Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here—nothing is too small.

Dear Care and Feeding,

My husband “Justin” and I have a 4-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old son. Last weekend, my husband did something so negligent I’m not sure if I can ever trust him with our kids again.

The weather was finally nice in our area and we were hosting a barbecue in our backyard with about a dozen friends and family members over. At one point, my daughter spilled an entire bowl of chili on herself. I left Justin to watch my son while I took her inside to get cleaned up. About 15 minutes later, I had gotten my daughter’s clothes changed and we were about to return to the backyard when the doorbell rang. I opened up to find a neighbor holding our son. He handed him to me and said he was driving home when he spotted my son wandering around in the street halfway down the block from my house.

Justin’s excuse was that he had given my son a popsicle to eat to keep him busy and left him sitting on one of our lawn chairs while he kept an eye on the grill. I told him that if he wasn’t able to watch him, he should have said so and I would have asked someone else to do it. Even though my husband apologized, I no longer feel comfortable having him watch our kids. Until our kids are several years older, I plan on taking them with me when I need to go somewhere rather than have him watch them. If I am not able to do that, I’m going to send them to my parents’ or have one or both of them come over. Justin says it was an honest mistake on his part and I’m being unfair. I don’t think I am. Our son could have been hit by a car, kidnapped, attacked by a dog, or God knows what else. Right?

—No More Chances

Dear No More Chances,

That must’ve been absolutely heart-stopping. The image of your toddler wandering down the street is terrifying. I’m so relieved your neighbor found him and returned him safely. So many things could have gone wrong! Alhamdulillah, nothing did. I’m honestly shaken just reading about it.

Let me be as clear as possible: What happened was scary, preventable, and totally irresponsible. Your husband made a potentially dangerous mistake. Parking a 2-year-old in a lawn chair and expecting they’d stay put? Come on.

That said, throwing your husband into exile might not be the answer here. Instead of asking whether you can ever trust him again, ask whether this behavior reflects who he is, overall, as a parent. Does he usually keep the kids safe? Is he engaged? Does he understand that parenting can’t be paused? If the answers are yes, then I’d bet this shook him too. Unless this is part of a larger pattern of inattentiveness or dangerous carelessness, I’d argue that this incident, as awful as it was, is a wake-up call.

You’re not wrong to feel like your trust was broken. He absolutely should’ve said no if he couldn’t fully watch Jacob. But I’d also bet he said yes because he wanted to help, not because he didn’t care. That’s not an excuse—it’s just a starting point for a real conversation.

So have that conversation. Sit down and calmly establish some non-negotiables for when either of you is on solo kid duty. Make a plan for chaotic moments like what to do if one kid spills chili on themselves. Be honest about your limits. If you’re juggling too much, say so. And make it clear that this isn’t about blame or punishment. It’s about keeping your kids safe and making sure neither of you ever has to live through that kind of fear again.

Parenting requires vigilance, yes, but it also requires growth. Give him the opportunity to grow from this. He won’t forget this moment. Neither will you. Thankfully, your child is safe. As terrifying wake-up calls go, this one came without lifelong scars or consequences. That’s a gift. Use it.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I’m 20 and recently moved out, and I have an 8-year-old sister. Due to the age gap we’ve never been the closest (not helped by the fact that I have always been very obviously favored by our parents), but she sees us as the best of friends. She’s started asking if she can stay over at my house, and to be honest, I’m not sure. At first I said maybe in the future, but she’s consistently asking me every chance she gets and I feel like I’m letting her down. Don’t get me wrong, I would love her to come over, but a sleepover sounds draining. She can be really annoying, and doesn’t sleep well at all (think not getting to sleep until midnight and then waking up at 2am, and expecting someone to be entertaining her every minute of her being awake). My parents have also started to pressure me into taking her for a sleepover. What should I do?

—Slightly Unwilling Babysitter

Dear SUB,

Congrats on moving out! Nothing like your first apartment to help you appreciate how much you don’t miss spending your nights trying to entertain a sugar-high third-grader.

That said, my first reaction to your letter was: Does this guy appreciate how deeply his little sister loves him? To her, a sleepover at your place probably sounds like a golden ticket into your cool grown-up world. Sure, it’ll get in the way of you eating takeout in bed while watching YouTube, or whatever 20-year-olds do, but it’s so sweet that she wants to share that with you.

But, yes, it’s also exhausting. Hanging out with kids can feel like babysitting a raccoon. It’s completely reasonable not to want to be on the receiving end of all that energy. Wanting personal space isn’t mean. It’s healthy.

I’m concerned you didn’t set a hard boundary up front. You said “maybe in the future,” when you could have been honest, telling her it was because of her sleeping habit. Maybe your best bet at this point is to gently offer an alternative. Sit down, plan out a fun sibling hangout, and present her with the plan instead. Tell her you’ve picked a Saturday where you want to order a pizza, watch a movie, play with some markers and cardboard or something, and maybe her favorite board game. Agree on a firm pickup time with your parents, and make it fun. Feel free to invite some of your friends, as well.

If your parents try to pressure you into going the full sleepover route, put it back on them. Tell them you’re happy to revisit the idea if your sister can show she’s sleeping through the night consistently. Until then, this could be a solid compromise: Your sister gets your attention, you get your space back, and nobody ends up awake at 2 a.m.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I could really use some help. For a couple months, my nearly 4-year-old has been coming out of his room on an almost nightly basis, and then not going to sleep until about 9:30 or 10. He shares a room with his 20-month-old sister, so sometimes she wakes him up in the morning and he does not get enough sleep. It is not good for anyone. We’ve tried a lot of tricks: Let him take books and his Tonie Box, just keep marching him back in, and so on. He transitioned to a toddler bed really well for the first month, and then this.

We’ve tried showing him it’s really boring after you go to bed—We’re cleaning or working!—so he doesn’t feel like he’s missing out. At the end of the day, I just really worry about him not getting enough sleep. I can handle the getting up (though I don’t want to), but that’s my biggest source of stress. Even if his sister didn’t wake him up, we’d still have to get up for preschool. Any ideas? Anything that’s worked?

—Bedtime Blues

Dear BB,

Congratulations on transitioning your kid to a toddler bed, but honestly? Welcome to hell. I too have Googled “kid won’t fucking sleep help.” My kids share a room, too, both in toddler beds, and for a stretch, one woke the other up, or both refused to sleep and turned their room upside down instead. You’re not doing anything wrong. It’s normal. Four-year-olds aren’t good with discipline, especially when they decide sleep is only when the fun stops.

That said, I can offer a few things that worked for us. No guarantees, of course. Toddlers are famously not a science.

The first one is routine. Not just a vague sense of “bed time,” but a consistent, predictable order: dinner, bath, pajamas, brushing teeth, story, lights out. Once that pattern sets in, their bodies expect it. This takes time. But once they stop fighting it, it really pays off, or it did for me.

The second is introducing Quiet Time. I tell my kids, “You don’t have to sleep, but you do have to be quiet.” My kids enjoy the autonomy, and weirdly, that seems to lower the pressure and lets the tired sneak in.

And finally, when all else fails, I resort to Up. Lights off, toys away, blanket wrapped, I lift them up and rock them with their head on my shoulder for 15 to 20 minutes. They almost always knocks them out. If they wake when I set them down in bed, I repeat. Rarely have had to do this more than twice. I was scared it’d become a nightly habit, but thankfully, it hasn’t.

There are other hacks you can try. I’ve heard bumping bedtime earlier can avoid the overtired second wind that turns them into overenergized goblins. But the most important thing to remember is you’re doing great. You’re doing the work, you’re paying attention, you’re trying. The struggle is real.

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