Hey all.
I’m going to be a Dad for the first time in (or around) February.
For those parents out there…What’s the one most important pearl of wisdom or piece of advice which you were told, or wish you had been told?
Thanks!
Mine and 5 and almost 3 so I am still in the early days - I’d love to hear the advice of people ahead of me!
You will never be alone again - that feeling of being unencumbered, fluid? Gone. Even when you’re away from them there is an invisible thread connecting you. Plus they will follow you everywhere, and they hate closed bathroom doors.
Get their sleep training started early - starting from 6 weeks. Sure, it’s so lovely rocking them to sleep, but they quickly learn that this is a sleep cue and begin to rely on it (we had friends who finally booked into sleep school at 7 months after 3-4 45min sessions a night bouncing on a swiss ball). Learnt this with number 1, number 2 was much easier. I don’t mean CIO, but Dr Harvey Kapp’s 5 S’s is a beautiful, magic thing.
Get them used to sleeping in lots of places - if they only understand sleeping at home in their cot, it will trap you.
Get a Cuski. See above.
The days are long, but the years are short - they change so much, so fast. Video lots of random small things - whimpers, early smiles etc. Every week something will go, never to return and both you and them will love looking back and seeing how small they really were.
We did babyled weaning with both kids, look into it. Teaches them to appreciate a wide range of foods (we never prepared special food for them), judge their own appetite and develop great motor control. Plus it’s super fun to watch them explore.
When our oldest was born, I got the following bit of advice from my (wise) FIL.
“You’re the parents, and you know better than anyone what’s best for your kid. You should ignore* almost all the advice you’ll get and follow your own instincts on raising him.”
We’ve done pretty much what he said. No mommy boards, no parenting books, and almost completely ignored the avalanche of advice from other relatives and friends. They’re 20 and 25 now, and are both thriving, happy and successful young adults. One is honors pre-med at university, the other is an airline pilot.
*Yes, I see it. I’ve had my irony shots this month, so it’s OK.
Sorry, I got pulled away from the terminal before I could finish my thoughts.
The point I was trying to make is that you’ll encounter a huge number of people who have really strong opinions on your parenting methods. Whether from the TV, or random nosy bystanders, or opinionated relatives, you’ll probably get an earful. We ignored all the criticism but sifted through sincere advice, and raised our kids in the way we thought was best. We are (to our family) scandalously liberal in our social beliefs and permissiveness, and doom was predicted over and over for our kids. The prevailing belief was the boy would end up on parole, and the girl on the pole (dancing). The result surprised everyone but us.
I hope my 2 cents hasn’t come off as smart-ass. That wasn’t my intent. 
You don’t have to know everything now. They come out as starter kits, and your job is to keep fluids going in one end, catch them coming out the other end, and try not to drop them. The hard stuff comes later, but it’s still okay. You will grow with them. You don’t have to know how to raise a teenager until you have a teenager. All you have to do is stay one day ahead of them. Sometimes, that’s all you can do.
And congratulations!
As it’s too late to recommend that you get a cat instead, I’m going to +1 the above.
Congratulations and best wishes to your growing family.
The only piece of advice I ever give to new parents is the only genuinely useful thing that was told to me: don’t teach your child they can only sleep when it’s dead quiet. My children have both been terrible eaters, but they have slept through chaos since they day they were born. As I write this, our TV is on full blast in the open plan flat, we’ve been making cookies so running the mixer and we’ve been laughing and chatting over dinner. All of this while my 8 year old and 3 year old sleep soundly, just feet away, with their bedroom doors open.
For us, it meant that our girls were portable from the off - we would go out to friends’ houses, and just park a carry-cot in the corner of the room so they could sleep. Best thing we ever did.
Amen. And that is important for a parent of a newborn - it’s very hard to fix it later if you miss that early opportunity.
We went a step further with my daughter and conditioned her like Pavlov’s mutt. She has a bedtime song, and no matter where we were or what was going on around us, we’d sing the song as the last part of her bedtime ritual. She’s almost 10, and that song still almost always induces sleepiness. 
Do not be too quick to attribute the things that work out well to your fantastic parenting. Do not be smug when other people aren’t getting your results, assuming they just didn’t apply your methods out of some person weakness of character. Babies are people, from day one. There’s a lot you can’t control.
And one second piece of advice, that is more marital than parental: give each other the benefit of the doubt. Parenting is hard, and different people find different parts harder than others. You each have to have faith that the other is giving 100%, and accept that even with that much effort, it’s still going to be hard sometimes. You have to be able to voice your needs to each other, and take each other’s needs seriously–and you won’t have the same needs. If you start to resent each other for the sheer. . . discomfort . . .of the next couple years, it makes everything even harder. You need to be partners in a way that you’ve probably never really had to be before.
The first one is easy. Too easy, next thing you know you’ll think a second one will be easy too, but it isn’t a linear progression like that.
Don’t forget to take lots of pictures and videos.
Don’t talk baby talk to your baby.
And for the love of god, teach them independence. They should know how to clean their room, make their bed, wash their own dishes, do their own laundry and clean the bathroom.
I think this underscores my one piece of advice that what works for one kid won’t work for another. I think sleep habits are at least partially (and probably very much) genetic. My dad didn’t sleep much, I don’t sleep much, and my kids (3 and 5) don’t sleep much. There is no scenario where we could bring them to a friend’s house and have them sleep in the corner, and no training that would have encouraged it. Both stopped napping long before their second birthday, and the oldest before his first birthday. Neither sleeps more than 8-9 hours in a day total. Luckily, what we lost at naptime, we gained at night, as both slept through the night early on, and the youngest slept through the night (through the grace of the the flying spaghetti monster) from the first night in the hospital onwards.
I think the sad truth is that parents can encourage and aid in the process of the child’s development and make them the best they can be, but, seeing my two very, very different kids grow over the past few years, I think we are molding personalities that are largely determined from the moment sperm hits egg.
My oldest is very clingy and wants constant attention. My youngest wants no help and would rather play by himself for hours on end. We could see that from the beginning, and I don’t think our parenting had anything to do with it. We are just working within who they are as people to help them along.
I’m not a parent, but if I were ever to become one, here is the rule that I would live by:
Do what you feel is best. Trust your instincts. Humans have been raising their young for ~200 millennia; “mommy blogs” and fads such as “attachment parenting” and “co-sleeping” are recent inventions. H. Sapiens got by for 200,000 years without them. Your ancestors fed their tots when they were hungry, comforted them when they were upset, clothed them when they were cold. Do not let strangers who think they know better set impossible standards for you to live by. Unless you’re deliberately abusive or neglectful, you would really have to try hard to screw up your child. Do the best you can, and your kids will turn out just fine.
Mine are 14 and 10, for whatever bona fides that brings.
-
You know more than you think you do. If something seems to need doing, do it. Figure out later if it was right and either repeat or don’t.
-
Most important: The baby revolves around the family, not the family around the baby.
-
All sorts of people will give you advice. Some will do it to try to control or boss you. Fuck them. Some will do it because they want to help. Thank them. But accept or reject based on what you want to do, not because you feel pressured. Remember, we’re all idiots of one sort or another, revel in that fact.
Diaper rash is real and it sucks. It’s ouchy and babies are not prepared to cope with ouchy stuff, the result being that they will communicate to you loudly and in no uncertain terms that they are feeling ouchy, around the clock if necessary. It is in everyone’s best interest that you are vigilant about changing diapers.
That being said, sure you’ll miss one here and there and eventually your little bundle of joy is bound to get a rash. Don’t beat yourself up, it happens even though you’ve tried your best.
When it does happen Neosporin and Desitin are gonna become your new best friends.
Neosporin with pain relief slathered directly on the affected area will soothe the sting and promote healing, and a layer of Desitin over that will provide a barrier that will prevent the area from coming into contact with additional smelly bodily fluids thus giving the rash a chance to recover.
Just one bit of advice, huh?
Ok, babies will cry occasionally. Sometimes there is a reason and they need attention, sometimes there is no apparent reason and you just have to let them cry. They get tired and cranky too. Some are just fussier than others. I do not know when basic elements of a person’s personality develop but with my 2 sons it seemed like they were born that way, one fussy, one calmer and easier to please. They are still that way almost 30 years later.
If you think that there is always something you must do to fix it, if crying drives you nuts and you feel like a failure for not knowing what is wrong, you are going to have a rough time.
No one told me this, but I figured it out on my own and am happy to pass it along:
Exchange passports with your wife/SO/whatever and bury them in the yard while out of sight of one another. Remove the temptation.
God help you if you ever use the term “babysitting” to describe supervising/playing with/teaching your child. Ima reach through the internet and slap you silly.
Babysitting is a job done for pay, usually on an hourly basis. You don’t babysit anything you spermed into existence.
FTR, I’ve heard more of this from women than I have from men, and have worked with two women who used this word to describe caring for their own children.
:dubious: :smack:
Sometimes a baby cries because something IS wrong. I also worked with a man whose first child was colicky, and he said the baby cried one time for FORTY HOURS STRAIGHT. :eek: Be prepared for this.