, and you’re doing a good job. Your son is thriving, and he’ll continue to thrive in his school. Enjoy the rest of the summer with your babies.

—Logan

Updated July 1, 2025: I’ve updated the last two paragraphs of the second question, which give a very brief overview of special education services in the public school system, to soften some language (“may” instead of “will,” etc.) and to remove the mention of “educational diagnosis,” a confusing term, based on reader feedback in the comments. Thank you, readers!

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