Lots more for you... Read this!! Here are 10 more pieces of parenting advice you will probably receive from strangers when you have children. … and every single one of them can be rammed up the adviser’s bottom. 1. Just tell that toddler “no” Guess what, People-Who-Don’t-Have-Kids? Toddlers are like violent mental patients: sometimes it’s in all our interests to just humour them. There’s a time and a place for telling a toddler “no.” That time and place is a time and place where you can ride out the massive tantrum that will subsequently erupt. (Preferably, you need a straitjacket and a lockable room to put that wild animal in until it calms down.) For instance, Cousin Ginny’s wedding ceremony is not the time to start playing the tough love card. If the kid wants to play bongos on your head and it’s keeping him quiet, then everybody make like a bongo until the ceremony is over. 2. You are over-feeding that baby The older generation are particularly fond of some very heavy judgement around feeding. According to them, babies should be on a strict diet of three balanced meals a day including a vegemite crust chaser for three month old breastfed babies. If you are feeding your baby on demand, you will no doubt be familiar with this retort every time you get out your norks … “Again? Really?” Yes. Really. Jam it up your jacksie. 3. You should buy proper shoes for your baby, it will help him learn to walk I have three children. If I had bought “proper shoes” (read “expensive over-priced shoes from a specialty children’s shoe shop”) for them we would now be living in a house made of shoeboxes because we would not have any money left. Someone tried to sell me on this “buy proper shoes for back support” theory very early on and luckily because I am a cheapskate I ignored her. Proper shoes a) only fit for two seconds b) get kicked off and lost c) are a stupidly expensive rort designed for people who have more money than they know what to do with and like going somewhere they can have their toddler sit still on a bench and get their feet “measured.” Proper school shoes: yes. Shoes for just-walking toddlers: ***giant raspberry*** 4. Don’t wrap that baby so tight My mother-in-law, God love her (and I do, she is a top woman), was of the “let that baby’s limbs be free” sort of brigade. She did not believe in wrapping. And whenever she got to hold one of my wrapped-like-a-pupa babies she would surreptitiously loosen and unwrap the wrap and then simply look the other way and pretend she didn’t know how it had happened. I caught her at it once and I said, “I see you!” She laughed. We laughed. But I was onto her. Wrapping is like breastfeeding, control crying and feeding on demand: to each their own. Some do. Some don’t. No judgement or advice please – you know where you can ram it … 5. Don’t vaccinate your kids, it gives them autism/cancer/makes them dumb/harms them in some terrible way/attracts aliens from outerspace to abduct them. I’m not going to elaborate on this. I’m just going to wait for the comments box to fill up with anti-vaxxer propaganda. 6. You shouldn’t feed your children sugar Oh yeah? Just watch me. 7. You shouldn’t let your children watch more than half an hour of television a day Half an hour? HALF AN HOUR!? Are you mad? I can’t get enough done in half an hour! Parenting is a blood sport and television is the ultimate bandage. One of my friends used to strap her fractious toddler into his stroller and sit him in front of Maisy episodes on repeat until she could bath the baby, feed the baby and get the dinner ready. Half an hour? Don’t make me laugh. 8. Put cold cream on your face at night This pearl of wisdom was recently given to our own Rebel Wylie. Rebel is heavily pregnant with her fourth child and was trailing three children through Target at the time. A woman approached her and said the best piece of parenting advice she could give was to “put some cold cream on your face every night.” Right. Thanks for that. Because clearly, Rebel was a newcomer to this whole parenting caper … AND how helpful! If only someone had told ME that all those years ago maybe I would look like Kylie Minogue instead of something from The Crypt. 9. He’s just got a bit of wind … There’s nothing like a crying baby to bring out the “Fix-it Felix” in older women. And “probable cause” is their stock in trade. Most oft-quoted probable cause for a crying baby? Wind. Oh, how much do the older generation LOVE this one? Any time one of my babies was whinging or grizzling or even just making a funny face I’d hear the same thing: “Oh I think he’s got wind.” Then they gotta pick up the baby and do the special, patented “wind eradication” technique that they swear by. What is it with old ladies and the “wind” thing? 10. The six month old baby will never learn if you keep picking him up every time he cries Oh yeah? Will never learn what? That I don’t LOVE HIM! Is that what I should be teaching him? That he’s on his own in this big old world and then ultimately after he’s lived his life alone and unheard, he will then die alone? That there’s no one out there? That his tiny cries are of no consequence to me, HIS MOTHER? That I’ve lost interest and gone off to do some shopping? Forgive me if I have an uncontrollable instinct to soothe my offspring. I must be some dumb animal with kooky, hippy, Communist, feminist, alternative lifestyle, extreme breastfeeding maternal urges. What pieces of parenting “advice” have you been given that you would like to return to sender?
Posted on: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 10:47:41 +0000
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