DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: Why is it that I am the one who gets chewed out and made to feel guilty by my boss because I take one sick day to help take care of my grandma when my mom is out of town, yet the other guys in my department take off two or three times a month, and everyone knows they’re not sick? And even when they are around, they do half as much work as I do in a typical day. --- NOT FAIR

DEAR NOT FAIR: It may be that your boss knows you can be counted on to show up and get the work done, and so has to scramble more to cover your absence than is the case with your coworkers.

If that’s what’s behind your boss’s grouching at you, try taking it as something of a backwards compliment, born out of frustration with less reliable staffers than you.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: My younger sister and I had our first babies within weeks of each other. The boys have been more like brothers than cousins, so there is no problem there, despite their having very different personalities. My nephew is smart, popular, and athletic. My son is also smart, but in a nerdy, quieter way, not at all into sports, and has only a couple of good friends, unlike my popular nephew. Both boys seem comfortable in their own skins and have done well in their first year of high school.

Now that the school year is over, though, I am looking forward to fewer postings by my sister about how incredible and superior her son is. She posts nearly every day. I almost never do, and when I do, it’s almost never about my kids’ achievements.

It also seems the timing of her posts just happen to coincide with my telling her something my son or his younger brother did that made me proud. I tell her, and within minutes of our talking or texting, there’s a new post about her son’s latest success, or that her fifth-grader just won some prize or other, or was singled out in class for some awesome accomplishment.

I never say anything to my sister, but I truly believe she feels some need to compete her kids against mine, and I just think that is so immature. Don’t you? --- STOP BRAGGING

DEAR STOP BRAGGING: I’m not sure it’s as much a display of immaturity as one of playing into the trend of selective social media sharing that makes it seem like some people are living in a perfect world, filled with only joyous events.

While there may be an element of an extension of sibling rivalry, it’s also possible this is just one of the things your sister does to help her feel good about herself and the job she’s doing as a parent.

Let her do her thing, and you do yours on social media and in the real world. It seems clear that just as your sons are very different people, so are you and your younger sister.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: Even though my son has a good job, it doesn’t pay enough to support the kind of car he just went out and purchased. It’s the kind of car I wouldn’t consider buying even now, when I make more than I ever have before. I don’t even know how his credit rating qualified him for the size of the loan he must have had to take. The monthly payments and insurance must be out of this world!

The other thing I wonder is if he took into account that his fancy imported car is going to cost a fortune every time it has to go in for servicing, which is something I warned him about. My brother found out the hard way when he bought a foreign car a few years back and ended up selling it within two years because the upkeep was putting him in debt.

Why would a smart kid, as I consider my son to be, do something so dumb? He is usually savvy about his finances and this just baffles me, to be honest. --- HE COULD HAVE SPENT LESS

DEAR HE COULD HAVE SPENT LESS: I think it’s natural to want to reward ourselves in a special way from time to time. Perhaps that’s what’s behind your son’s apparently out of character, extravagant purchase.

Even so, he may not have abandoned his usual good sense and did indeed take his ability to meet all the real and potential costs involved with his new car under consideration before he committed to buying it. If he did get in over his head, hopefully he’ll follow your brother’s example and get out from under a financial yoke he isn’t able to tolerate — and take more care to look before he leaps in the future.