Has anyone ever given you really terrible advice?

[NellysCheekPlaster]

I'm loving the other thread about excellent life-changing advice.

But I'm wondering about the flip side - the terrible advice we've all received.

Here's mine:
"Always be in a relationship with someone who loves you more than you love them".
I took the advice - what a shitshow. He was insecure, he was needy, he basically stalked me for the whole three years of our relationship and then for a year afterwards too.

Also:
"Just get it [tiny tattoo of a horny devil on my tragus]. It'll look great on you"
It did. In 2001.

Ooof.

Probably an entire thread's worth of bad (mostly outdated) parenting advice.

One favourite was that you can absolutely carry a newborn on your lap in the back of the car because it "was good enough for Princess Di"

My mother's advice on men and careers was so outdated - this was early 2000's. It's so hard to believe I actually listened and followed it. I suppose blindly thinking that mum-knows-best.

She is so forward thinking now, in her seventies, it's night and day to how she was back then.

My dh's aunt told me I should just leave baby ds alone in his cot in the house and go out and about!! She said that's how she coped when she had twins. When I brought ds (6 weeks) to dh's dgm's house when she said, the aunt was really annoyed I hadn't followed her advice and left him alone!!

My step father aka adoptive father,
It was a case of his misogynistic shitty attitudes
and negatives attitude in general about myself to family friends about me,

Knowing full well i had experinced an extremely highly shitty childhood before i was adopted...
I think 🤔 knowing what i know now,

I was and still are suffering CPSTD
and mute disorder from everything i went through as a child too..

What an Arsehole he was and still is

Dickhead

Believing career advice from DM (it was the 80s so listened to!) :
Why would you want to join the police - how would you cope having to walk a lot with period pains?
I never had period pains!
Speaking of periods - use 2 tampons if you have a heavy period Luckily I didn't!

There is sooo much more but now I ignore it all!

My mum advised me to learn to touch type - as another 'string to your bow'. I never wanted to to take notes of what other people said, and I never have. ( no offence to those that do!)

I received some spectacularly bad advice on home educating by a teacher friend.
Including a break down of the costs she estimated I would incur.
She had assumed I would need to pay £40 per hour for a separate tutor in every subject!
I know a bunch of home educators, at all different income levels and not one would approach it like that.
My kid does his lessons online with the £2 tuition Hub, which, as the name suggests, is significantly cheaper!

I gave my brother bad advice once. In a work related issue.
I thought it was good advice at the time, but it probably wasn't. I have apologized, and everything is fine now, but things might have turned out differently if I had not said what I said/if he hadn't followed my advice.

"Let's get married, it'll be great"

Too many of these to count

But the current one that bugs me is generalised advice about "you regret the things you don't do".

Um, no. I don't even remember the options I chose not to take....

A midwife when I went into labour with my DS, it was my second DS and I had a big age gap. She treated me as if it was my first baby, I was having regular contractions and she told me they were braxton hicks. She sent me home and told me to have a paracetamol and a bath. By the time I got home I was having contractions every two minutes and they were lasting a minute. We just about made it back to the hospital when I was 10 cm’s, I was examined in the lift going up to the ward, more or less thrown on a bed and told to start pushing. My baby was born 15 minutes later with his cord around his neck and blue.

My mum advised me to come out of the teacher pension, which I did for four years before realising my error. Very annoying and costly mistake.

You should never use moisturiser on the skin around your eyes - just wash twice a day with soap and water.

Luckily a quick glance was enough to tell me not to take skincare advice from this person...

My mum advised me to learn to touch type - as another 'string to your bow'. I never wanted to to take notes of what other people said, and I never have. ( no offence to those that do!)

I had the opposite to this, I was in ‘top’ band at school and we weren’t allowed to learn to type at school because we were told we were bright and wouldn’t ever need to get a job that involved any typing.

Touch typing is the most useful skill I ever learned. Can do all my own typing as I think

Touch typing is the most useful skill I ever learned.
Exactly.

This sounds to me like she really suffered with her periods and thought it was normal.

Worst advice I ever had was from my teachers at school who told me the A level combination I wanted to do wouldn’t achieve anything, I listened followed their advice and took what they suggested and failed miserably

God rest her soul but it turns out Di was not quite the paragon of in car safety that she should have been 🙃

Yes an estate agent when we were looking to buy a house and thinking it was out of our budget.
"Stretch yourselves as far as you possible can and you won't regret it"

We didn't and have never. But I bet lots of people did and now can't afford their houses. I hope he's still not spouting that crap.

Our estate agent suggested we put our London flat on the market at x price. Dh told him to add £50k. Sold at dhs higher price 🙄 thank god we didn’t listen to him!

Get back with your violent ex because your child is disabled and nobody else will ever love them.

My own mother.

Thankfully, I didn't follow this terrible advice.

My mum told me it wasn't worth applying to a particular university as I wasn't clever enough.

I applied anyway and got a place.

A GP (Doctor rather than Grandparent) told me not to wear sunsreen in 35c weather as I should get a tan. I am very very pale and burn very easily.