Worst advice you've seen on a thread?

[PrincessAnne5Eva]

Lighthearted!

Ok so I've seen some corkers in the years I've been posting/lurking on MN. What's the worst advice you've ever seen on a thread? Here are a few (in no particular order):

Years ago, someone telling the OP to do all the housework and not give her four teenage children any simple chores to do because she was a single parent and they "needed to have a childhood" so couldn't possibly do the dishwasher or similar.

Someone on a pension thread telling the OP that her house was her pension, except she was renting and they hadn't read the OP properly.

Someone telling an OP without a car that going on holiday to the arse end of the Highlands to a tiny village was completely doable by public transport and encouraging her to go up there somehow and effectively get stranded in a village with no bus service or taxi companies.

Luckily on these sort of threads I also see a lot of people calling bullshit on the bad advice but it still makes me laugh and hope to God that the OP is sensible enough to listen to the majority (they usually are).

Cross post! Glad that I wasn't the only one thinking it was ridiculous!

They can. They just do it in person / over the phone / zoom rather than in writing.
I've done it.

I thought I was being rock n roll putting custard in my tea when I'd ran out of milk on quite a few occasions,it's really quite nice to be honest,kind of a vanilla type tasting tea 😀
But cheese?,obviously I haven't lived!😆

But most of these older mums come back after 2 year of having a baby asking for advice on divorce

How do you know this?

Fucking hell 🤣👆

It's all extremes isn't it!

Sometimes, it's the right time to sit down with your child and have a non-judgemental chat about their behaviour to get to the bottom of it. Sometimes, bad behaviour requires some support. Sometimes, children, just like adults, can be little shits and need to be straightened up sharpish.

The idea of parentification, or forcing your child to act as the parent for younger children, became more publicised, brilliant. Then it became that if you ask your 16 yo to keep an eye on your 6 yo for 5 minutes whilst you run to the shop, you are a child abuser, and a 10 yo emptying the dishwasher needs therapy to recover.

I'm guessing it comes from the fact that it used to be a fairly regular result of divorce maaaany years ago. Clearly not relevant for unmarried couples though!

I'm stuffed. I had one in my 20's, one in my 30's and one in my 40's. Daft, yes! Bad mother to any of them - absolutely not!

A&E threads are always mental. It's usually someone describing something that could easily have been treated elsewhere but was delayed for whatever reason and they refuse to go private (dental pain, weird symptoms in child etc). I suspect a lot of the A&E replies are actually strangers keen on having a live drama thread to follow so they tend to urge OP to go to A&E regardless of what the situation it. They're just hungry for medical updates.

"Does my child eat too much" threads are also wild. The OP posts a meal plan for a 3 year old that contains more food than a fully grown adult. The replies are always unanimously positive that the child is definitely NOT eating too much and it's cruel to deprive growing kids of calories. Stuffing a child is absolutely acceptable even if the child is clearly overweight and cannot control their appetaite. Then at the same time, threads are exploding about weight loss injections, side effects, obesity etc.

This in spades. I see older mum bashing, AND younger mum bashing on here. The younger mum bashing seems worse though. It comes from posters who claim the only women they know who had their first baby under 26, are lower class, badly educated, 'common as muck' Vicky-Pollard types. I see this quite a lot!

There are advantages and disadvantages to having a baby young-ish, (say, 18-25,) and for having one say, at 42 ... But it's a biological fact that there is a much lower risk to mother and baby if the mother is under 35 when she has a baby. And 29-31 is the average age for a woman to become a first time mother. Yes it really is, despite the average age on Mumsnet being 43-45 apparently!

So I do get a bit annoyed when some posters try to make out that 43-45, is a perfectly normal age to have a baby, so it's OK to leave it a few years if you're in your mid-late 30s! Because it's not true.

It’s perfectly OK @BatchCookBabe

It is up to the woman when she has a baby.

People on the Legal board giving incorrect legal advice, often arguing with actually legally qualified people.

Happens every day and never gets old (unless you're the poor poster seeking advice!)

If your only qualifications are "Well in my opinion..." or "I've just asked Chat GTP..." then remember, you know nothing Jon Snow.

But most of these older mums come back after 2 year of having a baby asking for advice on divorce.

Really???????

So, um, at what age did all the 20 and 30-something and 40yo “I need a divorce” posters and separated single mums get married and have their kids?

’most’ LOL do you keep a 2-year spread sheet of posters?

Jesus, that is the worst I have heard! What absolute fruitloops. Who in their right mind would let a complete stranger carry their newborn baby or a child of any age a round a supermarket? 🤯

"Show them this thread" sprang to mind immediately. Yes that's just the thing to mend fences with someone you're not getting on with - let them know you've been bitching about them to the internet.

The exercise/weight loss threads are full of actively dangerous advice. Someone will post asking about exercise and getting healthy and will just get a litany of "you can't outrun a bad diet" followed by 100 disordered eating tips.

A lot of workplace threads, especially those where a man has a female colleague and has had lunch with her, will get dominated by posters who obviously have little experience of professional offices and who think that a business meeting with a woman has to be an emotional affair.

It's really not 'perfectly OK..' . It's not OK to dish out misinformation. It's not OK to say that it's perfectly OK to delay motherhood until your mid 40s. It happens on here, and it happens in the media. Female celebrities not having their first baby til her mid 40s, even her 50s in some cases... (often by IVF or using donor eggs.) It's giving women false hope, and is very misleading.

@BatchCookBabe look, I don’t want to derail the thread, but women will make different choices to you. Those choices will have risks: the risks of not having a baby at all increase as do some birth defects and so on.

Unless you’re living under a rock, chances are you know this. It doesn’t mean having a baby at whatever age you want is ‘not OK.’ For a lot of women who have a baby when they are older than you seem acceptable, they’ve been trying for a number of years.

@gannett

A lot of workplace threads, especially those where a man has a female colleague and has had lunch with her, will get dominated by posters who obviously have little experience of professional offices and who think that a business meeting with a woman has to be an emotional affair.

It's often true though. And it's often not just an 'emotional affair.' And the threads are more than likely to be dominated by posters who DO have a lot of experience is 'professional offices.'

How patronising to assume posters who say there could be an affair brewing have never been in an office before. And what is a 'professional office?' 😆Is it a building that went to Uni and got a degree? 😂

To be fair on the threads I've seen, it's always been the case that OP has had many conversations. Sometimes over several years.

One of the worst was recently. In response to an OP who was being bullied into sex, someone advised her that men have needs and she needs to submit to those needs at least twice a week or he'd look elsewhere.

The Doghouse advice threads usually go - I have a cockapoo puppy and need some help - followed by 40 posters telling the OP that a cockapoo isn’t a breed and was certainly from a puppy farm, not one poster actually giving any advice.
This happens a lot if the poor OP makes any grammatical or spelling error - 500 posts complaining that the OP is illiterate and no one advising them on their original question on how to get their child to go to school.

Oh god this, definitely.

I've been plodding along for a few years trying for a baby, found this site on my researching, now convinced that at 38 (if I ever get pregnant) I'm going to have a baby with a life limiting disability and/or uncontrollable behavioural problems. They will never thrive in school, or as adults and their mental health will be in tatters for decades because I don't know how to meet their needs due to of lack of support from professionals.

It's honestly put me off trying anymore as I'm so worried that my age is a dead cert for the above.

Try again, you disproved your own point.

My favourite is on property issues over boundaries and fences. Who owns the boundary? Well actually, nobody. A boundary is just the line between two properties, nobody can own it. Regarding fences, unless you are the original coventee, it is unlikely you would be required to put up a replacement fence. The only people required to fence their property are those keeping livestock.

I remember this one too! Must have been the tenant posting!