Unsolicited Advice

One of my favorite questions to ask every mother I know is how and when they got their babies to sleep through the night (I promise after this post to quit talking about sleep!). I’ve gotten such a wide variety of answers from mothers’ with different parenting styles and from different generations; everything from filling their tiny bellies up with cereal just before bed or letting them cry-it-out to co-sleeping. It amazes me to think there could be so many effective (and just as many not so effective) solutions to the same problem.

I wish I had it in me to appreciate all of the answers I get to the rest of the questions that I don’t ask. The truth is; when it comes to parenting I’m hypersensitive to unsolicited advice. My knowledge that most people just want to help is overridden by the most important question of all; whether or not I’m a good mother. Truthfully, and without an ounce of arrogance, I believe I am a great mother. I can’t deny, however, questioning whether or not my friends and family feel the same if they continually offer solutions to problems I don’t think Caroline and I are even experiencing. It causes me to second-guess myself and after a while it becomes downright annoying.

As I work on hardening my shell, I will also try and be very cognizant of my own desires to help my new mother friends and offer advice only when it’s asked of me. Perhaps others are not so sensitive and don’t have the habit of over thinking every little thing like I do. But I happen to believe that praising the job they are doing will go miles further than any advice could, solicited or unsolicited. Praise for doing a wonderful job is something every mother doesn’t and can’t get enough of.