The “advice” nobody wants

Do you know what I hate the most about parenting? More than Judgy Mummy and her Perfect Darlings. More than realising that the last two slices of bread are mouldy when I’m rushing to make O’s pack-up. More, even, than a shit in the bath that I have to fish out with my bare hands.

I hate unsolicited “advice”.

Why the quotations marks? Well, because it’s not really advice, is it? When somebody comes at you with an opinion about your parenting, it’s not advice. It’s a loud, wailing siren accompanied by the words “YOU ARE DOING IT ALL WRONG”.

“No, don’t breastfeed like that; you should be doing it like this.”

“No, you shouldn’t be weaning with purees/doing baby-led weaning. Your baby will end up obese and you’ll have to purée everything forever/isn’t getting enough to eat.”

“No, I’ve read really bad reviews about that car seat. You should get this one instead.”

And then there’s today.

“OMG OMG OMG it’s too hot in F’s room! Put him somewhere else!”

No shit. I fucking know it’s hot in his room. Guess where else it’s hot? Every other room in the house. Should I put him in one of those instead, just in case the exact same temperature is somehow cooler somewhere else?

I really don’t know why other people feel the need to tell mothers how to be mothers. Motherhood seems to be the one thing that everyone has an opinion on, but do you know what? Being a mother is actually hard enough, thanks. We don’t need to be told that we are doing everything wrong and making all of the wrong choices.

We can be doubtful and worried and second guess ourselves all by ourselves.
We don’t need someone else to make us feel guilty about what we’re feeding our children; we probably already do. It’s not necessary for you to tell us our car seat isn’t as good as yours; it’s highly likely that we are already worried about it, even though we researched it for hours and it cost more than our monthly mortgage payment. And that guilt trip you want to lay on us about whether or not our kid should still have a dummy at bedtime? Yeah, we’ve read all the same articles you have, cheers.

If you want to give me some advice about something, you could go back in time about two and a half hours and tell me that my makeshift air conditioning unit of a bowl of ice water in front of a fan in F’s room is going to lead to him seeing if he can throw all of his stuffed animals into the bowl. Because you’d think I would have seen that one coming.

But I did not.

And there were no survivors. Even Favourite Bunny got his ears wet.

So maybe I am just as inept as you already assume I am when you come at me with your words of wisdom after all.

Why didn’t I use the humidifier first?!