How to handle unwanted advice
What is it with parenting and unwanted advice? It must be the only topic in the world where everyone’s happy to approach absolute strangers with nuggets of wisdom. You don’t see it at any other time of your life. When I get in my car, no one advises that I should stop at the next red light. If my dog starts barking, no one suggests that he’s tired or hungry. (He’s not, he’s just a pain in the arse.) If I’m shopping for the ingredients of a vegetable lasagne, no one sneers that in their day there were only meat ones and it never did them any harm.
But alas, before a baby is even born, every mother has likely already received hundreds of pieces of unwanted advice. Told that they should or shouldn’t swaddle, use a dummy or use sleep training. And because every mum has been told since they were a little girl that they had to be ‘good’ and ‘nice’, we all just quietly accept it, as our confidence gets chipped away a little more each time.
I’ve been thinking a lot more about this today as I’ve been battling my toddler’s foot muff. I use a tandem pushchair and as she’s on the bottom ‘bunk’, her long legs have started making the muff brush against the ground. It’s a pain in the bum as I have to wash it after we’ve gone uphill or move the seat and face a toddler tantrum. On one short walk I was stopped twice to be told about how it was getting muddy. Someone even took it upon themselves to try to tuck it in for me.
And what do I do? Say thank you. Of course I don’t want to because I’m insulted that they consider me that dumb I hadn’t noticed. That the gentle taps of my toddler touching the ground weren’t clues enough. That I needed a complete stranger to point out the bloody obvious because I’m such a neglectful mother I hadn’t noticed myself.
Of course, they’re probably trying to be helpful. They probably had toddlers and babies themselves and want to be kind to a mum in need. Many of us don’t want anyone else to learn the hard way like we did. And there’s a good chance I’m being too touchy. Because all of these nuggets of wisdom are so small it’s hardly a big deal, right? But it’s like the Scrooge McDuck vault of golden nuggets – after a while there’s so many they can create a tidal wave. Perhaps it’s because we hear our babies cry regularly enough, we don’t need to hear anymore feedback which suggests we’re lacking in any way. Our Mum Guilt is already on high alert. And who wants to think for a moment that we’ve dropped the ball as mums? We can proudly be bad singers, mathematicians or drivers but the idea that someone else knows your child better than you do? No way.
This was something we spotted with my Mother in Law who told my partner that I was burping my daughter too much. She had reflux and unless you’ve had a refluxy baby, you don’t know the timebomb lifestyle that comes with it. What worked for one baby won’t necessarily work for another so you might feel judged if a person isn’t interested to hear about your different experience. Also, given how much babycare has changed over the years, a lot of advice can be updated so you can find it frustrating to receive advice you know to be wrong. Sadly, sometimes the best way to stave off unwanted advice from those closest to us is to not share in the first place.
Frustratingly, studies have shown that giving advice is a lot more motivational than receiving advice so sometimes it’s more about the advice giver having that warm gooey feeling. Maybe we should let them have it and focus on giving ourselves some self-care. For every piece of advice we receive, we should mentally give ourselves one compliment on our parenting. Perhaps for some repeat advice-givers, we need to say those things aloud to politely say ‘We’ve got this’.
