If I had a nickle...

Well actually, if I had a penny for every parent who has said they are sick of other peoples advice...I would pulling down bigger figures than Oprah. Why do people find the need to tell you how your kid should act, what they should eat, when they should go to bed, etc? Well there are a few reasons for this.

Perhaps you don't realize it, but you may be "asking" for this advice. Yes, I said it, you could be asking for it! Now before you close the blog and laugh to yourself, think about it. Do you often discuss problems you are working through with your child? Do you complain about stages you might be in? These might seem like basic venting conversations but often it's an invitation to give advice.

This isn't always a bad thing. Most of the time it means these people care and are trying to help you work through a problem. And honestly who are you to look a gift horse in the mouth? Some of my most successful parenting moves have come from this type of advice. I would be complaining about some stage my kid was in and someone would either point out that I was on the right track but if I changed this and this I might see different results OR they would say have you tried this completely different thing.

Of course there is the random drive by advice giver who will talk to you for five minutes in a passing conversation and then proceed to tell you to try this or that or that their kid did this. These are usually the worst kind because you may have simply said "I think little Joey is getting another tooth because he's been somewhat cranky. But overall things are great". Again this could be taken as in invitation by these types of people. For some reason they heard "I think little Joey is getting more teeth and I am at a complete loss of what needs to be done here. Please tell me everything you know about getting teeth! I beg of you!"

Now I'm always a bit skeptical of this advice for a few reasons. Some who give this advice really have no had any recent baby experience so often it is hard to tell if it's complete crap or one of those random things that works but no one knows why. Also people handing out this type of advice (usually older women and men) ASSUME (yes, that is the perfect word) that all kids are the same. Now those women know better! What the heck are they thinking?? Most of them have raised more than one child and know they are all different. But it has been a long time so they are fuzzy on the details. The men on the other hand...well it's not all of them, but some try to give advice (usually to each other) as if children pop off of a Xerox machine.

While this type of advice giver can get really old fast, it is also important to recognize good advice when it's given.

On several occasions I've found that people ask for advice or say "I've done this and this. And nothing is working!". For example, I hear sometimes "I've tried medication and different bottles but nothing is helping with her reflux!". To this I might say "Have you tried soy formula?". Sometimes I get an answer to that like "Oh no it's not the formula" or I get a comment about how so many people are telling them to do some many things and it's all very confusing.

Well to that person I want to say DO SOME RESEARCH. Please! This is yet another type of advice exchange that goes awry for no good reason. I have spoken to two top pediatric GI specialists in my travels and both recommend soy for reflux for the simple reason that it is easier to digest. The faster it digests, the less work that goes into it the better. This information is also readily available to anyone who wants to spend the eight seconds doing a google search.

Now I try not to put myself in the situation where I'm giving advice too often. It can be met with displeasure by some who don't seem to appreciate that I've done my research. And it often is mixed in with all the other random advice givers, so it appears to be nothing more than unsolicited, uneducated advice.

While it seems completely contradictory for me to say advice giving is usually annoying and then complain no one takes good advice, I think we need to find a happy medium. While it's great to try to help a friend or co-worker in need, think about what you might be saying. Perhaps it's better if you offer a website with information rather than some half witted notion you heard once from some other random lady who you barely know.

I definitely think knowledge is power. When it comes to parenting nothing could be more true. So rather than get mad at advice, consider the possibility that it could be an absolute nugget of crap or perhaps a golden nugget among lots of stinky brown ones.