Dear Queenie,
My parents don’t have any friends or hobbies so they depend on me and my wife and our children for their social life. Our children do a lot of sports and my parents come to all their games, but then they talk all the time about other things so we can’t pay attention to the game. They want us to spend every weekend and holiday with them, so we can’t visit or celebrate just us and our kids, or with my wife’s family.
They are nice people, but sometimes my wife and I would like to be together on an occasion just us and our children and all this is getting to be a problem.
Queenie, how do we get them to let us have some time without them?—Fed-up father
Dear Father,
An occasional dinner with you and your wife and children is reasonable, but your parents’ wishes are excessive; they expect too much of you.
It is okay to tell them “no” sometimes – firmly, but politely – and your wife must agree and stand with you on this. If you can make it stick, your parents will just have to learn to live with the reduced “together” time.
