What is the worst advice someone has ever given you?

[abacucat]

I was told as a young adult to put butter over a bad burn I had got. I ignored it of course.
What about you?

My dad told me I'd ruin my DDs life if I didn't stay with my abusive partner. I left him anyway and my daughter has flourished.

@nettletheelf I completely agree with you also.

I am a bit bemused that it seems to be assumed that what you love is going to be be exclusive to well paid. And that direct career path is best. I loved a humanities subject (it overlaps into being a hobby so I loved it at home and school) and was encouraged to do it. It doesn't have a direct career path and is not vocational but graduates do go into very well paid careers. I did very well at it. If I had been encouraged to go more direct well paid career path (and let's face it that means STEM for most people) I would have done much worse at alevel stage, gone to a worse university and had fewer options. In contrast a friend did the science subject she was told she should not the humanities she enjoyed. Now she was lucky to be talented at both but she hated studying the subject and forced herself through it. She has a well paid career but crucially she could have gone into it from the humanities subject and would have actually enjoyed her degree.

I do however think that there are some people who feel they are expected to go to university but don't have a strong opinion on what they want to do at 18. Those people might pick a subject because they 'love' the sound of it when it is not a sensible choice. So in those cases they should be receiving good advice on what of the options they can see themselves doing would give the past career path /level of pay.

It is more individual though than saying you will automatically advise your children to keep what they love as a hobby.

"The best way to make money is not to spend it." From my father, for whom it was true because, having the right gonads, he inherited half the family business and had the option of never working again.
His brother inherited the other half. His four sisters were lucky enough to have nursing and teaching scholarships available to them then. Otherwise they would have been dependent on their male relatives for food and shelter, as their unmarried aunts had been.
He said it so earnestly, too. He really thought he was giving me helpful advice.

I can't think of any advice I've been given specifically but can think of a few things that ppl generally say which I always think are daft. PP have mentioned, the one about only regretting the things you don't do (definitely not true!) and also the one about friends being the most important thing, above partners. Realistically you spend your life (hopefully) with a partner, more time than with a friend and I believe a partner should also be a friend so I don't agree with the whole idea of friends being more important and partners being an afterthought.

I was told not to get involved in a relationship with someone you work with by my very lovely best friend. I ignored the advice, and have been happily married for 14 years now.

Who has said that doing what you love and being well paid are mutually exclusive?

My post said that for a fortunate few it works out great, but for most people it doesn’t. You say yourself that your chosen field isn’t vocational and doesn’t have a career path, and that only some people go on to well paid careers in it, so it doesn’t look like the best bet, does it, irrespective of how much people studying it love the subject?

One of my friends from school was mad on drama and wanted to be a dancer and actress. She danced on cruise ships for a pittance, came home and now works in a newsagents. She doesn’t like it, and wishes that she’d done something else with her life and kept the thing she loved for fun.

Weaning my baby with baby rice in her bottle.....she was 10 days old. MIL is nuts!

nettle, what I'm getting at is that I think it's not that 'do what you love' is a myth, it's that people don't use the phrase in the same way.

Choosing something you love or enjoy without looking at the practicalities is silly.

But lots of people will recommend 'do what you love' or 'choose a career you'll enjoy' and won't in the least mean 'ignore other considerations.

Yet it becomes a finger-wagging exercise, especially (IME) for Arts Graduates who're women. I've never heard anyone tell my little brother, who studied history, that he must have chosen it because he loved it and wasn't that silly? OTOH the number of people who queue up to tell me smugly I should have chosen a more 'practical' degree and not one I 'loved' is remarkable.

I find it really odd. My DP's a scientist and for some reason, because STEM are less female-dominated, no one ever assumes she chose it out of enjoyment or love, but only out of responsibility.

Not a good stereotype to perpetuate.

My mum's batshit. All her advice was bad advice, but the health and beauty advice stood out.

• you don't have dark hair on your upper lip, it's blonde (I have dark brown hair btw), but you rub your nose all the time and your dirty hands make it turn dark. It won't wash off because you do it so often you've rubbed the colour right into the hair.

• You shouldn't shave your legs because it'll make the hair thicker and you'll regret it in later life (I've no idea if this was true but at 14, and having to wear a skirt to school, I'd have been happy to risk future regret in exchange for not being called "King Kong" in school )

• (to 5yo me) don't bite your hair or rescue a sticky sweetie that has stuck to your duffel coat, because the fibres will go down into your stomach and then collect around your heart and you'll die, it happened to a wee girl in Kirkintilloch last year [no it didn't][for about a month I was convinced I was going to die]

• don't brush your teeth the way the school dentist said to, because it's causing you to get brown stains on your teeth (my mother had false teeth, and the next time I went to the dentist she told us it was because I was drinking too much tea. Dentist: does she drink a lot of tea? My mother: I wouldn't have said a lot of tea, no. Dentist: how many times a week, would you say? My mother: twice a day)

• the only reason you're still ill with a cough because you swallow the catarrh instead of spitting it out (I had whooping cough)

• there's nothing wrong with you, you just need to get out and get some fresh air and not lie there wasting the day (I had chickenpox)

• don't be stupid, get out there and play, you can't have hay fever if there's no hay (yep, you guessed it, hay fever)

I really credit a lot of that batshittery for my decision to have a career in science

I get it, LRD.

From my mum:

Don't have showers during your period.

Don't wash your hair during your period.

Don't take paracetamol even though you have mastitis (and infection elsewhere?) and the fever is making you shiver uncontrollably.

Also: tampons are dangerous.

Paediatric doctor in A&E, told me to stop breastfeeding my 6 week old baby who was projectile vomiting blood. Just feed him water as he had a stomach virus.

I obviously ignored him, we later found out the DC had Pyloric Stenosis and needed an operation.

'Don't go travelling.' Listened and regretted this.

'Let your sister adopt your baby.' Bit of a backstory but, eh, no.

The things our parents say. I wonder if I'll give such sage advice to my child. Hope not.

Cutting your hair regularly encourages it to grow.

Many years ago, I confided to my mum that my boyfriend was always trying to persuade me to have sex. She said "You should let him, men expect it, you know."

I have so so many delightful ones that my Dad has said over the years, but I think the worst advice/comments were the 'you have to be married before you have kids' ones. Plus the general image my parents portrayed of staying together even though my Dad is quite a misogynistic bully.

I got married to what I now realise is a carbon copy of my Dad.
I've stayed and had the kids.

Wish I'd stayed single, got my own place and had kids my own way!

I was having some problems with my work giving me part time hours that worked with childcare arrangements and my friend told me to call in sick on the same day every week to make a point.

My dad lectured my DC on using her brown asthma inhaler. Apparently using it would make her lungs paper thin and she would become dependent on it!

It took a hell of a lot of cajoling and convincing and a trip to the asthma nurse to make her see how fucking dangerous and utterly stupid his advice was & convince her to use her inhaler correctly!

Also my parents, you don’t need glasses your eyes change during puberty and if you wear glasses your eyes go bad and get used to them. I had to beg and plead, by the time I got glasses my eyesight was really really awful.

And it’s not like they didn’t go or the opticians regularly.

Also never took us to the dentists, apparently the dentist would purposely drill holes in healthy teeth. But they both went to the dentist!

Luckily I have good teeth.

As a result I have been obsessive with taking my dc to the dentists and opticians regularly.

went to the doctors for help with my disabled child who wasnt sleeping at all and was given a prescription for horlicks

i kicked off major

My aunt advised me to never learn to drive as then, my husband will expect me to do things by myself and be independent from him, and soon you'll grow apart. She said that if I'm unable to drive, we'll be forced to run errands together and be more like a couple.

Same (unhinged) aunt advised me to test how patient a potential husband is by teasing him until he lost his temper.

fuzzywuzzy that's beyond bad advice and verging into downright neglectful/harmful!

I agree too, @nettletheelf, especially for women to be financially independent.

In fact there is other advice I agree with on here. Remember things were different 20 or 30 years ago.