Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Email careandfeeding@slate.com or post it in the Slate Parenting Facebook group.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I am the white father of a 13-year-old white son. We live in a very diverse area and several of my son’s friends are people of color, mostly black. Recently I heard my son call one of his friends the N-word. I was obviously furious and immediately explained that he does not get to say that word. He responded by saying his black friends said he could. His friend also told me that I, a white person, don’t get to choose who says that. After his friend left, I told him that his friends do not get to speak on behalf of all black people and he should never say the word. He reiterated what his friend said, that as a white person my opinion here did not matter.

I followed up by asking him to ask his friends’ parents about the matter. He said he uses the word in front of several of them all the time, in their homes, and they don’t care. We ended by me telling him I don’t want to hear it in my house, which he agreed to. But I worry he is freely using this word out in the world and does not understand the ramifications, both the pain it can cause people to hear a white person say that word, but also the damage to his life it could cause. I thought about reaching out to some black friends and neighbors to talk to him, but I don’t feel it’s the job of black people to educate white people on racism. It makes me feel very uncomfortable saying his black friends are wrong and that I, as a white person, am right when it comes to usage of that word. But I don’t know what else to do. How can I get him to understand that he can’t say that word despite his friends saying he can?

—White Parent Problems

Dear WPP,

I might suggest that this is less of an N-word question and more of a parenting question. You have a teenager. Which means that there is someone in your life about whom you care a great deal, in whose behavior you are exorbitantly invested, but who does not listen to you. This, obviously, is a maddening state of affairs.

But obviously, get used to it, because it’s the normal one. It’s developmentally appropriate for adolescents to be boneheads, and much of parenting at this stage is about knowing when to let go. You will not win most battles of wills with teenagers, but if you obsess over control you will manage to destroy quite a bit along the way.

Obviously, I don’t think your son should be spraying the N-word, but it’s a hard time for him to hear that because he’s feeling himself and his burgeoning identity as the white dude who kicks it with the black kids. Furthermore, all his friends are all co-signing (for the time being) so I’m not too mad at him for trying to do (what he believes is) his thing. The good news is that reality is a much better teacher than most parents. It is extremely likely that he’ll let the word fly around some other kids who don’t know him like that and they will have an entirely different reaction. It’s also extremely likely that one of the kids who is in his friend group will wake up one day, look at him sideways, and be like: Actually, on second thought …. There’s also a nonzero chance that your son himself will wake up one day and be like, oh hold up. Remember: These are all kids and everyone is growing and changing at lightning speed.

So what can you do? By all means make clear why you think he shouldn’t say it. Also get clear yourself on why that is! A lot of times people don’t want to do things that seem racist because they know it’s impolite and shameful, but they are entirely unclear on the specifics of why it’s hurtful and harmful. This disconnect is ferreted out by the agile young minds of our teenagers who see it as good reason to dismiss our messages wholesale. In other words, they may not always know what they’re talking about, but they damn sure know when you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a very cogent explanation in this viral video, which is a great tool because you can get an explainer from a black person without having to burden a black person. I might also recommend you both watch the film Blindspotting which, while not entirely perfect, is a lot of fun and does explore the story of the white kid who grows up around black people with a level of nuance and realism that matches what I’ve seen in my life but that I’m not used to seeing in cinema. (The film does deal with some mature stuff so you may want to screen it before, but I don’t think it’s much that most 13-year-olds with internet access haven’t already encountered.

Continue to make your case. But remember that while you can influence what he does in the world, you cannot control it. He will figure out what he needs to figure out, even if he has to learn it the hard way.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I don’t know how to help my 10-year-old. She’s wonderful—creative, open-minded, curious, and loving. She just can’t seem to pay attention or follow directions of any kind.

She forgets her schoolbooks for homework so often that I tried to rent or buy an extra set to keep at home. School said no. And she’s disorganized to the point that it’s hard to understand how any human could be that disorganized. She’s not at all willful or disobedient, it’s just as if she’s physically incapable of doing these important things.

Two of her teachers met with me to discuss the problems and were pleased when I said I was going to have her assessed, but then they filled out the teacher assessment forms as if she were doing just fine, with only a little trouble keeping her desk neat. Yet what I hear from her main teacher is “I had to keep redirecting her, she wasn’t writing down what she needed to write,” etc.

There’s something going on here. She needs something, but I don’t know what, or how to help. Reminding her—“It’s Wednesday, what book do you need to bring home tonight?”—does no good. Any ideas? I talked to her doctor, he gave me the forms, but like I said, the result wasn’t helpful.

—Sad for My Girl

Dear Sad,

I’m curious what you mean when you say the result wasn’t helpful. Your kid was presumably screened for ADHD/ADD and the results of that screening did not suggest, to your current pediatrician at this current moment, that there’s a need to go further along that path. It may be that your daughter could benefit from a diagnosis, and if that’s the case there will be an opportunity to look at the issue again in fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade. It’s also entirely possible that she does not need a diagnosis and is just forgetful. In which case, great! No drugs for the child!

Unless these two teachers are involved in the weirdest grift I’ve ever seen, they’ve filled out your physician’s forms honestly. There’s not much you can do about that until there are different teachers. So while you’re waiting for more to be revealed along that front, it’s worth investing in some best practices for forgetful kids: reminders, charts, sticky notes, and list-making. You say that reminding her does no good, but I wonder if you mean does no good as in “she still forgets the book” or as in “reminding her doesn’t fix the overall problem.” I would suggest that you can continue to lightheartedly search for techniques that help her remember to bring home the book (a love note in her lunch, a secret decoder ring, a message with invisible ink), but you can’t expect to make her not forgetful by reminding her not to be forgetful. That is not how it works.

Finally I’d like to suggest that you don’t, in fact, need to be sad for your girl. She’s just a kid who forgets stuff. If you don’t treat it as a crisis, then it might not have to be. Help her remember stuff when and how you can. Do not get angry at her for being forgetful (as much as that’s possible), and continue to check in with teachers along the way. Perhaps most importantly, try to resist the temptation to catastrophize this just yet. I say this as the parent of a child with an ADD diagnosis: You have time.

Dear Care and Feeding,

My husband and I are expecting our first child in February. We are both in our early 30s and do not have a lot experience around babies and young children. We are both very social and enjoy spending time out with friends. Our fairly large friend group contains almost no parents (though two other couples are currently pregnant). I’m pretty sure my husband is freaking out about how having a child will affect our social lives. We both are very much aware that our world will shift come February (being pregnant, mine pretty much already has, which I’m more than OK with), but how do I help him see that even if we no longer can participate in all the Saturday night dinners and drinks and Sunday Fundays, we’re still going to be OK? I don’t doubt that he’ll be a wonderful father; I just worry that he’s only focusing on the negatives (change, finances, lack of sleep) and not the positives (cute adorable baby coming our way). Am I totally naïve myself?

—The End of the World as We Know It

Dear TEotWaWKI,

I mean, I have bad news for your husband, which is that he’s not wrong. The good news only comes in the form of worse news, which is that once you have a baby you will both be so overwhelmed and exhausted that a lack of social life will be the least of your worries.

I’m willing to bet that what your husband is expressing as fear about a dying social life is really just generalized anxiety about little things like, you know, becoming a parent, being eternally responsible for the life of a little thing that you love so much, committing to a family for the rest of your life—things of that nature. Assure him that things will be fine eventually. Having a social life with a kid is hard but not impossible. You’ll make new friends, and some of your old friends will have kids. (As you note, some of them already are, and as you’re in your early 30s I’ll bet you $100 that more will follow.) You don’t need to worry about opportunities to “let your hair down” because at 3 a.m. with a screaming infant in your lap, your hair will be plenty down.

Tell your husband that kids are great, babies are delicious, toddlers are fucking cute. Hugging a child that you love is the single greatest feeling in the known universe. And they totally grow up, which means eventually you gain your independence back just as they gain theirs for the first time. Then the world will be your oyster again. It’s just that, by then, there’s a good chance you’ll be entirely over oysters.

—Carvell