Dear Relative We Don’t See Very Often,

We’re on the way to your house for dinner. Before we get there, I want you to prepare yourself, because you and I have the same goal: we’re going to have a good time.

I used to be just like you. I had several cousins whose behavior at family events made excellent birth control. One boy my age was an expert at “I’ll show you mine, if you’ll show me yours.” A brother-sister duo were the loudest children Commander’s Palace Restaurant has ever hosted.  Another wore pajamas wherever they went and seemed always to be in a screaming rush.

My parents would shake their heads when these cousins left, saying, “I just don’t know how your aunt and uncle stand having such wild kids. Why don’t they try some discipline?” We’d gird our loins for family functions that also included our friends, explaining, “The rest of our family is not as well-disciplined as we are.” In retrospect, it was satisfying to receive the holiday behavior prize every time. But my cousins didn’t seem to like me very much.

Fast-forward 35 years, and my children are the ones the other relatives shake their heads about. And it’s not just the kids. Frankly, our family of four is loud, unpredictable, moody, impulsive, high-maintenance, and accident-prone, even on a good day.

So as one who has seen both sides of the family holiday behavior equation, I implore you. Please know that I understand we aren’t easy to be around. Also know that family get-togethers are as important to us as they are to you. Bear some things in mind:

1. Correlation Doesn’t Imply Causation. It’s just like they taught me in Psychology 101. Imagine that the parenting you witness today could be the result, rather than the cause, of having a difficult child. Just because I’m willing to pack a peanut butter and jelly sandwich doesn’t mean I’ve made my child into a picky eater by giving in to his every whim. Maybe I’m more interested in him having a full belly, and thus better behavior, than in him trying your candied Brussels sprouts.
2. We’re At Our Very Worst. We’re out of our daily routine. The stakes are high. We’re dressed up. There’s a present waiting for us, we don’t know what it’s going to be, and we’re going to have to wait all day to open it. When we do open it, it’s unlikely to be the signed Peyton Manning jersey we imagine it to be. If you want to know what we’re really like, come over after school on a regular Wednesday.
3. Think Short-Term. The parenting techniques you will observe today are short-term, not long-term, solutions. Like Andrew Solomon explains in Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, short-term parenting and long-term parenting can be completely at odds with each other. When my child belches at the table at your house, I’m going to ignore it. When he does it at home, I’m going to tolerate the 30-minute tantrum that will result from my giving him a five-minute time-out.
4. Save the Advice. We get a ton of parenting advice from books, professionals, and well-meaning bystanders. We seek it out. We even pay for it. If you have a suggestion, wait a day and decide if it’s worth calling us about. If it involves a special diet or a spanking, keep it to yourself.
5. More Than an Ounce of Prevention. We’ve done everything we can do beforehand to prevent a problem. By the time we get to your house, both children will have had a full, nutritious meal. They got as much sleep last night as humanly possible, and if they didn’t, they’ve had a nap. They know that if either of them utters the word “booty” at the table, which is my worst fear and the most likely mishap, they’re going to lose something they cherish.
6. Relax, and Leave the Discipline to Us. No matter how awkward it looks. We spend a lot more time with our children than you do. If we insist that our child leave the dinner table early and that’s against the rules in your home, there’s probably a good reason. Last time I did this, I was pretty sure my son was about to vomit on the china, silver, tablecloth, and white upholstered dining chair in front of a party of twenty.

If this get-together is a chance to showcase my children, to enter them in a competition for best all-around kid in the family, I forfeit. I myself won that prize enough times, and it earned me nothing but superficial relationships with the cousins I was competing against.

Let’s see this instead for what it really is, or should be: a chance to get together, to catch up, and to reminisce. Look at it this way. Remember at our grandmother Murtha’s house in Albany, Georgia? Something hideous always shimmied beside the plate, nestled on a bed of iceberg lettuce.

Co-Cola salad was purple, and if you looked at it hard enough you could see the shadows and pits of the Bing cherries and nuts within the confines of the gelatinous purple cube. Every once in a while, you’d glimpse a white clot of cream cheese, oozing zit-like. There was a dollop of mayonnaise on top like a beanie. Any jostling of the table, even from putting a dish down nearby, caused it to quiver menacingly. If Co-Cola salad could talk—and at the time that didn’t seem like such a stretch—it would say, “Go on, kid. Eat me. What’s the worst that could happen?”

When you notice my kids blanching at your Brussels sprouts, tell the story of the Co-Cola salad. That’s our heritage. We’ll all get a kick out of it.

Lynn Adams lives in New Orleans with her husband and two children.