Bad Advice

DrillSergeantCat

Just for fun...

What is some bad advice you've personally been given or have seen given?

sunshine507

In light of the post blowing up on Scary Mommy, "don't bother tethering your furniture to walls" 

kjd291

"Don't keep feeding her whenever she cries for food... you'd be surprised how early the kid will start manipulating you" -- when my baby was A MONTH old. 

DrillSergeantCat

I'm in a mommy group on Facebook and it's just rife with bad advice. Just today I've seen someone suggest baking soda as a heartburn remedy. I've seen someone suggest raspberry herbal tea (almost correct) to help with labor. One of the things I'd like to see 2017 kill is the phrase "food before one is just for fun" as it's also bad advice.

DrillSergeantCat

sunshine507 said:

In light of the post blowing up on Scary Mommy, "don't bother tethering your furniture to walls" 

Having a 10.5 month old who pulls himself up on everything has me wanting to go get tethers NOW!

kjd291 said:

"Don't keep feeding her whenever she cries for food... you'd be surprised how early the kid will start manipulating you" -- when my baby was A MONTH old. 

Or the ever popular, don't hold her when she cries for the same reason.

disneybaby84

People are constantly telling me what to do with furniture, buy this, you need this, don't use that, when they don't live in my home. If you don't know the square fotage of my small tiny apartment, don't make recommendations that are impossible.

kiyamurph

DrillSergeantCat said:

I'm in a mommy group on Facebook and it's just rife with bad advice. Just today I've seen someone suggest baking soda as a heartburn remedy. I've seen someone suggest raspberry herbal tea (almost correct) to help with labor. One of the things I'd like to see 2017 kill is the phrase "food before one is just for fun" as it's also bad advice.

This! That phrase drives me crazy. No, it's not just for fun. Your kid needs to learn how to eat solids before the age of 1.

The worst advice I ever received was to wait to start looking for daycares. I currently live in a smaller city and people told me over and over that since we're not like the big cities, I could wait to get my son on a daycare list. I took their advice and didn't start looking until he was a month old and I had the most god awful time trying to find a place. 

DrillSergeantCat

Alright! Someone just told a mom to giver her 2 month old 25 ml of vitamin D!

Gators&BoSox

feeding LO fruit will give him a sweet tooth...

nicklesb

My mom told me to stop rubbing my stomach (I do it lightly, caressing) because it was bad for the baby. I think it just gets on her nerves. 

Cbeanz

Baking soda is a heartburn remedy though!  Sodium bicarbonate is the active ingredient in a lot of OTC antacids. Tums is calcium carbonate which is a different counter ion but same principle.

DrillSergeantCat

Cbeanz said:

Baking soda is a heartburn remedy though!  Sodium bicarbonate is the active ingredient in a lot of OTC antacids. Tums is calcium carbonate which is a different counter ion but same principle.

Yep, and it's fine if you're not pregnant, but it can be really dangerous to use while pregnant. 

eta - baking soda is a category c for pregnant women. It can cause fluid retention for mother and baby.

wintersong

My mom was convinced that the coat she got my toddler for Christmas was safe for his car seat because "it's really squishy so you can get the straps tight." Um, no mom, squishy is actually the opposite of safe, lol. 

I hate food before one is just for fun too. Not because I believe kids need to be fully weaned off the breast or formula by one....my son was still getting most of his calories from breast milk well after 12 months. But because (1) everything that a kid eats before one takes up space that cannot be filled by the more nutritionally dense breast milk or formula and should therefore be chosen intentionally, and (2) really by a year a breasted kiddo should he getting about 25% of their calories from non bm sources--a quarter of your calories is not exactly insignificant. I get the spirit behind thr statement, it's just so oversimplified it's no longer true. 

And babies are born with a sweet tooth, lol...you can't trick them. Kids like sweet stuff because their taste sensations are more vivid than adults. A kid might fight some vegetables legitimately unbearably bitter even if they taste fine to adults. 

My dad insisted that I HAD to start my son on pureed fruit at 6 months. (For context my mom breastfed for about 3 months with each of us, so he had no context for knowing anything about an older baby.) When he heard my son's first food was a tiny scrap of grilled chicken from my dinner plate (whch he loved, I still remember his little smile) he showed up at my door THE NEXT DAY with a bag full of Gerber first fruits. Um, thanks?