Dear Amy: My mother died when I was 12 years old. I am now 15, but I am having a hard time getting over it and I already tried counseling but it did not work. I tried grief meetings too.
I have three brothers and two sisters. My father got in some trouble in New York, and he lives in Jamaica.
I don’t really have much contact with him, but we just started writing to each other this year. Please give me some advice?
— Sore Heart
Dear Sore: You don’t say much about what your living situation is now or exactly why your dad isn’t in the picture, but I hope that you and your siblings live with someone who really cares about you, because you deserve all the love and support you can get.
I know you don’t think counseling worked for you, but the thing about counseling is that you can’t always tell whether it worked until much later.
Please find someone at your social service agency or at school who can help you reconnect with counseling. If you liked the first counselor, go back to the same person. It’s really important that you feel you can trust the counselor enough to tell him everything. If you don’t feel you can say every single thing you’re thinking and feeling, it’s going to be so much harder for you to move on.
And you know what — you may never quite “get over” all of this, but the idea is to try to keep moving forward so you can continue to grow into the great person you’re going to be.
You might benefit from reading “Straight Talk About Death for Teenagers: How to Cope with Losing Someone You Love,” by Earl A. Grollman (Beacon Press). This book addresses many of the issues you and your siblings face.
I think it’s good that you’re in touch with your dad, as long as he is kind to you. That’s what you deserve most of all. Please give the adults in your life — at home, school, social services, and maybe at church — every opportunity to help you.
Dear Amy: During family gatherings my two daughters-in-law will carry on long, whispered conversations lasting from 30 to 45 minutes. I want to say something to them about this because it makes me uncomfortable, but then I got to thinking, is it really a breach of etiquette as I was taught or am I being overly sensitive?
Do I have a right to ask them to refrain from doing this in my home?
— Confused
Dear Confused: You don’t need to know much about etiquette to know that this is wrong — you knew it was wrong when you were in the lunchroom in grade school, right? It’s impolite to exclude others from conversation in a public gathering.
One way to deal with this might be to approach your daughters-in-law in a lighthearted way and say something to the effect of, “Ladies, is this a private conversation or can anyone join in?” This is the grown-up version of, “Girls, maybe you’d like to share your thoughts with the rest of the class?!” If they don’t get the idea from your good-natured interjection, you might have to get serious and just let them know simply, clearly and politely that it makes other people feel left out to witness their intimate conversations.
At sit-down family functions, it might be effective to seat them far apart at the table, in order for the whole family to enjoy their company.
Dear Amy: When my sister first had kids, I baby-sat frequently. When we both had kids, we took turns baby-sitting for each other, plus we went on family outings and get-togethers. Now that her kids are grown, she rarely offers to baby-sit my kids, and she makes more social plans with her friends than with my family and me.
When I ask her to baby-sit, she either says she’s busy or says she’ll get back to me, then doesn’t. I understand that now that her kids are grown, she wants time for herself, but after all the baby-sitting I did for her before I had kids, shouldn’t she reciprocate?
Plus, I miss out on the family time we used to spend together. Is there any way I can get this across to her?
— Shortchanged
Dear Short: As you acknowledge, people pass through different life phases, and right now you’re still in the kid zone while your sister has passed on to the next phase.
You need to decide which you miss more — your sister’s presence in your family or the baby-sitting help, because these are distinctly different things. You may find that you and she have entirely different versions of who owes whom what, but it will be good to clear the air about this.
If you’re worried about how to have this conversation, try starting with, “The kids and I really miss you!” and take it from there.
———-
Ask Amy appears Mondays through Fridays in Tempo, Saturdays in the Weekend section and Sundays in Q. Readers may send questions via e-mail to askamy@tribune.com or by mail to Ask Amy, Chicago Tribune, TT500, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611. Previous Ask Amy columns are available at Amy Dickinson’s Web site, Chicagotribune.com/amy.
