AIBU to ask about bizarre parenting advice you've received?

[squeakyballs]

It's been a long week with a teething DS and I though this would be a lighthearted way to get to the end of today!

I'll start. I'm British but live in Australia. We took our 7mo DS to a daytime birthday party recently. It was sunny and although mostly in the shade, I was putting sun cream on him to be extra cautious. A friend's mother who was there (native Aussie) advised us to put him in the sun for 30 minutes without sun cream to 'toughen up' his skin to the climate. She had done it with her children. She was being deadly serious, definitely not joking .

What whacky advice have you been given?

Cannot remember any bizzare advice as such. Only the difference in understanding what is the most important.
I got my first child when I lived int he UK. Lot of advice was around how to ensure not to overheat little baby. E.g. if baby is in a pram sleeping and you walk inside (e.g. go shopping) always remove his hat even if you risk waking him up.
Having the second child here 2 years later. One of the most important thing to ensure was: for baby and child not to be cold. And children are to wear hat practically any time while outside: either it's too cold in winter or it is too sunny in summer, or too windy any other time.
I was probably driving other mums here crazy when my 2 year old was happily running around hat-free and they had problems to explain to their children why they must keep the hat on.

We're an overprotective bunch the Italians DM despairs that I don't take DS to the gp every time he has a temperature.

On the plus side we are allowed more coffee in pregnancy and we're not too fussed on getting babies/toddlers to 'self-soothe' in general so there's less pressure.

I know squeaky! The family found out and fired her, but she honestly just thought it was a neat little trick to get babies off to sleep!

He is alive and well, has three incredibly academically gifted children etc. But yeah, lucky he didn't get killed really.

My MIL told me to start weaning my DD at 10 days ‘just pop some baby rice in her bottle, it’ll stop her crying’. I don’t know how DH survived his childhood frankly!

Gp advised to let a two week old- I repeat, TWO WEEK OLD, cry it out at night

A (now NC) family member of mine used to tell me all sorts of stuff.

Babies are far better off being too hot than too cold.

Put yoghurt in their bottle (even though I was breast feeding) so they sleep all night.

Only pick your child up every 4 hours or you're 'making a rod for your own back'.

If your newborn doesn't poo for 12 hours give them a bottle of fresh orange juice.

Epilepsy is attention seeking and she actually shouted at a child having a fit at a family event, then declared it worked because the child stopped fitting after a minute or 2.

Then she told the girlfriend of another family member who was addicted to drugs that it didn't matter if social services came over and saw anything untoward, as long as there was sheets on the childrens beds that's all they cared about.

I never listened to a word she said, other family members hang off her every word though, its terrifying.

My HV told me (sobbing on my knees with tiredness) that the only way to get my breastfed baby (12months) to sleep through was to wean him onto a bottle (which he had always refused) and water down his feeds. When I pointed out NHS advice was to wean off a bottle at 12 months she rolled her eyes at me. Following my DSis advice DP did night wakings for a week patting him back to sleep and he slept beautifully from then on.

Not so sure my experience of an Italian family is so benign. I had 3 generations of (otherwise intelligent) women trying to convince me that the only way to deal with a baby’s hiccups was a big squeeze of fresh lemon juice on their tongue. Seriously.

It’s amazing my own tastebuds weren’t entirely cauterised by acid by the time I started school.

My mother told me that I was being manipulated by 5 day old Dd as I was feeding on demand .
Her method for dealing with a crying baby is fairly suspect too - “Long garden loud radio “. And she wonders why she’s not close to her children.

My elderly neighbor's advised me to leave DS in the pram outside our (ground floor flat) window so he would get fresh air and I would get a break. Also advised when he was teething to rub some brandy on the gums. My granny also backed this up saying it worked a treat when she had my mum 😂 safe to say it was ignored

When I was pregnant, my DM told me that I should not raise my elbows above shoulder level because it would cause the umbilical cord to wrap around the baby's neck, killing her instantly. Apparently, my DH needed to facilitate washing of my hair, such was the threat to my unborn child.
Also, when DD had nappy rash she suggested wiping the area with watered down bleach before dusting liberally with laundry starch.
Both suggestions ignored by me, much to the distress of DM.

Ugh my family are gems for this stuff. My GM told me that I need to stop paying attention to my DD at nighttime or she would never learn how to sleep at night, and that I should put a teaspoon of whisky or brandy in her bottle to help her sleep. I did this with all my 6 and it never did them any harm she announced proudly. I really had to bite my tongue to point out that two of her children had grown up to become alcoholics.

I did however point out that I wasn’t bottle feeding, my DD was breast fed and I was warned to stop that too. She called me ‘one of those martyrs’ who insist on making having a baby as hard on myself as possible 😖

My dad when my younger son was around 5 years old and going through period of liking sparkly things, girls clothes and nail varnish told me I needed to beat that out of him before the kids at school did it for me. He also asserted that I had better not let him turn out to be gay or he would have ‘set him straight’ himself.

And these people honestly wonder why I want fuck all to do with them these days 😳

I was told to put milky tea with a bit of sugar in my DS night bottle .. hes 1

@squeakyballs Definitely don’t do that! I’m an Aussie and acutely aware of the dangers of the sun having watched several people die of melanoma and would never recommend such a thing!

I have been told all kinds of stupid things since becoming a parent, though a PP reminded me of how my inlaws told me when pregnant I was definitely having a girl because “girls steal your looks”. I had a boy.

TimeIHadANameChange my MIL said exactly the same! We had two cats. She maintained we'd have to get rid of them. Luckily thenDH wasn't having that either and we kept the cats.

When I was pregnant with No 2, DS came down with a bug caught from nursery. I asked MIL to come over and help (I was very poorly because of the pregnancy, which was a difficult one). She came over with FIL and an industrial sized bottle of bleach and, instead of helping occupy DS, they proceeded to scrub the entire kitchen with bleach whilst reiterating that we had to get rid of the cats.

DN promptly came down with the same bug (they attended same nursery), but SIL and BIL did not get the same 'get rid of the animals' advice. They are farmers.

A former friend told me that I should stop following food-safety advice during the pregnancy because "you can eat anything, as long as it's organic". Yeah, because "organic" (whatever the hell that means) food never has listeria or salmonella in it...

Same person told me to let my DD run in front of me on heavily trafficked roads, or "she'll never learn". Yeah, because being run over will teach her, right?

DS was in the SCBU for a week after he was born and my mum would come everyday during visiting hours to hold DS and give us a break. He is the first grandchild and she was totally besotted. One day the nurse came over and told my mum she was spoiling DS. She wasn’t joking either. Mum replied that she was the grandma and it was her job to spoil him and you can’t spoil a week old baby!!

@RuggerHug my nephew suffered really badly with wind and yes he'd get a blue/pinched look around his mouth. His mam rushed him to A&E the first time where the docs checked him and confirmed he was fine (and the look vanished after a big burp!)

@TimeIhadaNameChange Nope she's Scottish (maybe with Italian heritage though?) I'd never heard of it, the thought of putting babies in scarfs gives me the absolute fear though, her neck barely existed at that age but left alone with a bib for a few secs and she'll happily choke herself though!

@ChakaDakotaRegina that sorta makes sense to me too. People with gestational diabetes can have larger babies and one way to manage it is to limit your carb/sugar intake.

"Don't pick him up the second he cries, you'll spoil him." He was 1 week old.

"Leave him to cry in the night." No thanks. Plus I'd like to stay on the right side of my neighbours.

"He's such a big boy, you should give him rusks to eat" 3 months old. Didn't like it when I pointed out that he was big because of genetics.

"Bite him back" After I'd been bitten by 1yo.

I actually wonder how both me and my husband turned out as well as we did.

My HV wanted me to stop pumping - she couldn't wrap her head round it "but WHY?" DD had a poor latch, I had severely cracked nipples so preferred to pump as well as feed to give my boobs a break and so other people could feed the baby while I focused on DD1 who was only 13 months when her sister was born. I explained all this to her and I said I was happy with the situation - had actually gotten into a nice routine and didn't find it much trouble at all but she was completely baffled. "Wouldn't it just be easier on yourself to switch to formula?" Zero support was the reason I stopped BF the first time round - on the advice of a male GP who said I should stop as I couldn't feed the baby while taking antibiotics for mastitis - so I was sure to ignore everyone's advice after that!

@Ridingthegravytrain - there is actually some truth to that. If you don't get enough calcium in pregnancy your body will actually strip it from your bones to pass it to the growing baby. Your best bet is to ensure that you get enough calcium to support all three of you, otherwise you will be more at risk of osteoporosis in your later years. I don't think GP should have suggested you stop BF, just increase your intake to allow for the higher demand.

My mum bought us a book called Barney Learns Good Manners (or some such shite) as I had said I was having difficulty getting DS to say Please and Thank You when I gave him things. I suppose I was meant to read it aloud to him, as he wasn't yet reading anything, being about 18 months or so. And autistic with language processing difficulties. When I expressed concern that his speech wasn't developing as I would expect, she said: "All boys are lazy about talking". So that was me told.