"We didn't do that and you turned out ok!"

[user1471517900]

AIBU to think this is the most annoying phrase you can hear with your child from grandparents? Or are there more?

Oof. I'm not looking forward to this when I have kids. My mum is neurotic enough about how she raised us as it is, constantly seeking affirmation, and flying off the handle if she even remotely thinks we're criticising any of her (awful) decisions (for example the time they didn't bother to get us checked into a hotel/stay somewhere with accommodation and ended up sleeping literally on the street/getting attacked by a drunken alcoholic homeless man on holiday after I'd already been groped early in the holiday age 14, but sure, it was all just an adventure ). At the time I was fairly blase about it, but looking back, it was a ridiculously vulnerable position to put HER OWN CHILDREN into.

I'm lucky enough to be pretty damn resilient with fairly minimal MH impact, but my sister, bless her, is seven shades of screwed.

I think the problem can be that there is so much info available now, people think they are experts before a baby is even born. This is reinforced by the Your Baby You Rules mantra so often repeated on sites such as these.
Whereas in past times, new parents were happy to take advice and accept that someone who had brought up children themselves might have some useful tips to impart, nowadays new parents think they know everything straight away.
When things don't go by the book, they are under such pressure to not be proved wrong -#feelingblessed - it must be a nightmare for them.
I think another facet of this is winen feneralky
I actually feel sorry for this generation of mothers and fathers.

Every generation has there own 'way' and this should be respected.
70's/80's parenting was different to 50's parenting and our parents undoubtedly did things differently to their parents.
However I do think that we are all a bit quick to dismiss generational wisdom, particularly when it comes to areas like settling babies for sleep etc

However posters complaining that they don't have life skills because of their parents should really consider what they are saying. My mother cooked and cleaned for us and when we moved out we had to learn these skills for ourselves, I would think that is relatively commonplace.

I'm not sure that's solely just new parents though. My mil and DM gave me what I now know to be very good advice, but it wasn't the modern way of things and boy did the HV out the fear of God into me about not doing things by the modern 'book'. I was honestly too terrified by them to listen to others.

That doesn't account for all hvs though I hasten to add, but it is an experience shared locally to me and by a few others. I guess some people get unlucky in who they get HV wise.

My dps were definitely better dps than their own dps. But that bar was set low. Will I be better than mine? Well I want desperately to not make their mistakes but I know I'll make my own. I don't think I'll be anything but a different parent and hope I'm not a worse one.

Notever

"Which of us has the "best or most safe" parenting? None of us. We all do our best at the time."

You may have been doing your best at the time, but to say that neither generation of parents have/had safer parenting methods over the other, is ridiculous.

Objectively, regardless of not knowing better, parents that raised kids while thinking that smoking during pregnancy was OK and seatbelts/carseats weren't really a thing, obviously had a less safe way of doing things. It may not be their fault that they thought these things were OK, but that doesn't mean not wearing seatbelts is ever safer than wearing one iyswim.

Uh, yes I totally agree OP.
I'm currently pg with my first and have basically just stopped telling people my mother my hopes and plans for when he arrives as everything I mention is eye roll worthy or not what she did with me and my 3 siblings and we "all turned out fine didn't we?!"

I agree with you that advances in foetal research and SIDS research is so much better now so why would new parents ignore it? and yes maybe my mum did put me down to sleep on my side and I didn't die but I'm still not doing it with my one!

Rant over totally not bothered at all not me

I never offer advice, try to not say anything negative and find my DsIL and sons often ask me for my experience/advice.

Advice changes all the time, when I had my first the advice was to put new borns on their backs, then my sister had hers and the advice was put them on their front, she was very critical with my next one when the advice had changed again and you weren't supposed to put them on their front, she was convinced I was just going back to earlier advice.

'we are all so responsible for our children's personality and mental health and that our parents are responsible for ours?'

Children have their own personalities, however as parents we do have an effect. Particularly in areas such as self esteem and relationships. I agree with you regarding taking credit for achievements/qualities etc though.

'However posters complaining that they don't have life skills because of their parents should really consider what they are saying. My mother cooked and cleaned for us and when we moved out we had to learn these skills for ourselves, I would think that is relatively commonplace.'

I actually think it's extremely important to foster age appropriate independence from the outset. Children are not helpless beings (bearing in mind ages and stages of course).

My MIL doesn't do this, because she says comparisons of parenting - whether between generations or between siblings - only sows discord. She is a wonderful women who I go to for advice.

My parents on the other hand are constantly saying 'we didn't do that' 'your sister doesn't do that' and it invariably feels like a criticism of either them or us is being made. I avoid discussions about my kids with them.

Ultimately, MIL is more involved and knows her grandkids much better, and has successfully scoped out her 'wise grandmother' role.

My parents come across as insecure and immature, and don't really know my kids.

Be honest - has anyone's parents ever advocated something dangerous? Or have they just raised an eyebrow at the heightened hysteria that accompanies parenting these days? Just because something is recommended as the safest way to do things, it does not mean that all other ways are inherently unsafe.
Take the recent thread on here about rear-facing car seats. Judging by some of the responses, you would think anyone who did not put their infant in a RF car seat was doing the equivalent of not bothering with a car seat at all. There is a very small chance of being involved in a bad car accident, and if that happened, a child in a RF car seat would be a tiny bit safer than a child in a FF one. So a tiny bit safer in something very unlikely to happen in the first place. Is it really worth all the hyperbole and htysterics?
A pp poster summed it up for me - not even had the baby yet, but already rolling her eyes at her mother's suggestions, as she, the childless woman, knows all there is to know about being a mother. Better, in fact, than someone who has been a mother at least once.
Parents are so adament their way is best and are very keen to quote safety, until bed-sharing is mentioned, whereupon all bets, it seems, are off. My mother would have been horrified if I shared a bed with a tiny newborn, yet is seems to be the done thing these days, yet there is angst about teddies in cots because they are a safety risk! Can anyone else see the how completely illogocal that is?

Be honest - has anyone's parents ever advocated something dangerous?

Well, yes. Do you count telling parents to put babies down to sleep on their stomachs as dangerous? Back to sleep and other SIDS guidelines has very clearly saved lives.

(Also, cathf, I can see that it's very important to your sense of pride in your parenting that you didn't do all these silly 'modern' things, but there is no one method of parenting that everyone used to follow. Parenting books telling parents what to do have been around for centuries, literally. Feed/sleep/responsiveness/discipline practices change over the years and then change and change again. Your mother might have disapproved of co-sleeping, but your 8x-great grandmother would probably be horrified you didn't and tell you off for not. And so it goes.)

But equally the older generation can justify doing some really shit things because that's what they did and it did them no harm.

I refer back to my earlier comment about my man who honestly thought there was nothing wrong in dipping my 12 week old cousin's dummy in Whiskey. After all, the baby slept really well after that, and she had done it to all her children, and they all turned out okay!

*sorry Nan!

Oh and just remembered when I was pregnant I was advised to drink lots and lots of Guinness for the iron! Can't imagine telling a pregnant woman to do that these days! 😂

Even whisky's an improvement on some. I've read 18th-century writers telling parents off for feeding laudanum to babies to get them to sleep.

My mil, who is never short of a comment on things, has only ever gone as far as 'thank god we didn't have to bother with such stuff in our day'. However a couple of years back she acknowledged that perhaps she was viewing her child rearing days through rose tinted glasses, as my dc are very unlike hers were as she remembers them, yet they're relatively normal kids compared to all the other cousins etc (unless that family are all weird ). Her own sister laughed at her and said 'told you so'. She has given me great advice though, rarely unsolicited too.

I do think that there is a tendency for some new parents to act as if they wrote the book on parenting and to transmit that to others who have already raised their own babies. I certainly did that to my parents (I regret it now!).

Now my children are older, I can see that some things I did differently to my parents were different better, some different worse. And at the time, everyone does the best they can with the information they have.

It's a ridiculous argument isn't it.
Throw back at them that rapists were more likely to have been bottle fed as babies, and paedophiles were more likely to have smokers as mothers.

This.
My Nan does this all the flipping time and nothing irritates me more

What a silly response Neutrogena. Surely you are not being serious?

Of course I'm not serious. It's just something that COULD be said to show how ridiculous their statements are...

My dad once made a comment about not having such a thing when we were little (I think it was a net for the nappy big, so you could pop it straight into the washer without having to fish out individual nappies), with the implication that there was no need for such an item, it was a waste of money as they had managed fine without it. I pointed out that if it had existed back in the day they would absolutely have had one - he agreed, a bit sheepishly

cathf yes, I've known several:
-A grandparent berating a mother already under pressure from the HV because she wouldn't give her toddler coffee to keep them lively at visit times. Apparently in their/my (hence the apparently, as my DF never heard of this) culture/generation caffeine at any age was fine.
-Allowing a child to get out of their car seat and move around the car because they are old enough to figure out the car seat. On a NSL road.
-My father tries to slip my daughter unpeeled grapes all the time. My own sister had a choking incident because of this back in the day. It's stubbornness and my DM watches him for such things.

Thankfully my own DM is reasonable and offers advice while staying up to date on bits too.

... DD in the grape example is a toddler.

MIL asked that I'm feeding 4-hourly, right, like she was told? Is it actually dangerous? Probably not, but would have most likely messed up the supply and had my baby screaming for 3.5 hours

Most of us turn out like our parents I am afraid no matter how much we hope not but no one likes to be reminded of that.

I think and all generations of my family have thought the one thing you do for babies is feed them, cuddle and love them and anything else is just a bonus. I am sure most parents do all that.

As for fashions they come and go and then also some things we only learn later eg I was put to sleep on my front - the new safe way so if you were sick you did not choke on it. Then we found out that temporary idea was not so great and going to sleep on your back might be safer. However I do think the basics of what mothers have always done - cuddle their children, breastfeed them, carry them around are instinctive to just about all of us and never change. I would not dream of interfering with grandchildren and my mother never did with us either.