60 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 2-3-16”

  1. It’s easy to wake up at 2:30 when you fall asleep at 8:30 the night before. It’s easy to stay in a warm bed praying until 4 and then finally decide to rise and get to work . . .

    Greetings to the world!

    Liked by 6 people

    Reply

  2. Here’s your question of the day. I’d say most of the folks here have had training or opportunity to learn from others about child rearing. But what if you don’t go to church; where do you learn how to raise a balanced and healthy child?

    Who do you turn to for advice? How do you judge that advice?

    I’ve been thinking how hard it would be to be a parent in today’s society–for Christians and non-Christians alike.

    But I’m thinking it would be so much harder to not have, at least, a plumb line to make decisions by.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  3. How nice to see the lovely header and also be able to use the like button and have it respond favorably!

    Michelle, I think good info is available through books and online if parents want to make the effort to search it out. I think so many are either truly too busy with work and other responsibilities that they don’t make time or some are “deadbeats” who are caught up in alcohol and drugs or just plain selfishness and don’t care. There is only so much a church can do, and so much depends on how willing people are to get involved and help people who may not have resources to reciprocate kindnesses.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  5. Michelle: I was a social worker many moons ago. I worked for Associated Catholic Charities in their Teen Parenting Program. I also worked as a social worker in a hospital. I think it’s very hard to discern good parenting advice from the bad without the framework of Christianity. In our secular, humanistic culture the advice espoused by psychological experts often does more harm than good. And, unlike the timelessness of Biblical wisdom, it changes frequently.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  8. I love the peacefulness in your photos.

    Yes, very peaceful after a morning with 20+mph winds and heavy rains. The river is still cold, with ice floating downstream. I think the fog you see is from the warm afternoon sun on the cold water. I noticed the low fog while driving home and immediately called Mrs L to have the camera ready when I got home. We’ve never seen this phenomena in the 12 years we’ve lived here.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

  9. Peter, we live in a swamp, a drained and regularly dredged swamp, but natural swampland nonetheless. And we see that phenomenon frequently (not just over water). Schools get two-hour delays for fog on a fairly regular basis. We might see it any time of day, any time of year, though fall and winter mornings seem to be the most common. It looks lovely, but as a kid from Phoenix (where fog was a rare thing, always a winter morning thing), it’s odd.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  10. The photos are quite lovely Peter.
    Michelle, I see billboards around that offer an 800 number to call the State for parenting help. As you know I struggle with knowing if I am a good mother or not. My role model wasn’t that good. I can remember hearing “I love Kim so much I would let someone cut my heart out for her”…except I learned early on it was a lie. It was only words. I don’t trust anyone who tells me how much they love me. Show me. I do make sure I tell BG a LOT that I love her. Mostly it is silliness. I say, “nub nou” — I don’t even remember how it started. I always looked for older women to serve as mentors to me. Any mothering skills I have came from Mama Ruth and I let my ex mother in law STRONGLY influence me to the point I figured she new best and took her advice over my instinct (can’t trust that). Looking back I STRONGLY suspect that I failed as a mother from about 2005 is until 2011. First I was selfish and then I was depressed.
    (When I dance around the subject with her she says she has had a great childhood and doesn’t remember anything bad)

    I think secular books and other parenting advice can sometimes do more harm than good. If I had to pick one I would pick a newer one by John Rosemond.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  11. Snarky Alert. Do you sometimes get frustrated with “unspoken prayer requests”? I have an acquaintance from my Rainbow Girl years that I stay in touch with on FB. She really is a wonderful person but she constantly posts “I am just in shock. I have an unspoken prayer request”. How do you pray for something like that constantly? I must admit that I have gotten to the point that I see something from her and instead of thinking “oh, I should stop and pray for her”. I think ” I wonder what has happened now”. I don’t like myself much when I think that way. I am sure something is serious or she wouldn’t ask, but every now and then a detail would be nice so I could know how to pray.

    Rant over. Back to work

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  12. Good Morning from the frozen forest….Peter that photo is so peaceful and serene….beautiful!
    The plow has yet to make it to our road, no trash pick up this week. Tomorrow I will break out of this place and have lunch with a dear friend…so looking forward to that!
    QOD….I’m not certain church is a place to be relied upon to get training to raise a balanced healthy child…like Kim, I developed realtionships with older women and was blessed to glean some of their wisdom in raising my children. Although, my oldest seems to believe we made many mistakes…he being so much wiser and all…..

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  15. Mississippi River? Or? Peaceful is a good word to describe those photos.

    After our windstorm Sunday, the ocean & mountain views here were spectacular. Unfortunately, the best views of the mountains I get are on the freeway as I’m heading to work. Can’t take a photo while driving! But on those bright, post-storm mornings I love seeing all the harbor cranes in the foreground with the backdrop of snow-covered mountains in the distance.

    Guess I should go take the political quiz. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  17. One of our former churches had a parenting class that was given by our county. I was a young parent and my husband and I attended it with many others from our church. It was not a good program, IMO. I am not sure it did more harm than good, since I would suppose that would depend on what the parents were doing in the first place. It is sad that the church (which should have had plenty of resources) could not do better for it’s young parents.

    Our county/state has early family programs, which do try to teach parents how to parent. However, I know some of the leaders even get frustrated with their methods. World view matters when it comes to parenting. There is a big difference, for example, whether you believe children are born in sin or they are born a clean slate.

    The clean slate theory abounded when my first born came along. Was I in for a shock! This single issue has created a lot of little monsters, IMO.

    One of the biggest things to think about in parenting is the goal. That also will depend on world view.

    I agree that there is plenty of media and programs for parents to take advantage of for learning how to parent. Having the will or finding the best is another issue.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  18. NancyJill, I have always heard that the first child is an experiment and learning to raise the other children. Being the child of an only child and the mother of an only child…I guess we are really messed up. 😉

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  20. And cheryl, I took another ocean shot the other day that was slanted, but found the auto straightening button and now it’s beautiful. 🙂 Sent to AJ late last night in the straighter version.

    I must somehow tilt right when I shoot the ocean. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  22. When Wesley was a newborn, my mother advised me to give him a bottle because he could not possibly get all he needed in liquid from me. At that point I realized I would have to make my own way. He never had a bottle except while still at the hospital and I had a fever so they would not let them bring him to me. Art got to give him the bottle.

    We did not have parenting classes at our small church, and early on we were not attending church. I mostly read books to help me to learn how to be a parent. I had never even been around an infant before so it was like being in a foreign land. I still have not been around many infants since Art is an only and my brother never married. Poor Wesley has always been the only youth in our aging family. He learned early on how to use a stick to imitate a walking cane (better than using it as a gun 🙂 )

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  23. Remember Dr. Spock? He was the leading “expert” during my parents’ child-rearing era in the 1950s & ’60s.

    Our church last week held a day-long marriage and parenting seminar, we have a relatively large church (for our denomination) congregation that includes many young, middle-aged and older families who I’m sure have a variety of experiences to share with one another.

    Our pastor has a special interest in marriage counseling and does a lot of it (including for unchurched couples in the community who come his way).

    He performed the wedding ceremony for “Eddie’s” son (remember Eddie from Leave it to Beaver? 🙂 )

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  25. Donna,

    I have the same problem when shooting pics. Because my right arm doesn’t work as well, or raise as high, or remain steady, I tilt too. Low right, high left. 😦

    Like

    Reply

  26. Janice, when BG was born I relied on my 70 something next door neighbor. She had raised 5 children and had nursed them all. About a year in I made the comment to her that I had not worried about much because I had her next door, especially about breast feeding. She laughed and said, “Oh Lord. If I knew you were depending on me I would have told you not to. I gave my own daughter antihistimines for a cold and dried up her milk!!!!”. Now she did teach me to put salt in a sock, warm it in the microwave (of course she had used an oven) to put on BG’s ears when she had an earache/infection and she did give me piece of mind, so it wasn’t all a loss.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  29. What’s a parenting class?
    Who is Dr. Spock?
    We just did what we needed to do.
    Except.
    My parents came to visit when Chuck was two weeks old.
    Chuck cried a lot.
    Mother said. “Feed him!”
    That worked. He wasn’t getting enough from Elvera. So we started giving him bottles of something the doctor recommended. Similac, I think it was.
    But we lived in a seminary trailer park and most of the women there either had small children or were pregnant. We had lots of company.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  30. Political quiz, top and bottom: 98% Cruz, 92% Carson . . . . 10% Clinton, 7% Sanders.

    I kept clicking the “show more questions” option, but left blank some on which I don’t know enough to have an opinion.

    Like

    Reply

  31. I took the quiz and have mercy Trump was on top of the list for me….then Ben Carson…perhaps I should sit this one out!
    Chas reminded me of when Jacob was an infant and I would take him on base to hang out at the rec center while waiting for Paul….older ladies would be there advising me what to do for him as he was constantly hungry…they told me to give him rice cereal…at 8 wks old….and I did! Lo and behold he slept better and his hunger was satisfied….he started out his life at 10 pounds but he was never big as a child…my doctor said he was built like a tank 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  32. SCAM ALERT
    You may have seen this before. It has happened before.
    I got in the mail today, a notice that I needed to renew my subscription to TV Guide.
    Special rates. Send them $99.95.
    It’s from Global Publication Processing.

    I don’t take TV Guide. I don’t want TV Guide.
    Be careful about subscriptions. This happens every couple of months.
    Not just for TV Guide.

    Like

    Reply

  33. Michelle’s question: It would never have occurred to me that church might be a place to get parenting advice; however, it’s true that two people I would turn to quickly for parenting advice are women I met in church. One of them was in my church in Nashville, and she’d reared two children and largely reared two more; she knew my foster kids and provided some respite care for them, and she was a logical choice for a few questions I had.

    But I’d say that for me the largest fund of parenting advice within my family is within my family. There are a lot of us, and most of us have had a lot of experience with children. (I didn’t rear any from birth, but between foster parenting, camp counseling, an open door for neighborhood children, teaching, babysitting, and being a stepmom to teens and young adults, I have had enough experience with children that my sister came to me for parenting advice on numerous occasions, even after she had several children.) For simple medical questions, my mother was a great resource. (She reared seven and had had some nursing experience.) But we all got to watch our parents and each other, and determine what did and didn’t work. Many of us read books. And we had some experience with other people’s children that left our own not a total mystery. (One of my brothers works with children full-time. Every one of my siblings married a firstborn–I myself didn’t–and most of them had some experience helping care for siblings who were several years younger. My older brothers all had experience with us–my brothers ranging in age from almost seven to fourteen when I was born, with two more children coming along within the next three years. And as they had us, we had their children–my first niece was born when I was 13, and I had at least five nieces and nephews by the time I was 18. My youngest brother would have had several more by the time he was 18.)

    So, yes, we’d have the church for resources, but being a member of a large family means those in the church family would have only been back-up resources. I suspect, in other words, that the church or other community group is more necessary to parents who are only children or from very small families.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  34. When my sister had her firstborn, they were living in South Carolina, and many older women in her church liked giving parenting advice. One that amused her was that they were always telling her to put a blanket or a jacket on that poor child. The reality is that my nephew is very hot-natured and didn’t need or want a blanket most of the time, but she learned to carry one just so she could say, “Thanks” and put it on him, and make the would-be grandma feel good about helping out a young, clueless mother.

    Like

    Reply

  35. I was 92% Rubio. 🙂 Nice when you see that what you actually believe lines up so well with the candidate you’ve chosen.

    Cruz: Too abrasive. But I matched him on issues by 85%, I believe. He just doesn’t have some of the other important characteristics I think are needed to be a good leader. It’s more than a number.

    Like

    Reply

  36. Well, Guess Who, since we don’t vote till May, and most will have dropped out by then, we haven’t bothered to check out the candidates very well yet. I just know it’s “no” to Trump and that what I’ve heard about Carson sounds good. But there has been no point in wading through more than a dozen candidates to choose first, second, and third choices, when it will be down to two to four by the time they reach us. (And hopefully Trump won’t be still one of those options!)

    Like

    Reply

  37. I think both Cruz and Rubio were seen as likely front runners early on, but there can also be surprises along the way so that didn’t rule out say a Carson catching fire. I was hoping Carson would take flight, but he hasn’t. I’ve always liked Rubio and thought he had much potential for being a good 2016 GOP candidate in the general election.

    Some of the bigger names like Bush and Christie seemed to falter early on in the polling. And without at least a decent showing in the polls (and later in the early primaries and caucuses), the money will soon dry up.

    Trump has been an unpleasant surprise. 😦

    Like

    Reply

  38. Parenting advice: Like many others have said, the best parenting advice is from those with prior experience. It is true that the Bible gives us a higher view of both children and the responsibility of parenting than natural instincts alone can provide. Paul’s instruction to parents to not exasperate their children was completely contrary to the Roman patriarchal tradition which gave fathers the power of life and death over their children. That isn’t to say non Christians cannot be good and loving parents – God sends rain on the just and the unjust, and He also grants them merciful qualities (otherwise, the world of people would have consumed each other by now). My mother and other older female relatives have been the source of parenting advice for many of my younger relatives; but our former pastor preached through more than one New Testament epistle, and when he came to the passages on parenting, he preached some very good sermons, which later helped me understand why certain patriarchal parenting ideas didn’t work.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  40. We lived way out on a ranch when the girls were small. I got Parents magazine, a gift from our pastor’s wife, and read it front to back. My husband had a niece who was a brat. My goal was for my children to not act like that. They didn’t. The only piece of advice I got from my MIL was that if they could walk flatfooted, they could pee in the pot. It is true, and they all have.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  42. I forgot about all those parenting magazines. I read those front to back, also.

    When I was a teenager and also on into college I had a number of babysitting jobs, but not with infants. My best friend got some of the infant sitting jobs in the neighborhood. I only once had a job where I sat with a family with a boy who was about two and in diapers. When I was trying to change his diaper and got it off, he leaped away and ran out the front door. I felt pretty hopeless at that point that I could ever have a child and deal with such behavior. It was terrible. I did find out later that not all children act like that!

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  43. Well, I was pretty incompetent all around. I’d changed one diaper before I had my first child. And I nearly botched his first diaper change–in fact, my roommate called for a corpsman to come help me.

    A tall gangly twenty-something corpsman came in, looked around and kindly suggested I got take a shower. He would take care of the baby.

    When I returned, they brought back the baby wrapped like a burrito, clean and ready to eat.

    It’s a miracle he survived a mother like me!

    Anyway, other than the fact I’d spent the prior nine months turning pregnancy into a research project in an effort to understand, I had little knowledge to base anything on. I only babysat older children. No parent, understandably, would leave an infant with me.

    Knowing, I knew nothing, I attended the local Navy chapel for a presentation by Dr. Dobson on parenting. It was a video, I bought his books and my children survived.

    I’ll never forget our XO’s wife figuring out I was lost in the new world and taking me out to breakfast–with our babies–and giving me a lot of pointers. When she made a reference to her baby’s schedule, I was horrified like I’d missed studying for a test.

    “There’s supposed to be a schedule?”

    She assured me, the same thing I’ve told new moms for years: “Do what works best for your family. The baby doesn’t know he needs a bath every day or whatever; he just needs you to love him and do what makes the most sense to you.”

    Score! I might be able to handle that . . .

    I also was in a community of like-aged people and paid close attention to the older, more experienced women. A close friend–who became my second son’s godmother–taught me everything I ever knew about nursing a baby and some excellent truths about motherhood.

    They’re probably alive because of Jan and Dorie.

    And so it went. My various churches provided support in the form of Bible studies where I could ask questions of experienced mothers, library books on parenting and lots and lots and lots of discussions with my equally educated and poorly equipped friends.

    You know what?

    The kids are all right.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  44. I read all those parenting magazines at the library but finally had to give up. I didn’t have a father on hand to help when my first children were young, sigh, and it just stirred up a lot of resentment.

    But then I started reading the single parenting columns and that didn’t help either.

    I was far better off sticking with Dr. Seuss books . . . 🙂

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  45. I just looked at the Arts at Emory catalog they sent in the mail. They have some unusual listings. How about this one? Argentine Tango for People with Parkinson ‘ s Disease: a Neuroscientific Perspective

    Like

    Reply

  47. I found one to appeal to Chas:
    Enchanting the Desert: Visualizing the Production of Space at the Grand Canyon/Digital Mapping and the Humanities Series.

    They have something for everyone like this: Spider Woman to Horned Serpent: Creation and Creativity in Native North American Art.

    Gotta love it!♡ And some of the programs are free to the community.

    Like

    Reply

  48. When I was 17, I spent a week or more with one of my older brothers, whose firstborn was about to turn nine months old and was just walking. One evening they went out to dinner and left me with the baby. She fouled her diaper, and managed to get it all over her.

    I’d never bathed a baby, though I’d once watched it being done and I had read instructions on how to do it. But I knew a few baby wipes weren’t going to do the trick. So I hunted around for all the tools I needed (baby bath tub? I might have just used the bathroom sink) and gave her a bath.

    With each of my sister’s five children, I played the role a grandmother often plays, going to their house and staying until I could see she was ready to be on her own with the kids. I haven’t done lots and lots of care for newborns (mostly I took care of the other children and the meals while she cared for the newborn), but I’ve had more experience than my daughters have, and feel mostly prepared to be a grandmother when I get that chance.

    When I was about 18, I occasionally cared for two siblings who lived down the street. They were nine months apart (!), the younger one being two months premature, and the younger one was less than a year old when I first cared for them. Well, one day I went down the street and knocked on the door. The father answered the door and spent several minutes chatting with me, telling me what was in the fridge for their lunch or whatever. After three or four minutes of conversation, he said, “Well, the kids are in the bathtub.” And my brain said, “What?! You have an 11-month-old and a mobile 20-month-old (big and strong enough to accidentally knock his sister down) alone in the bathtub?!” I mean, I was a teenager and a virtual stranger to the family, but if the phone rang while I was bathing them, I would not turn my back or leave the room. The kids either came with me or the phone went unanswered. That a father didn’t know that Safety 101 fact put a mental note in my head “When you have babysitters, make extra sure they know how to care for kids safely.” I wouldn’t have been shocked to see a babysitter my age do something that dumb, but I was really shocked to see a father being that careless. (Another time when I arrived, he told me the kids were in the tub and the baby had pooped in the tub. I remember thinking hey, no fair, it happened on your watch, you clean it up! But I took care of it.)

    Oh, and one of my high school electives was baby and child care, since I wanted to do more babysitting. When the textbook came, my mom was disgusted that it was Dr. Spock. So I read it with a shaker full of salt, but it probably was nevertheless useful to me, since it did go into such safety principles and basic care. I just didn’t pay attention to what he said on such things as child training and discipline.

    Like

    Reply

  49. There are two times I can think of not to take advice:
    -An unmarried person giving marriage advice, unless he or she is widowed;
    -A childless person giving parenting advice. I remember I knew a lot more about raising children before I had any of my own.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  51. I did baby sit as a teen. But it didn’t always go well. 🙂

    (Remembering the time I frantically chased the kids and the family dog down the street, my arms flying as I yelled for them all to come back!, which didn’t work; chaos all around.)

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  53. I think I told you about the time when Chuck was a baby. Elvera and a friend who had a tiny baby girl went somewhere and I babysat both kids. Chuck wet his diapers and I changed them. But the baby girl stayed dry. When the women came home they asked how it went. I mentioned that the girl never needed changing.
    That’s how I learned that baby girls and boys wet their diapers in different places.
    I had three female grandkids. I changed their diapers.
    I suspect I have changed my last diaper.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  54. Peter, actually I wouldn’t want parenting advice from most of the parents I know! But I find it interesting that as far as we know the apostle Paul never had children, but he was inspired by the Holy Spirit with the ability to give godly counsel on parenting.

    One doesn’t have to be a parent to be able to give advice in some areas of parenting. A medical person without kids may know more about colic than a parent whose children never had it, for example. And a woman who has taught twos and threes in Sunday school for twenty years (I know someone like that) may never have had children of her own, but it would be a foolish parent indeed to think that she has no possible advice she can give about toddlers!

    I did a lot more babysitting than my sister did, and I taught Sunday school for many years, so for years I knew a lot more than she did about dealing with fussy babies, or relating to a seven-year-old boy, and so forth. Now she is rearing a houseful of children, and she knows more than I do about young children. But many years later she still thanks me for ideas I gave her when she was new at it. She has four boys now, and can fairly be considered an expert, but in my days in Chicago quite a few phone calls from her started with “You’ve had a lot of experience with boys . . .”

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  55. Cheryl: You make two valid points. However, I don’t know any childless people who are inspired by the Holy Spirit like Paul was. And medical advice is not the same as advice on raising children.

    Like

    Reply

  56. Peter, sometimes medical advice is actually the same as “advice on raising children.” Many of the things that women call their mothers about are medical questions: what do I do for his colic? He’s spitting up after every meal–what does that mean, and what should I do? Her belly button is red all the time–is that normal? She seems to be constipated; what do I do now?

    No, childless people aren’t inspired by the Holy Spirit as Paul was. Nevertheless, sometimes the advice a parent needs is biblical advice, and one doesn’t have to be a parent to give that.

    See, I come from the other direction here. When I was single, I often felt like I had my hands tied, because I saw friends who were foolish parents, but I didn’t feel like I could say anything because of this cultural idea that “only parents understand children.” Example: I once went to visit a friend of mine (at her invitation) when she was heavily pregnant. Her husband was at work, and because she wasn’t feeling very well, she chose to have us go upstairs and talk on her bed so that she could be more comfortable. She was reclining on the bed, and I was sitting on it. She got off the bed to go get something, and her ten-year-old took her spot. My friend came back to the bed, saw her child on her spot, and told her to get up. Her child grinned a cheeky little grin and said, “I’ll get up if you get me my books from my room.” So this sick, pregnant lady went to the room of her young, healthy daughter to get the daughter’s books and bribe her daughter to get off her own bed.

    One doesn’t have to be a parent to be able to tell that mother a better way of doing things. Yes, at that moment she was too sick to argue with her daughter, but that kind of result didn’t happen in a vacuum. I’d been over there for quite a few evenings through the years, and that sort of behavior was absolutely typical. If I’d been a mother myself, at some point I would have gently tried to do some instruction of the mother. And “Children obey your parents, for this is right” is a verse that is true whether or not an onlooker is a parent. Truth is truth.

    Like

    Reply

  57. I’m a parent now, and I feel a little more confident in speaking to parenting issues (in terms of the likelihood that someone might listen–still remote, but not still at zero), though I still won’t address an issue I know nothing about, any more than I did when I was single. But the truth is, it wasn’t being a parent that gave me some knowledge about children. I learned a little bit in being a foster parent, but I already had the skills needed to be a good foster parent before I ever became one, because (1) I’d had tons of experience with children; (2) I understood biblical principles of parenting; (3) I’d watched many parents and seen what worked and what didn’t; (4) I’d once been a child myself; (5) I’ve done much reading and am likely to remember something I’ve read; and (6) a lot of parenting is common sense. (You don’t leave two toddlers unsupervised in a bathtub; one or both could drown. You don’t need to be a parent to know that; it’s common sense.) I still wouldn’t speak to parenting issues like “How do I braid my daughter’s hair?” because I don’t know the answer, but I do know some answers, and about other things I might offer a possible solution and admit I’m guessing. (For diaper rash: Have you tried Desitin? Have you tried to leave her naked for a while? Obviously I haven’t dealt with this myself, but I’ve heard mothers swear by both of those, so it depends on whether you want the natural cure or the chemical one.)

    As I once argued on the World blog, if it’s true that no one can know anything about children without being a parent, then very few people can ever know anything about old people, because very few of us have ever parented them. But one can actually know a great deal about any particular group of people without having been a parent of them. The question is, is this advice good? “Is this person a parent?” is the wrong question. My pregnant friend now has four children, so she’s definitely a parent–but I wouldn’t seek her out for parenting advice, unless it was something along the lines of splinter removal or other practical issues. On child discipline, I know more than she does. It’s conceivably possible I know more than she does on issues such as getting a baby to sleep, though most likely she knows more about that too. If the advice is bad, ignore it. If you don’t have means to test the advice and you don’t trust the wisdom of the source, then ignore the advice. But ignoring the advice because the person hasn’t had children is a logical fallacy, though I’m too tired to remember which one. 🙂

    BTW, I do sympathize with parents who have know-it-all non-parents speaking glibly along the lines of “No child of mine would ever refuse to eat peas.” But the truth is, being a parent isn’t the cure-all that teaches you everything you need to know about children, nor is non-parenting proof that you know nothing about them. Neither of my daughters was a strong-willed child, so my husband is a parent but not an expert on strong-willed children. He’s a parent, but knows nothing about taking care of a black child’s hair. And he’s a parent and I’m “only” a stepparent, but I’m willing to bet I know tons more than he does about raising boys. He has a sister but no brothers, and daughters but no sons. I have five brothers, close to 20 nephews before even getting to my husband’s side of the family (boys run 3:1 among my siblings’ children, with my sister alone having four boys), and many years of experience as a Sunday school teacher, so I know quite a few things about boys.

    Like

    Reply

  58. I also feel that I am experienced with children. Some things I always call a friend about though. We were rarely sick and when someone did get sick I had usually forgotten what to do so I would call my friend who was always sick.

    Like

    Reply

  59. I don’t remember ever giving parenting advice except on here. Parenting advice is not generally well received. I think there is way too much parenting advice out there, which is why people are so confused.

    Like

    Reply

  60. Now I remember. A lady had watched us for years and approached me one time with a question. I had asked her how her children were doing and if they were enjoying school. She said she had just decided her little boy needed to be put on ADHD meds and asked what I would do. I told her I would first make sure he had no screen time and spent lots of time outside running around. He was seven and I had spent some time with him at Bible Club. She said oh no, that could never happen as that was how he and his daddy bonded and hid daddy would never give up the video games. Apparently, the little boy spend all the after school time on video games with his dad, well into the evening. She has not approached me since, in three years and seems to get quite busy when I come near. Her son is on ADHD meds.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment