Those of you with strongly held views on feeding, weaning and other parenting notions, how will you feel if (when?) the guidelines change again?

[BroccoliSpears]

I say "those of you", but actually I count myself as someone with strong beliefs about what is best for my children.

For an easy example, I firmly believe that breastfed babies don't need water until after they are weaned, often arguing the case with various sticky beaks who insist my 4-month-old is "probably just thirsty". I wonder how I will feel if in 25 years time my daughter is rolling her eyes at my old fashioned ideas and calmly pointing out that research has shown that it is very important that babies under 6 months old get a little cooled boiled water when it's hot...

My OP is not about bf babies and water (that was just my example), but more how you will feel if and when the guidelines change away from current advice.

What if they decide babies should be weaned at 4 month again?

What if they discredit extended breastfeeding?

Hope this isn't a contentious thread. Just something I've been smiling to myself wondering what will have changed and how I'll feel in 25 years time.

Oh of course sorry, additives

We can only do the best we can with the information we have at the time. This is already happening to me - I have older children, weaned at 4 months (tho also breastfed til 1), starting on purees. BLW hadn't been invented! I wasn't a bad mum - just doing what was thought to be ok at the time. My DCs are fine, eat everything so could say "mine came to no harm" - but I know that new research is being done all the time. So, I'm not going to feel guilty - tho do feel guilty at having a go at my Mum when she told me our first finger food was bread soldiers and golden syrup. And we were put to bed with dinky feeders. How was she to know any different?

Will I even remember these things? They seem to be growing hazy already.

Maybe things won't change much. Between our parents' generation and ours there has been a massive increase in the information available to us (t'internet). When our own children are having children, the idea of having all available information at our fingertips won't be new to us.

wot lilolimanc said

In about 25y time some of us will be grandparents. We'll have to change our opinions to chime with the latest advice, or keep our mouths firmly shut.

Interesting about the potty training at 6 mths Broccoli

Do you think elimination communication/infant potty training will be all the rage? (we do a version of this).

Naah, everyone is too lazy

Reading some of this thread i realised i obviously haven't got strong enough opinions to count as 'those of you', but i do find it disturbing that some people still actually seem to listen to the very old style advice, eg; giving sugar water instead of plain water or diluted juice; putting a bit of whisky (or is it brandy?) in the bottle at bedtime...or is this just people I know?

I'm sure some friends of my parents used to dip the dummy in the wine...that will have been about 10 years ago
Or did he just pretend in a jokey way?

Oh no - the same person i mentioned dipped her DS's in honey if i remember rightly!

Ah well, this is one area where being an Older Parent helps. For one thing, I've seen guidelines and fashions change enough times not to be surprised, will probably shrug shoulders and say 'thats interesting, wonder what they'll say next?'

And for another, I will probably be sitting cosily in my retirement home by the time the dds have kids, and won't interfere too much at all

My wonderful and wise 88 year old mother listens openminded to new ideas and when asked about what she did with her babies says "I did the best I could with what I knew at the time. Just like you do darling" I hope I'm the same.

My mother saw nothing wrong with putting the baby down with a pacifier or bottle at bedtime. I didn't know any better until someone lost their child to that while we were on Okinawa.
The suction apparently emptied (almost siphoned) the bottle into the babies lungs. The father was potty training their toddler and was just gone a moment.
We only found out about it because we were taking our child to the doctors and everyone was called out for an emergency.
I'm sure this isn't the usual case but I would hate to be that one exception...and what can you say to the poor parents at that time? Other than you are sorry for their loss there isn't anything to say. You just try to pass on the info and hope it never happens to anyone else.

I like to think I'll be able to encourage my children to find things out for themselves, be questioning and enquiring about what's best, and not to blindly trust their HV

I hope I will take it upon myself to find out what's current and what's new if and when I become a granny. As for how I would feel about what I've done? Guilty, probably, but you can only do your best. I know I've done nothing without making up my own mind on the basis of current evidence (and Mumsnet, obviously).

They're guidelines, not life-or-death rules. I don't follow them strictly anyway, preferring to do my own research and thinking. I hope my kids will do the same, rather than just blindly following what some HV says.

Sorry, just realised I've said pretty much what others have said!

I'm a real old hippy mum - co-sleeping, long term breastfeeding, baby wearing etc. I would never comment to anyone about their parenting style but I'm so soppy I find tales of crying it out and sobbing tots being left at nursery really hard to hear.

It is already one of my great fears that I will have a daughter in law who does Gina Ford and I'll have to resist the temptation to stick my oar in !!

guidelines may well change a bit, but I'd be very surprised if they went back to what they used to be years ago - or even if they went in that sort of direction

mainly because vast amounts of the old advice on weaning, feeding, sleeping etc wasn't based on any evidence at all

My mum constantly snipes at me because in her eyes, I am spoiling DS2 (and spoilt DS1) by picking him up too much and not leaving him to cry at all (crying is apparently a baby's way of exercising - according to the ancient GP who administered to my mum when she was pregnant).

My mum also never fed a baby any sooner than every 4 hours, put us out in our pram in all weathers for fresh air and we slept by ourselves from Day 1 and were left to cry regardless.

All pretty much early 70s parenting from what I gather.

I feel sorry for myself as a baby!

After saying all that, she spoils DS1 rotten, he's allowed to eat his tea in front of telly at her house, gets a present everytime she takes him shopping and all sorts of nonsense.

I have sons.

Therefore in time honoured mumsnet tradition I will be a MIL with old fashioned views on how to rear babies.

And of course I will insist that these new ways are just rubbish and the way I did it was best.

For after all, the hussies women who love my sons will see what I fab job I did on them... won't they?

(If ever my sons become fathers I will trawl the AIBU threads every night looking for evidence of manipulating dils who stole my sons my dils bitching about me interfering seeking advice from other mumsnetters.

Do you ever think about your future daughter in law lying in bed with your son hissing "I am NOT going to visit your mother. You can go and take the children, but I am NOT going"

Oh god, I can't bear it!

All those lonely xmasses with just dp while my sons get dragged off to 'her' mothers..

I'll offer free child care and there will be an AIBU thread every day about my shocking childcare techniques and you'll all go 'YABU its free childcare, so you have to put up with the old witch'

I have to thank mumsnet though - at least after all those years of AIBU threads I'll know what I'm in for!

At least I have a dd as well, so I can complain to her about daughter in law!

And she'll be posting here about how her MIL keeps on going on about breast feeding as if it's the best and forbidding the children to have fruit shoots and sausage rolls and insisting that they can get down from the table befoe everyone's finished and......