# Grandparently advice to new mums/dads. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 27, 2010, 9:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grandparently-advice-to-new-mums-dads/558498 "2010-10-27T09:45:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grandparently-advice-to-new-mums-dads/558498/21 "2010-10-28T12:57:37Z")
> [@chela](#): > > My advice to Grandparents - don’t overdress the baby or overheat the house. We do have central heat and only newborns need to be kept warm as toast all the time. Actually, no on the last bit (absolutely agree with the rest). When they brought the Kidlet home, one of the things The Proud Parents had to do was lower the heating, which they’d set to “toasty” for the kid. I’m one of those people who are cold all the time, I get wrinkly fingertips at 23ºC, and both me and the kid were more or less this color -\> ⭕cool: Babies don’t regulate their temperature very well yet, but that means being ready to take clothing on and off, not trying to roast either them or the whole family. ---
**Author:** ![raspberry\_hunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grandparently-advice-to-new-mums-dads/558498/22 "2010-10-28T17:41:00Z")
> [@Hello\_Again](#): > > Maybe it’s just the parts I hear about, but my friends’ parents pretty much constantly berate them that by failure to [use a pacifier/feed rice cereal/serve undiluted juice/whatever thing pediatricians are advising against these days] they are essentially murdering their children, who – if they live – will grow up to hate them. This is SO my mom, except that she could care less what the pediatricians say. She used to berate me every time we were on the phone to stop swaddling my child, as a) SHE never did this and therefore it must be some sort of wrong new-fangled thing, let’s ignore the part where moms have been doing this for hundreds of years and that the Little One stopped crying immediately when you did it, and b) if the baby rolled over while she was swaddled it would be CERTAIN DISASTER because she wouldn’t be able to roll back over again, my mom read a post on the Interweb about how this could happen and couldn’t stop having nightmares about it!! Eventually, thankfully for my sanity, the Little One was able to fall asleep without being swaddled and we could stop and my mom could stop yelling at me. Then the Little One started to roll over… and she couldn’t roll back over again anyway. Wouldn’t’ve mattered if she were swaddled or not. Note also this is the same woman who thought nothing of putting thick heavy blankets in the crib with the baby, in violation of every doctor and baby book I know about. Now she’s been saying the same thing about how we NEED to get a jumper. My friend who’s a physical therapist doesn’t like them much, and somehow I trust her over my mom… ---
**Author:** ![kushiel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbce88/32.png) [@kushiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kushiel)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grandparently-advice-to-new-mums-dads/558498/23 "2010-10-29T16:27:50Z")
My brother, being much older than me, spent my first couple of years being very involved in my care. This was in the 80s when you didn’t even need a carseat by law. My sister-in-law, OTOH, doesn’t have as much experience with babies, and what she does is very recent. This leads to a mix of my brother going ‘baby doesn’t need a bib, that’s why we wipe them up after!’ and her going ‘but the formula will get all in the folds of her neck!’. He has a much more laidback attitude, seeing as he took care of me and I never kicked the bucket. I mean, of course he’s all up in the really important stuff like carseats, but he also knows that not doing some things doesn’t mean the baby will suffer for it. ---
**Author:** ![Serenata67](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/serenata67/32/10646_2.png) [@Serenata67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Serenata67)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2010, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grandparently-advice-to-new-mums-dads/558498/24 "2010-10-31T04:26:10Z")
When I have kids, my mother will be the best go-to Grandma… she’s a pediatrician. She’s pretty no-nonsense. If something’s not that important, she’ll tell me. If it is, she’ll tell me, too. I think my kid’s pediatrician will love me because I won’t be the kind of mom calling the doc all the time because my baby did xyz. I’ll be calling _Grandma_ all the time because kid did xyz… but that’s another story. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grandparently-advice-to-new-mums-dads/558498.md?page=1)