Dear Amy: I am a 16-year-old girl and I live with my parents and my 14-year-old brother.
I’m worried about my father. He has a very stressful job in the car business. But because of gas prices, he isn’t doing so well now, and he handles his stress by exploding in anger.
For example, we were recently on a 13-hour drive home from visiting my grandparents. At a rest stop, my mother gently teased him and he started yelling at everyone.
After another six hours of sulking, when my mother tried to confront him, he maintained that she had made a snide comment and got angry all over again.
My father acts this way on every vacation and nearly every day he has off. He’s not violent, but it is scary.
He is my father and I love him, and I’ve never doubted that he loves us, but it is painful and frightening to have to deal with this all the time, as I get stuck playing peacemaker. — Worried Teen
Dear Worried: Gas prices are so high lately that families feel they have to choose between filling the tank and sending the kids to college.
None of this is your fault, however, and it is your father’s responsibility to find ways to modulate his anger.
You could try to help your dad by talking to him. Choose a time when he is calm and when the two of you are alone. The best you can do is to tell him how his behavior makes you feel. He might have grown up with a parent with an explosive temper, so hearing how this affects you and your brother might have an impact.
Also talk to your mom. It sounds as if your father needs help, and she could urge him to get it.
Dear Amy: I am getting married soon and have to decide on a guest list. The friends list is easy, but I can’t figure out what the cutoff should be for some of my extended family.
My mother wants to invite family members whose names I don’t even know.
My fiance and I are paying for the wedding and don’t relish the idea of inviting people we don’t know.
Are there rules and requirements to this I don’t understand? Also, I have a crazy immediate family of divorced parents who both got remarried when I was young.
The trouble is, my dad got divorced again, so now I have an ex-stepmom. We haven’t ever been close. My dad is selfishly pressuring me to invite her so as not to set a “precedent” that his other kids might follow and not invite him to things.
I don’t like being pressured, guilt-tripped or bullied into inviting someone to my wedding. — Worried
Dear Worried: It is your wedding and your guest list.
Every marrying couple faces family pressure, and you may have to choose to invite someone for the sake of the family you are in — and the family you are making together. This is an intimate celebration of your relationship, however, and you shouldn’t have to share it with people you don’t know.
There is no rule saying that you have to include former stepparents, and it is unfair of your father to lay this at your feet, but the best you can do is to respond respectfully and lovingly, make your choice, draw your boundaries and stand firm.
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