Reader Essay
by Kim Conrey
Thank You So Much for Your
Unsolicited Advice!
I
had avoided it, put it off, debated it, but it could no longer wait. I had to get to the store, but more than that, I had to bring my daughter. There was no help for it. No babysitter and my husband was at work. I cringed and loaded up the car. As parents, we know the dilemma. As soon as we step out in public with that little cherub, we are fair game, prey to every comment, “helpful advice” and opinionated soul within a 10-mile radius. “Excuse me, Ma’am. Would you please let that baby out of that cart?” “What?” I said as my toddler wiggled and whined in the buggy with no straps to keep her put. That’s right, an entire store of buggies and not one had straps. “Oh, sweetie are you afraid of that buggy?” “No, Ma’am, she isn’t afraid of the buggy. She just wants down so she can take off running, trip people and run in front of other shopping carts.” I turned back around hoping that would settle the matter. After all, I’m her mom, right? I’ve put her in shopping carts dozens of times and know, for a fact, that she isn’t afraid of them. I also know that she would take off running the minute I let her down. “Oh, she’s not going to do that,” I heard the woman say. I took a breath, smiled. “Ma’am, I have a 12-year-old at home. I know exactly what she will do if I let her down.” I turned around again to finish my shopping and get out of there. So, what is it that makes absolute strangers think that they can tell us what we should be doing with our children? Let me be clear. If someone is abusing a child, strangers have the absolute right, and yes, moral obligation, to say something. But that is not the kind of thing I am referring to here. I’m referring to people who have never laid eyes on me or my child but feel that I am in dire need of their wisdom, comments and advice. I have heard that, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Is it this mentality that causes people to tell us what we should do with our children, everything from teething advice bordering on the ridiculous to behavioral advice that oscillates between barbaric to downright silly? The issue with tribe mentality is this: We don’t live in a tribe anymore. Not in the sense that was meant when this saying first came to be. Before 106 Atlanta Parent January 2015
Hillary Clinton uttered “it takes a village” in the late 1990s, it is said to have African origins. If I lived in an actual village those dispensing advice would know my child, know my family, perhaps going back many generations. They would see us in the village daily and interact with us. Our lives are now lived in front of screens, creating virtual villages where we have hundreds or thousands of “friends” that know us, yet do not. The true villagers of old would scoff at the idea that we “know” each other in our world today. These villagers would know from experience what benefits the whole, the temperament of the child, the personalities and needs of the parents and community. It certainly wouldn’t be some woman in a sporting goods store stopping to tell me what I should do. Having a a second child 10 years after the first, I had forgotten about all this “helpful” advice being dispensed so freely. I’ll remember to bite my tongue next time I’m out in public. c Conrey, a mother of two, lives in Johns Creek.
As soon as we step out in public
with that little cherub, we are fair game, prey to every comment, “helpful advice” and opinionated soul within a 10-mile radius.
atlantaparent.com