What's the worst piece of advice you have ever been given re parenting?

[grumblingirl]

Mine include:

1. Strapping ds2 into his cot by tying a sheet tightly round the mattress and base so he can't wriggle about at night. My reply 'A bit like a straight jacket for babies eh?'

1. Putting my newborn in a (used) furry soft dog house as a playpen/sleeping basket (offer of 'giving' us the dog house included)

1. Stick a dummy onto LO's face with sticky tape so it doesn't fall out at night - This one was a joke though because I was moaning about lack of sleep (again).

Please tell me I'm not the only one who gets this crackers kind of advice?

MIL telling me I shouldn't wear perfume when pregnant 'cos I will confuse the baby when it's born? . Needless to say I ignored her and my DS definitely knew who I was!

Apparently I should have been thinking about potty training at 12 mths because that is when I was trained.

Let a toddler have a bottle until he's four 'because then he'll get some nutrition.' Yeah right. Might get a bit more 'nutrition' if he eats three meals a day with the rest of the family instead of guzzling milk all day. .

That was from my mum btw. Might explain why I absolutely detest milk now if I lived on it practically until I started school...!

Niecie, is that one particularly strange?

There was the HV who said that wotsits were a really good start to finger foods

Put the baby in his pram under a tree. He'll be happy all day. And a friend was told never to give mashed potato to babies because it was from the deadly nightshade family therefore poisonous. I did actually read that it was, from another weaning thread. Amazed. I was an Irish baby. And left under a tree all day.

Actually the wotsits or was it quavers advice I heard from paediatric dietician. Apparently they melt on the tongue, if your child has ISSUES with chewing. And meringues. I think it wasn't meant to be nutritional but social, or textural.

don't let baby manipulate you into feeding too often

Message withdrawn

My aunt told me to give DD a piece of steak to suck on. DD was 4 months old at the time...

give them an 'old back door key' to chew on when teething. From a random old man in the park!

Ah, yes the old 'he should be able to go 4 hours between feeds, he's just messing you about' at 3 week old breastfed baby (from my mother).

'Just give him a good slap on the legs, that'll shut him up' from a foul helpful old man when ds had a toddler tantrum in town. Er no, it'll make him scream louder. I'll just stick to my tried and tested method of staying calm and riding it out, thanks.

From HV, 'put him outside in his pram so that he can watch the washing blowing on the line' and other hints which made ds scream even more.

And the ever present 'well it was good enough for you...' .

My (childless) elder sister insisted when I had severe abdo pain and I had a smell from below a few days post-paturm that I was suffering from 'milk fever' and I had to ride it out for as long as it took . My mw took about 3secs to diagnose an vaginal infection which I probably acquired courtesy of the hospital bathroom, and packed me off to the docs for ABs.

Donk thanks for educating me! i reckon he'll get by without it for another week or two...

Theprovinciallady my mother also believes gripe water mixed with more water will cure everything. Possibly including cancer, migraines and the credit crunch. She's even tried to make me take it for a tummy ache recently (somehow I doubt 5 mls is going to hit the spot)

To encourage my jaundiced and sleepy newborn DS to breastfeed - 'try and put a little bit of honey on your nipples, that's what I used to do'. Thanks dear MIL, please never mention your nipples to me ever again (furiously trying to block that mental image)...

My mother's advice currently consists entirely of stating the bleeding obvious e.g.

Me: dd2 was up 6 times last night
Her: you need to stop her waking at night

Me: I'd quite like to stop co-sleeping now
Her: you need to get that baby in a cot

Honestly, someone should give her a book deal, surely it's just selfish for me to keep insight and wisdom like that to myself?

1. never drink fizzy water, the gas will get into your milk and give the baby colic

(from a mw)

1. You will be able to write your thesis while baby sleeps in a bouncy cradle.

"Why don't you try smacking him? These new-fangled ways are all very well, but they don't work, just smack him all the time".

mil told me to draw the sign of the cross over his face when ds1 woke up in the night after having a bad dream.
she also told me to hurry up and have another baby (just after i had ds1) so i could get them both potty trained together maybe thats why i have a 7.5 yr gap between ds1&2.

"Babies of 6 weeks old need exercise so let him cry on his playmat for half an hour at a time - it will do him good". Thanks HV...

Reading this thread at work earlier, I snorted so loud at the "cock tower made of lego" that I think my colleagues realised I wasn't reviewing last month's P&L

From MIL.
"Don't feed the baby at night. Babies don't need it. I didn't feed (h) at night when he was born and it took him 3 weeks of crying through every single night, but he learned in the end..."

I honestly thought I'd misunderstood, I was pg for the first time but even so, alarm bells or what?

Bubbaluv - Don't you think it is a strange idea to think you can potty train a child who can't walk or talk, let alone show any of the signs of readiness?

It is like so many other pieces of advice on here from our mothers who think we should do things their way even though we know better now.

I got an amusing one the other day.

9mo DS is BLW and wakes normally 1-2 times a night for a feed. An aging but not elderly acquaintance said authoritatively "give him baby rice, that makes them sleep through!"

So baby rice works better than the bread roll, 1/2 slice of toast, several slices of courgette, chunk of beef, bit of carrot and potato and a mini fromage frais he just ate for dinner (pot luck off our plates as we were out)? Oh if only someone had told me that months ago I could have solved all his sleep problems!

My MIL told me to put horlicks in a bottle and cut teat to allow it to flow through!!