Care and Feeding

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

Dear Care and Feeding,

This year my husband and I are going to be letting our 13-year-old daughter “Kayleigh” have a Halloween slumber party with five of her friends at our house. We were coming up with activities for the girls, and I dug my old Ouija board out of storage. Kayleigh loved the idea and had been playing with it since. Well, until my religious fanatic mother-in-law, “Doris,” caught wind of it while she was staying with my kids while my husband and I attended a wedding out of town.

When we returned, Kayleigh informed us that Doris took the Ouija board and burned it! My mother-in-law’s excuse was that she was protecting our family from the Devil. I’ve since bought another Ouija board for the party, but the one Doris destroyed was something I had from when I was Kayleigh’s age and I’m furious.…