Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I am a first-time mom in my early second trimester and due in December—peak flu season. My partner has two kids who come and stay at the house 50 percent of the time. They are great girls but get sick VERY often. During my pregnancy, the girls have gotten sick and I’ve tried to keep my distance as well as clean a whole lot. But they got strep and as a result, I also got it. That was scary but the doctor gave me antibiotics and they seem to be working. My worry is this will continue happening and get even worse when the newborn is here. I tried to bring this up to my partner and he just keeps saying it’s part of being a family. But I feel like he is not seeing the huge risk this will be to a baby. I am trying to find a solution without offending him. I feel like the logic should be we just keep them separate when sick, but I don’t feel supported. Can you help me find a plan or a way to explain my situation without sounding like a jerk to my partner?

—Concerned and Guilty Mama-To-Be

Dear To-Be,

I think that for the most part, your partner is right—this is part of being a family. That doesn’t mean you should be flippant about your baby’s health, but I think you need to put things in perspective. Plenty of babies are born with full-time siblings in their home and they remain perfectly healthy in the long run, despite seemingly endless cold seasons. In fact, if your infant goes to childcare, you’ll likely find that it’s him or her that becomes the Chief Infector of your family; babies and toddlers trade minor illnesses like it’s their job.

Talk to your OB-GYN or your future pediatrician, if you’ve already chosen them, about what to expect and at what point to be concerned. Make sure you, your partner, your step-kids, and any other family members are vaccinated against the big illnesses (whooping cough, etc.) and get on the same page with the kids’ other parent about flu and COVID vaccines.

Meanwhile, it’s great to take basic precautions like you are doing—increasing your cleaning, keeping some distance, etc.—to minimize disease transmission. You can ask your partner about the kids masking when they’re sick, too. There is an argument to be made about keeping the kids apart if one of them has a fever, but this might not always be possible given custody arrangements. But these are the kinds of conversations you, your husband, and doctors can have. Conversely, keeping the kids away from your home every time they’re sick feels like it could very quickly become a logistical nightmare—and also cause some serious resentment across your blended family. These kids are just as important as your baby, and they and your husband deserve their time with each other. I don’t think fewer microbes is worth jeopardizing that.

I know you’re concerned and want to protect your baby, and that is admirable. But recognize that your baby will never be in a fully sterile environment, nor do you want them to be. In this case, I encourage you to trust your partner and his experience and find ways to meet in the middle. Congrats on your coming baby!

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Dear Care and Feeding,

My son is very shy, as is his best friend. They were signed up for a bunch of summer camps together. Unfortunately, his friend (the slightly more outgoing of the two) was in a major accident recently. She has multiple fractures in each leg and one arm, plus other minor injuries. She’s had multiple surgeries and it seems she’s predicted to make a full recovery but will likely be in a wheelchair for the next two months, if not for most of the summer. Because she’s shy, she doesn’t have much in the way of friends, either, so my son is going to hang out with her a lot over the summer.

But my son is terrified of going to these camps without his friend. She’s going to have her parents and grandparents watching her in turns and will be able to attend a few of the camps she’s signed up for. I might pull him out of one or two as well but I’m a single mother and my daughter is signed up for most of these camps too (albeit in different groups as she’s two years younger) and it makes life much easier if they’re both going to the same place. Plus, it’ll be difficult for me to take time off or work from home if it turns out he can’t be with his friend for even one day if he’s not at camp. So I need to find a way for him to be more comfortable at camp without his friend. But I’m not sure how.

—Not a Happy Camper

Dear Camper,

The first step is to call the camp director and talk about your son’s nerves. Your mileage will vary with each camp, of course, but in general “camp people” are really invested in helping kids make friends. The camp director would be able to explain to you what the camp day looks like and can talk through the strategies they use to help fold shy kids into the mix.

Use the information that you glean to walk your son through the day so he knows what to expect. You might consider downloading a social story about summer camp—or making one on your own. Social stories are written or pictorial overviews of a variety of life events, from trips to the grocery store to visit with Santa. They often cover logistical timelines and behavioral norms, so while they are most often used with autistic kids, they’re really helpful tools for anyone who needs a little advanced preparation for something new. A quick Google search will yield tons of resources to explore.

As you prepare for the camp week, try to encourage him to be optimistic about camp without overselling it. Yes, you want him to have a great time, ideally, but the real objective is surviving without being miserable, right? So, focus on small goals like “try to talk to one kid in the morning and one kid in the afternoon” or “try to play the games with the group”—you get the idea. Acknowledge that going to camp alone can be hard, but we can do hard things in this family. You can even think of a sticker chart or some other way to count down the number of solo days at camp he has, so that he can see progress being made. I hope the summer turns out to be a positive one, despite your son’s apprehension, and I hope for a full and easy recovery for his friend!

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Dear Care and Feeding,

My 5-and-a-half-year-old is home for his first summer break ever. We are taking him out of preschool/daycare in mid-June and for most weeks have day camps lined up that are two to three hours per day, Monday through Thursday. My husband and I work from home and have a lot of flexibility during the summer months.

My concern is that my kiddo has been in daycare since infancy (#AmericanParentalLeave) and thrives on routines and predicable flows of the day. Any tips on setting up a routine for the summer months or how to best transition a daycare kid to summer (sort of) freedom? He’s active, will decently play on his own-ish, but is also used to being with his buddies at preschool all day so isn’t super used to going solo. This is only for seven weeks during the summer when both my husband and I have a lot of flexibility with our jobs.

—Summer Break

Dear Summer,

I’d approach summer days with a loose-schedule mindset. Do the same kind of thing each morning and the same kind of thing each afternoon, without overengineering it. For example, maybe the mornings are when he plays in the playroom on his own, and the afternoons are always quiet time followed by screentime. Pepper the day with moments that mirror what he’s used to from daycare (like a morning meeting, afternoon snack, etc.) which will give him benchmarks to measure the day against. I also really like using visual timers; you could use them to let him know when you’ll be ready to take a break and play with him.

One of the challenges of long summer days is kids growing bored with their usual toys. During COVID times, my sister-in-law and I each had similar tactics for avoiding this and keeping our kids busy while we worked. I had a menu of “special activities” on the wall that my kid could choose from—things like Play-Doh, water table, easel painting that we had around the house but weren’t in the playroom with all the regular toys. I had to literally retrieve them, which made them new and exciting. My sister-in-law took a different approach and had a selection of medium-sized plastic bins, each of which had its own self-contained theme or activity. So, there might be a doctor bin, a music bin, a sensory bin, and a shells-and-rocks bin. At a specific time of the day, her kids got to choose a bin to play with. Both methods provided our kids with a novel activity that felt special and different, and it required little-to-no set-up from us. It’s not unlike a play-stations approach a lot of daycares and kindergartens have, and thus might be familiar to your kid.

I’d also put some consistent activities on the weekly calendar and have it posted somewhere. Maybe Friday is always “field trip day” where you take him to a museum or zoo, and Tuesday nights are for going to the playground. Again, the idea is to give your kid things to look forward to that help him mark the passing time and feel that sense of predictability.

Final tip: Be ready to throw all of these suggestions out the window. You might find that your child and family need an even stronger routine to plan the day around, or your kid might love being a free spirit for these next few weeks. Taking your child’s lead and observing how they respond to these things will give you clues about how to help him (and you) survive the summer.

Dear Care and Feeding,

Three years ago, we had to move to a more expensive area. It was extremely stressful because I was pregnant with twins and had to take care of our 6-year-old son by myself. My 18-year-old stepdaughter chose not to move with us because she wanted to stay closer to her friends. We went from a four-bedroom house to three; we couldn’t find anything more affordable in our area.

My stepdaughter was staying with her mom but got kicked out for pot use and quitting school. She is currently staying with us and making a mess of our living room. She is “looking” for a job, but as far as I can tell, just spends her days on social media. She doesn’t help with chores either. It has been three months and every day is a fight. We can’t functionally use the room because she refuses to clean up and put the pull-out couch back. Both my husband and I work full-time. It kills me that I can’t even get my adult stepdaughter to run the vacuum. My 9-year-old son can at least put his own toys away!

We recently had a huge fight where my stepdaughter demanded that we put all three boys into one room, that it was humiliating and abusive for her not to have her own, and we should have done better by her. I had to leave the room before I said something I regretted. I have known my stepdaughter since she was 10; she has always been a bright and ambitious girl. I don’t know what has happened these last few years. My husband thinks she needs more time to find herself. I think some tough love is needed instead. Help!

—No Launching

Dear Launching,

I don’t know how long your stepdaughter has been staying with you, but at some point, it will be time to set some boundaries and enact some tough love. Does your husband have an idea of how long he wants to give her to figure things out? And does he want her to move out, or does he want to entertain the idea of her moving in permanently? None of this can be open-ended, for anyone’s sake, so the first step is for you and your husband to talk about timelines and endgames and get on the same page.

Once you’re there, talk to your stepdaughter together. Give her a reasonable deadline by which she needs to have a job (don’t give her a week’s notice, for example), and make it clear that chores are her rent. Identify consequences for not moving forward with things—I know this is hard when she is technically an adult. Cell phone access (if you both pay for it), Wi-Fi passwords, use of your cars, etc. can be useful things to limit until she demonstrates some responsibility. The added bonus is that these constraints mimic the challenges she’d face in the “real world” by not working. Offer to help her look for work, but don’t coddle or do it for her (I suspect she’d balk at that, anyway).

Regarding the housing situation, if you’re willing to have her stay in the house indefinitely, she will need to be in her own room, and maybe that can serve as a carrot for getting a job. But even if this is a temporary thing, do try to meet her in the middle and see whether there is something you can do to give her more privacy and feel less like a couch surfer. It doesn’t have to be an entire room, but maybe there is something to be done with privacy screens, furniture arrangements, or other creative hacks. My guess is that she feels really adrift right now and is taking her fear and frustration out on you. If you can figure out how to make her more comfortable and settled in your home, it might make her more centered and able to tackle the road ahead. Good luck!

—Allison

More Advice From Slate

We have three kids. Our daughter is nearly 13 and the eldest. We have been discussing what to do this winter for a family trip, and my daughter insists she doesn’t like skiing and has no interest in going. The kids have been on skis since they were 3. They’ve skied and/or snowboarded every winter. The boys, my husband, and I love it. We’ve traveled every winter to a ski destination and have been careful to choose places that offer a wide range of fun winter activities (like dogsledding, tubing, snowmobiling) and a fun town vibe that the kids can enjoy. Our daughter grumbles every time we go skiing.