What's the WORST parenting advice you've ever been given?

[MrsMerryHenry]

Both from professionals and well-meaning friends.

DH and I were ROFLing today about how having a talkative child apparently means they're ready to get rid of nappies.

Flipping heck, what freakish advice you've been given, kreecher! Please tell me you're joking about those?

Having said that, I must say I am finding my own umbilical cord stump an invaluable assistant now that I am pregnant. I use it for everything - cleaning my teeth, night-time cuddles, cooking breakfast while I have a lie-in - it even offers me tips on obscure google searches. Where would I be without it?

Gosh kreecher, did you leave your DD in the care of this person?

A mum i knew from dropping my daughter at school told me to make my ds a bottle off ash water (soak a piece of coal in boiled water and use the water) to help with wind!!! got to say i was horrified at the thought of givin my new baby dirty water to drink.

my Mum told me babies couldn't cry if you held them upside down (something to do with the diaphragm and pressure)

dd1 cried loads (well it felt like it anway, then we had dd2....) so we tried it and it's not true....

Um a relative (not on my side) gave her eldest condensed milk to drink. Apparantly it was the only milk it would drink when a baby - this was in the mid 1980s. She was a very very young mother so was obviously given this bit of wisdom by the maternity nurses. The child is none the worse, thriving, very brainy and not the size of a house.

The ash water thing I think derives from charcol biscuits being used as a remedy for wind - obviously new babies can't have charcol biscuits so I suppose in the old days that's what they would do. I don't think it would actually cause any damage but I would worry about the chemicals and crap they use in coal mining and bagging.

From MIL (in front of DS1 when in REception who has Autism and is very suggestable) 'have you taught him to grab and pull back the other children's thumbs in the playground if they bully him. I did that with DH (mine not hers!) and they never did it again.' AHHHHHHHHH! She comes up with this particular star annedcode EVERY TIME she visits.

I apparantly was eating steak and chips at some ridiculously early age (9 months I think) but that is because I was born with three teeth and had the full set by then. I do think that there is an element of my mother exagerating here.

Husband was a potty trained embryo by all accounts because "if you hold the baby over a potty right from the start then they will be potty trained." Oh well another one I didn't follow . . .

the only thing I would say is that advice changes from year to year. When my eldest was born weaning at 3 months was the norm (he's 14) and I did that and he's fine. Obviously by weaning I mean a tiny spoonful of mushed up pear and avocado. Yet when DS2 came along it was wait until 4 months which I did and he's fine. Now it's wait until 6 months. I could say to someone 'well I started weaning my eldest at 13 weeks' and they'd think that was throw hands up in horror stuff but we all lived!

My MIL is full of terasures. Personal favourites are 'if he's old enough to sit up he's old enough to potty train' - apparnetly I am just too lazy to spend 12 hours a day catching wee and poo in a pot
And
'I didn't need to go to mother and toddler groups - I loved my dc's enought to stay home with them all day' - I hadn't realised how badly I was damaging ds's with all that variety and socialisation.

flyingmum - there is actually a thing called ELimination Communication where people avoid the use of nappies as much as possible, even from birth. One of my friend's DH's was brought up this way by his Canadian mum - she barely ever used a nappy. So at least that bit's not that inconceivable!

Bumpybecky - you actually tried it??

thumbwiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiith!! Yes, I heard about EC when preg with DS and gave it a lot of thought...then decided life as a new mother was complicated enough and shelved it!

flyingmum: 'Apparantly it was the only milk it would drink when a baby' - I'm guessing this was because the child was offered it in the first place?! Unless they were particularly precocious and pointed to it hungrily in the pantry.

BlueSmarties: what a terrible, unloving mother you must be for not battening down the hatches and keeping your impressionable children away from the corrupting influence of...M&T Groups!!

flyingmum - I know what you mean DD1 is 15 and I was told to wean at 12 weeks or 12lbs whichever came first - well she was nearly 9lbs born so we were shoving baby rice down her at a couple of months old

Amazingly enough she has lived to tell the tale (says she who was one of the dangled over a potty from birth generation)

I was fed evaporated milk as a baby (my fault, apparently; I wouldn't be breastfed, not like my brothers who fed fine blah blah blah).

Ds1 was weaned at about 14 weeks, as per guidelines at the time (late 90s)

And my PILs regularly tell me that DH was given biltong to gnaw on when he was teething. Even from his first teeth. I just smile and vaguely say 'oh?' and change the subject.

I'm pretty sure I was given diluted carnation evaporated milk to drink as well as a baby - Mum only managed 3 days bfing before I made her bleed so they switched. Also had Ostermilk as well though - it wasn't all carnation!

And I lived to tell the tale... although I have shocking teeth.

MIAonline - i got that advice here in spain loads! they all told me not hold my newborn too much as she would get used to it oh yes and to let her cry

Good gracious, being given biltong to gnaw on at any stage in one's life sounds like a punishment. Poor MrPlumpRump!

my friend baby loves biltong and gnaws on it teething

"Make sure that you have a room where you can shut the baby when it cries, so that you can't hear it."