Dear Queenie,

I made a new friend at school this year and she invites me to her home a lot. I like going there because her family is so nice.

They eat dinner together and everyone is laughing and chatting and it’s like they are all best friends. I like it a lot, but when I go home I start crying because my family isn’t like that at all.

We never do things together or talk much to each other. We don’t even eat together. We just go the kitchen and help ourselves whenever we feel like eating and it’s never all at the same time. Sometimes two of us will eat at the same time, but it’s not like we’re together because we don’t talk to each other or anything, we just eat our food and go.

I tried to talk to my mother about this, but she was too busy to listen.

Queenie, how can I get my family act more like my friend’s family?—Sad all the time

Dear Sad all the time,

You can’t solve your family’s problems all by yourself. In fact, you can’t solve the others’ problems at all, so concentrate on your own.

Keep trying to talk to your mother. If you still can’t get her to listen to you, go to a teacher you trust or to your school counsellor and ask for help. Maybe if they intervene, they can make your mother understand that you seriously need her attention. If not, they can help you get counselling to learn to cope with your problems without her help.

You could also join a girls’ group like the Girls Brigade, Girl Scouts, Pathfinders, sports team or whatever to develop some outside interests and maybe find a female mentor who will give you the guidance you need. Your teacher or school counsellor could help you find the right group.

And keep up your relationship with your new friend. Even if your family is not all you would like it to be, you can learn from hers to be a better parent than yours are, and when you have children you can lead them in the right direction.

Dear Queenie,

My son married a divorced woman with two children this year.

Queenie, I need to know: Do I have to buy them Christmas presents the same as my grandchildren? I don’t even know them, so I don’t know what they would like or what sizes they wear or anything about them.—Going broke on gifts

Dear Going broke on gifts,

You don’t have to buy anyone gifts for any occasion, but to buy for some children in a family and not others would be discriminatory. The left-out children would be hurt, their mother would resent it and your son would be caught in the middle, a very awkward situation.

And why, may I ask, don’t you know anything about these children? Surely you have had time and opportunity to get to know them by now. Even if they live on another island, they are part of your son’s family, which makes them part of your grandchildren’s family too. I should think you would at least take some interest in them, if only because they are part of your loved ones’ lives.

Ask your son and/or his wife for gift suggestions.

Dear Queenie,

Queenie, why do men who claim to hate homosexuals spend so much time talking about homosexuals and homosexual activity if they hate it so much? It gets boring and even disgusting after a while, and I have to wonder why it is so much on their minds.—Just curious

Dear Just curious,

People who are afraid of something tend to dwell on what they are afraid of, like children who are always talking about ghosts and bogeymen.

Also, many men are actually intrigued by the subject, but are afraid to admit it for fear others will think they have homosexual tendencies, so they go on and on about how much they hate it and this gives them an excuse to think and talk about it.

When I hear them I am irresistibly reminded of the quote from Shakespeare: “The lady (in this case, the fellow) doth protest too much, methinks!” This thought is backed up by a study I have heard of in which a group of men were attached to machines that could measure their state of sexual arousal (sort of like lie detectors) and then shown various types of homosexual pornography.

Most of the men who claimed to be homophobes showed a considerable amount of arousal, while only a few of the men who claimed not to care one way or the other about the subject had any reaction at all, and then not much.

Dear Queenie,

My mother calls me almost every day to complain about some argument she has had with one of my sisters or brothers. She goes on and on, and by the time we hang up I’m ready to cry.

My sisters or brothers don’t want to talk to her because all she does is complain to them about the others and then argue with them if she doesn’t think they’re properly sympathetic, but she’s the one who starts the arguments. I’ve tried to explain this to her, but then she starts an argument with me.

I’m in my 30s. I’ve just started a new job, I have a little child and I’m in a very important relationship, and the stress is just too much for me. I’ve tried explaining this to her too, but she doesn’t even seem to hear me.

I suggested she talk these things over with Dad, but she says she doesn’t want to stress him out, but she doesn’t seem to care if she stresses me out!

My boyfriend says I should just hang up on her when she starts to go on about something, but I don’t want to do that.

Queenie, how can I get her to let up on me?—Depressed

Dear Depressed,

Your mother apparently leans on you because you are the only one who will listen to her. But if it puts too much stress on you, you will have to learn to set some limits.

You could just hang up on her when she starts her complaints, but that would be rude and unfeeling.

Your best bet would be to set a time limit to her phone calls; say, three to five minutes. Set a timer or check your clock when you answer the phone. If the conversation is, by some miracle, pleasant, talk as long as you want to. If not, when the time is up, tell her you have to go and say goodbye.

Make some excuse if you feel you have to, such as another call coming in, someone at the door, you have to check the food cooking on the stove, the baby is getting into something; whatever you can think of. Or just say, “Sorry, Mom, I have to go now. Goodbye.” Then hang up.

And if she calls you back, say, “Sorry, Mom, I can’t talk now,” and don’t even let her get started before you hang up.