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

Dear Care and Feeding,

My husband and I have two wonderful elementary school-age kids. They’re bright and interesting and interested, but they aren’t curve-breaking, brilliant Mensa babies. My husband is brilliant, and he was sure our kids were going to be like him. Unbeknownst to me, he made a lot of backup plans for if that happened.

My husband, in many settings, is kind of like a Siberian husky that someone is trying to keep in an apartment. As a child, he was bored and smart. If he didn’t have new challenges or puzzles every day, he would find or create his own. From early on, this included stuff like disassembling all the desks in his first grade classroom to build a sculpture and, in the fifth grade, improvising explosives. His K-12 education ultimately involved getting kicked out of multiple schools and a chunk of time in juvenile detention. In his mid-teens, he took classes at a local university and was mentored by an incredible local research professor. He went on to get a GED, rapidly obtain multiple degrees, and find an unusual and challenging career that gives him enough to think about.

He’s disappointed our kids aren’t more like him, and is often looking for signs that they aren’t being challenged enough in school. The truth is, they seem fine in school: They’re smart kids, but not to the extent that they need any special programming. I’m proud of them, and I don’t know how to get their father to understand that they can be wonderful even if they don’t need the same things he needed.

—The Kids are All Right

Dear All Right,

What exactly were/are those backup plans he made? Homeschooling them, so they wouldn’t be bored, as he was? (But he has a challenging career, so I don’t know how he’d manage to homeschool two young children—were you supposed to? Without having been consulted?) Or are we just talking about strategies to keep them engaged? Interesting afterschool activities? Plans to teach them Latin or mechanical engineering in the evenings and weekends himself? Or … has he already arranged for some local professors to mentor his still-young kids once they’re a little older? I am so curious!

And I’m curious mostly because you seem so frustrated by the plans he made, whatever they are. I understand perfectly your being distraught about his disappointment in his (your!) children (and I also wonder how he exhibits this, and whether he has expressed this to you or you intuit it—as well as, of course, whether he makes it known to the kids, which would be awful). For sure, it isn’t healthy for kids to experience a parent’s disappointment in or disapproval of who they are, what they can do, or how they perform. But high expectations for kids who are also aware that they are loved and appreciated for who they are isn’t a bad thing. Indeed, if your children are still in elementary school, they may be capable ultimately of way more than you think. Is it possible that your expectations are too low?

It’s very common—hell, it may be universal—for parents to reflexively believe that their kids will be just like them. Many parents confuse their children with themselves, especially when they’re aware of what they needed and didn’t get in their own childhood. Your husband may be suffering from this. But I don’t think pointing out to him that the kids aren’t as smart as he is, or as smart as you think he wants them to be, is going to change anything. Instead, perhaps you both could embrace a “let’s just see who they are” approach. Why not suggest to him that neither of you knows what the trajectory of their lives is going to look like? (And if he’s actively expressing his disappointment that they aren’t bored by school or otherwise demonstrating the qualities he expects of geniuses, tell him outright to knock it off.) But no one was ever hurt by a little enrichment, more opportunities, or exposure to art, science, big ideas, and languages and cultures other than their own—if that’s what his “backup plans” for them involve.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I am the parent of a 4-year-old. I know that I have many unpopular parenting opinions, including this one: I absolutely do not agree with the seemingly universal parenting opinion that “dishonesty is not acceptable.”

Kids lie to their parents! They lie because they don’t want to get in trouble, they lie to feel independent, etc. I lied to my parents all the time. What I care about, in my parenting, is making sure my child knows she CAN always come to me with no judgment. Punishing her for lying seems counterproductive, like it’s only going to lead to a child becoming sneakier and less trusting. If my child did something “bad,” and I know she did it, I don’t really care if she tells the truth because I’ll have the same response no matter what. I never want to “catch” her in a lie. If I know she did something, I’ll just tell her. For example, “So and so told me that you sent a really mean email. Can you tell me about it?” And then we’d have a conversation about respect and kindness, whether or not she denies having done it. I would never encourage lying, but she will not get in trouble for doing it. Do you think this is a bad parenting strategy, or do you agree with me?

—Liar, Liar (It’s All Right With Me)

Dear All Right With Me,

I’d give anything to know what your other unpopular parenting opinions are. But to address this one: The fact that you lied to your parents all the time—and that you are certain that all kids lie—is not a good foundation for a parenting strategy. It’s a throwing up of your hands, a what’s-the-point “strategy.” It’s cynical, and cynicism should not be the attitude with which to approach raising a child.

Of course you want to create an environment for your child that encourages her to tell you anything (that is one of the pillars of child-rearing)—and, yes, punishing a child who lies can backfire. But the way to do the former and not have to resort to the latter is not to issue a preemptive pardon for all lies. Your child is only 4. You have plenty of time, still, to work with her on what it means to be honest (which goes both ways) and trustworthy (ditto), as well as on good decision-making, respect, kindness, generosity (ad infinitum).

If she tests you, while she’s still so young (way before you get to the mean email stage!), by lying to you (“I didn’t do it!” when you know for sure she did, because you saw it yourself or a trusted adult, a teacher or her sitter, reported seeing it), a response that acknowledges your awareness of her lie in a matter-a-fact way (a cheerful, “Ah, we both know that’s not the way it happened” or perhaps even simply a cocked head and raised eyebrow)—not paired with punishment—reminds her that lying is neither acceptable nor necessary. If you lay this foundation early, you’ll save both yourself and your daughter a lot of heartache later. The habit of honesty, established early, lasts a lifetime.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

How do you separate “gut feeling” from “projection,” especially when both you and your kid are neurodivergent and your partner is not?

I often assume—or trust my gut—that my kid is having the same struggles I had, relates to others the way I did, and sees situations the same way I do. My partner’s worldview isn’t as shaped by those experiences as mine is. Yes, she sometimes misses certain cues. But maybe she’s right sometimes, too. Sometimes things are way simpler than I make them out to be. I’m not sure there’s a real answer to this. Perhaps I’m just collecting thoughts as I try to work this out.

—Finding a Balance

Dear Balance,

My first thought for your thought collection is this: Just asking the question—just knowing to ask the question—takes you a long way toward your goal. I’ve said this before, but I never tire of saying it, and I don’t believe it can be said too often: One of the greatest challenges of parenting is keeping keenly aware that your child is not you. Our children’s needs, experiences, reactions, feelings—lives—are theirs, not ours. We fail when we make assumptions about them. We fail when we treat them as do-overs for our own childhoods.

But we also fail when we don’t empathize with our children, don’t pay close attention to them and what they’re going through, don’t see the world through their eyes, don’t try our best to understand them, and don’t have compassion for them. So my second thought for your collection is this: Use what you know—everything you know, including both what you remember experiencing as a child and what you’ve made of it in the years since—to help you understand, empathize with, and otherwise do right by your child. But don’t rely only on those experiences.

You know that already, though, or you wouldn’t have asked your question. So I think you’re doing great. Your child is lucky. All kids should be so lucky. And you and your partner, putting your heads (and hearts) together, are going to knock it out of the park.

—Michelle

More Advice From Slate

Each of my in-laws passed away after a period filled with many illnesses, hospitalizations, and needing continuous daily care. My spouse and I felt proud of having served them at home in their last years of need. It was a loud home with many trying days toward the end—needing to force my in-laws to exercise, take medicine, clean them, etc. as they were going through both physical and mental decline. We had home nurse aides help us in the last few months, it had become so physically exhausting. One of my kids, who is 7 years old, seems to have witnessed some episode of this (something physical) when she must have been 5 or 6 and has on multiple occasions said that she knows what I did to grandma.

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