6 reasons not to go to young parents with your advice

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-13 00:26

If no one asks for your opinion, it's best to keep it to yourself.

This article is part of the Auto-da-fe project. In it, we declare war on everything that prevents people from living and becoming better: breaking laws, believing in nonsense, deceit and fraud. If you've come across a similar experience, share your stories in the comments.

As soon as you have a child, others rush to inform you that you are doing everything wrong. Grandmothers, grandfathers, friends and complete strangers are eager to tell young parents that the baby is not so dressed, not so cut or not sufficiently developed, if at the age of one and a half he is not yet reading poetry from a stool. Many counselors believe they are doing a good deed. But it is better for them to keep their valuable instructions to themselves.

Why you shouldn't interfere with your own business

1. Only parents are responsible for the child

This is what the law says. Neither grandmothers and grandfathers, nor aunts and uncles, and even less strangers bear responsibility for him - moral and legal. Parents have the right to decide how to bring up a child, how to dress him, what toys to buy and what to teach.

Humanity became interested in children's rights less than a century ago. Russian law prohibits the use of violence against a child, depriving him of secondary education, food, clothing, endangering his life and health (for example, creating unsanitary conditions in the apartment or refusing treatment).

However, the questions that haunt the "experts" in parenting are outside the legal framework. Formula feeding, carrying a baby in a sling, being homeschooled, or refusing to wear a hat and down jacket at 20 ° C is not violence or harm.

Therefore, before giving out instructions, remember that you are still not responsible for the consequences of your advice. And the parents of the child have every right to make all decisions on their own.

2. Parents themselves will figure out how best

Previously, knowledge about how to take care of children was passed on to new mothers from the elders in the family. There was simply no other way to learn how to feed, swaddle and develop a baby.

But things are different now. There are thousands of books on nutrition, nursing, psychology, parenting. We have access to blogs in which other people share their experiences, articles and lectures by pediatricians and psychologists, online consultations of specialists. Young parents are quite capable of taking advantage of all this splendor.

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3. Parents are already having a hard time

Raising children is much harder now than it used to be. Keeping a child is not a cheap pleasure, and the strength, time and emotions that parents give to their children are absolutely immeasurable.

In addition, the standards of upbringing and the requirements for the child are growing all the time. It is no longer enough to just feed and clothe children, help them do their homework, and hire tutors to go to college. They need gadgets, travel, mugs and extra activities - from English to robotics.

Parents have to think about a lot of things that few people used to care about. For example, about the psychological well-being of children: how to choose words so as not to injure the child, how to criticize and praise correctly, how to adapt a person to school or kindergarten. For the first time ever, adults have to deal with social media and find a balance between prohibition and connivance.

And this is only a small part of all the worries. Don't become one of them.

4. Unsolicited advice is a form of emotional abuse

This is exactly what I. Malkina-Pykh thinks “Victimology. Psychology of victim behavior some psychologists. It sounds rather harsh and controversial, but there is a sound grain in this thought. If a person does not ask your opinion about the upbringing of his child, raising this question, and even more so starting to impose something, you are grossly violating other people's boundaries.

Moreover, behind the unsolicited advice often lies a desire not to help, but to demonstrate their knowledge and authority, to assert themselves at the expense of another.

As a result, a person is forced to either silently and politely endure these attacks, or to defend himself. Both spoil the mood and take away strength.

5. Nobody sees the whole picture, except for the parents

A year ago, a Rostov resident turned to the police because a child completely unfamiliar to him threw a tantrum in the street. The man filmed the incident on camera, threatened the baby's mother and wrote a statement to law enforcement agencies.

The woman, who did nothing wrong, had a hard time after that: bullying, threats, communication with the guardianship, the police and the press. Although she did not beat the child, did not shout at him, did not endanger his life - in a word, she did not break the law in any way.

The man who filmed this ill-fated video, and the father himself. But after a divorce from his wife, he lives separately and does not regularly raise children. And if he was engaged and was at least a little interested in child physiology, he would know that hysterics in a child under four years old is absolutely normal. That the prefrontal cortex, which controls the limbic system and feelings, is still underdeveloped at this age, and the child is physically unable to contain emotions. In addition, given the small vocabulary, hysterics is almost the only way to throw out despair, annoyance and anger.

Doctors, psychologists and parents of sensitive children know perfectly well that a baby can throw a tantrum because of overwork, poor health, and in general because of anything.

American Greg Pembroke created a blog Reasons My Son Is Crying a few years ago, where he posted real stories about why young children cry. Among the reasons were, for example, the following: "the ocean was too loud," "Miley Cyrus was shown on TV." Based on the materials of this blog, they even released a book of the same name with stories and photographs.

Not only do counselors usually don’t see the whole picture, but they may not yet understand that parenting and childcare approaches are constantly changing. For example, now doctors categorically do not recommend wrapping up children too much, even in cold weather: overheating is one of the causes of sudden infant death syndrome. If it's cold outside, the child is recommended to wear the same number of layers of clothing as the adult puts on, plus one more. And if the temperature is above 24 ° C, one layer is enough for the baby. No winter hats or blankets in the summer. And no, children are not cold.

6. It is harmful for the counselors themselves

If only because it takes time and effort. While such people think about how wrong someone is raising their child, while scribbling an angry post on the parent forum or arguing with a young mother, they do not take care of their own lives. And their own children.

In what cases it is impossible to be silent

1. Parents are breaking the law

The child is beaten, raped, not fed, forced to live in unbearable conditions. If you become aware of this, be sure to contact the police.

2. The child is in real danger

Let's say you see that the baby is enthusiastically eating sand while his mother turned away. Or did you find out that schoolchildren offend someone else's child, and he is afraid to tell someone about it. In such cases, you need to calmly talk to the parents of the attacked person and talk about what is happening.

3. Someone else's child offends your

Pushes hard on the playground, hits and bullies at school, insults. Do not force children to deal with such problems on their own - be sure to act through adults.