DR. WALLACE: I'm a single mother to two boys, ages 17 and 12. My eldest recently has gone on a photography kick and he's constantly telling me that he's going to be a professional. He claims that he will find a job in this field and eventually go out on his own, as he has dreams of being a famous photographer someday.

All of this is great, and it's good to see him have hopes and dreams for sure. However, we live on a modest budget, as I work full-time to support the three of us. We are doing fine and have what we need, but the extras are difficult to work into our regular budget. My older son has his heart set on a high-end camera, but to be honest with you, it's out of our price range right now.

I feel terrible and wonder if you have any strategies or ideas on how I could break the news to him most tactfully and respectfully that we're not going to immediately be able to outfit him with a top-of-the-line camera at age 17. He does have a cell phone that I got him a few years ago, which has a really nice camera feature, but of course he tells me that he needs professional equipment to pursue his dreams. — Single Mother on a Budget, via email

SINGLE MOTHER ON A BUDGET: Perhaps instead of your son being able to take the elevator to the penthouse immediately, there may be some stairs the two of you could gradually climb together. Via this analogy, I mean that you may be able to help him find a decent, professional camera at a used or secondhand store somewhere that would be more reasonable for your budget. This would give him at least something to start pursuing his dreams with, and you could encourage him to study online how he might try to sell a few of his photographs independently by submitting to various publications or sources that need interesting or unique photographs.

Hopefully, over time he can get a part-time job somewhere and gradually keep trading in his older cameras for slightly better or newer versions, hence "climbing the stairs" in terms of gradually improving the equipment he works with.

This would allow him to have something beyond his cell phone to start with, and if he's serious about this field, he can make the most out of it and start soon in this manner for now.

SHE ACTS OUT IN RESTAURANTS EVERY TIME!

DR. WALLACE: I'm a 20-year-old male college student and I'm dating a 19-year-old woman who has what I call a less than optimal "restaurant personality." By this I mean she seems to have this metamorphosis whenever I take her out to any type of decent restaurant.

She seems normal enough on campus and when we're in the company of our friends, but for some reason whenever we eat at a restaurant she tends to act out. One of her favorite maneuvers is to loudly say, "Eww" when a dish of food is served that she doesn't like the look of. She'll do this before she even tries to take a small bite to taste it. Of course the server will ask if there's something wrong with the dish or if she wants it replaced and so forth, and the whole experience is very embarrassing to me.

Half the time she'll complain about how it looks but tell them to leave it there anyway and half the time she will actually tell him to take it away. Several times, managers have come to the table to ask what is wrong and so forth. It's gotten to the point where I'm running out of restaurants to take her to in our area because I am too self-conscious to go back into the ones that she has pulled this stunt at already.

What can I do about this? We've been dating now for almost six months. I never saw her do this until a couple of months ago, but now she literally does it every single time. — Her Restaurant Persona is Distasteful, via email

HER RESTAURANT PERSONA IS DISTASTEFUL: It could be that your girlfriend is interested in special attention or that she seeks validation for herself when she's out in public via the drama that she creates.

It does sound contrived to me, based upon the fact that she acts normally almost all of the time except when she's out at a nice restaurant with you. My advice would be to talk to her about this calmly and ask her if there's something you could do to make her feel more comfortable when the two of you go out in public together.

Definitely hear her out and listen intently to whatever she tells you and be sure to ask good, fair questions to her without sounding condescending. However, you shouldn't have to walk on eggshells and continually be embarrassed in public to the point where you're not willing to patronize a restaurant you visited once ever again, due to her acting out.

If you have a relationship with her parents, you might carefully ask them a creative question or two that might shed a little more light on the situation for you, but take care not to be too direct or to sound accusatory if you elect to see what you may also be able to discover this way.

Dr. Robert Wallace welcomes questions from readers. Although he is unable to reply to all of them individually, he will answer as many as possible in this column. Email him at [email protected]. To find out more about Dr. Robert Wallace and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Conor Luddy at Unsplash