My sister is endangering her life to be supermom. Her husband doesn’t care.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

My sister has been diagnosed with cancer. It is very advanced, and the treatment is brutal. I decided to relocate temporarily to help her because we are close and I knew that her husband, who is much older than she is and recently retired, participates little in parenting, cooking, and housekeeping. They have two young children.

Now that I am here, it is painful to see how my sister refuses to rest and how little her husband does at home. He’s often playing on his phone while my sister makes dinner, cleans, and cares for their children. The children are spoiled: Both parents always give in to them at the first whimper. They’re disobedient. They throw or drop their toys and shoes wherever they want when they are done with them. It takes an hour or two to put them to bed at night. The children are very smart, and I love them. They usually do well when I ask them to help me cook or tell them they need to put something away before starting a new activity—unless my sister is there to tell them they can have a reward without following instructions or that they don’t have to clean up after themselves if they don’t want to. My sister is extremely defensive of her parenting choices and often tells me that my help is not wanted. While she is quite controlling and has probably prevented her husband from gaining confidence as an active parent throughout their marriage, he has been the classic, lazy husband who thinks his only responsibility is to financially provide for his family.

The kids get excited when I’m there, and ask me to play, read stories, and help with bath time. I know my sister is scared, and she feels guilty and anxious about what her illness is “doing” to her children. Her health is expected to decline over the coming months. How can I encourage her to rest, get her husband to take an active role in the household, and get her to let me take over some parenting temporarily so that when I leave, she doesn’t have to work so hard? Right now, she lets me do some of the laundry, bath time, and cooking (but only when she is so tired, she can’t stay awake). I can’t imagine the complex emotions everyone is feeling, but shouldn’t she and her husband recognize by now that they are jeopardizing her life?

—At a Loss

Dear Loss,

I know you love your sister and you’re worried about her. Of course you are. But helping her doesn’t mean running her life. Help is something that can only be defined by the person getting the help—not by the helper. Your sister doesn’t want you to take over any of the parenting of her kids, not even temporarily. (And unless she has asked you, she certainly doesn’t want your opinions about her parenting.) So if you really want to help her, do so in the ways she wants to be helped. If she tells you she’s too tired or unwell to cook, do the laundry, or give the kids a bath, do it. And do it without giving her unsolicited advice about her marriage, criticizing her or her husband, or tsk-tsking about how much more you could be doing for her if only she’d let you. Bonus round: Don’t call her (or even think of her) as “controlling” when what she is insisting on being in control of is her own life. You say you can’t imagine the “complicated feelings” of your sister and brother-in-law—but then you quickly go on to say that they should both recognize that they’re putting her life in jeopardy, which negates your avowed recognition of how complex this is for them. You’re going to have to stand down and let them figure this out for themselves. You cannot make them handle this the way you want them to.

I also wonder, did she ask you to relocate temporarily? Did you offer and did she gratefully accept? Or did you decide to do this without consulting her? I think the answer matters. You and your sister may need to have a clarifying talk.

—Michelle

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