Unsolicited parenting advice

[Gina97]

So I am a new mom and by no means an expert. I love asking advice from parents that I look up to, but I have also been getting a lot of unsolicited parenting advice from my MIL. According to my husband his mother did drugs during his early childhood and he was primarily raised by his father. That being said, is there a tactful way to ask someone to not offer unsolicited parenting advice or is this something we will just have to deal with. Possibly something my husband could say to her?

Just smile, nod, say "that's really interesting, thanks" and then continue doing whatever you want. It's your baby.

That's been the strategy so far 😂

You could ask pointed questions about whether she followed much advice when she was a new mother?

But usually just ignoring is easiest.

Ignore ignore ignore - my mum is awful for this but I can't be doing with the drama of asking her not to 'im just trying to help, I've done it all before you know' (in reality I was basically raised by nannies and au pairs which makes it even more annoying!!)

I've perfected the smile, nod and move on

I used to get a lot of advice from MIL. It was mostly bad advice and she was unkind about our parenting style. I explained why we were doing it our way. She would say we were wrong and that SIL was doing it MIL's way.

Eventually she stopped giving advice when she realised I was ignoring it and DD was developing better than her cousin in every way.

Then she started asking me for advice and takes notes to help SIL!