Serious Monday - Why People (including me!) Give Parenting Advice

This is something I've been mulling over for a while now... as soon as I HAD Squiggle all I wanted to do was to advise other would-be-mums how to do it. Help them benefit from my experience, tell them what I'd hoped someone would've told me... this is actually (sorry guys) a really destructive behavior. while you're trying to help people have the birth/parenthood they want, you will, no matter how hard you try, make others feel undermined, inadequate and failing. I'm really sorry if I made anyone feel like that.

The overwhelming reason people give parenting advice is to recieve validation from others because deep down we're all petrified of 'doing it wrong and we find it difficult to believe that there are so many ways of doing it right. Infact our definition of right and wrong just doesn't seem to work that way does it? If we're doing it right, and someone else is doing it differently, they must be doing it wrong.... right?!

Wrong

Confused yet?! Hahaha!

It astounds me how many things are matters of heated debate among parents. The use of dummies, cloth nappies, breasttfeeding, controlled crying, adherence or non adherence to strict schedules.... but lets face it (although it is by no means ideal) if you let your baby cry itself to sleep every night, use disposables, bottle feed and stick to a strict 4 hour feeding regimen, while occupying the baby at all other times with a pacifier the baby is still probably going to turn out quite normal.... I mean yea, even if you beleive the research, the controlled crying  might leave them with abandonmant issues, and the dummy might retad their speech development a little but *really* I work with children, and these are not big issues

The kids with big issues are the ones who have autism, but their parents refuse to have them diagnosed (a) because they're in denial about their child's condition, or (b) because they don't want their child to be 'labelled' for the rest of their lives... The kids with big issues are the ones who live and care for their alcoholic mother ... I could go on but I would seriously be damaging my chance of ever getting a job again...
The truth is worse than you can imagine.

So let me give you this one piece of parenting advice.


Love your kid,


If you're loving your kid, and putting their needs first, you're doing it right.


(but seriously... Don't buy a Gina Ford book... please?)