Here’s an example of something that calls for a parent’s advice. Over the weekend, one of my FBFs has asked for advice on how to deal with her almost-2-year-old son who is majorly fighting bedtime, and also refuses to wear a diaper even though he isn’t potty-trained. She did not have these problems with her daughter (who is 9 years old, and I’ve heard many times that this is the most challenging age for many kids) nor did her parents go through it with her, or her husband’s parents with him.
Most of the people who responded seconded her idea of putting lavender oil on his feet (can’t hurt, anyway) and see if they can speed-potty train him, with advice on how to do so.
Gosh, what about those parents with 13 kids who were torturing and mistreating them?
THIRTEEN KIDS! Wow, they have buckets of experience raising kids! Obviously they’re better prepared and more knowledgeable than any expert or single person, right?
#1. My younger daughter had a very different personality from my older daughter. Advice from myself on how to deal with the younger one based on my own experience with the older was of limited value.
#2. Many if not most anti-vaxxers are parents. Want to trust them rather than the experts?
An expert nearly killed my kid last week. Or, at a minimum, could have caused brain damage.
We went to the doc. We explained the symptoms he was showing. We were told to take him home and let it pass. I had done some reading about his symptoms before we went based on the advice of some friends and, after we were told to take him home, I insisted on a blood test. They ran the test.
Then had us take him immediately to the E.R. Turns out our child is a type 1 diabetic and had we taken him home he would have likely entered a diabetic coma. Our soon to be ex doctors office is one of the most highly rated in the city.
I generally defer to the experts if I don’t have knowledge in the area as long as the expert advice seems sane. I have never offered or demanded a doc run any test before. I generally trust them. However, in this case, it was apparent that the doc didn’t understand the severity of the problem even though we explained the symptoms in detail.
Well, my newly fired doctor blamed his blowing off of my health concerns as being due to time considerations, since he had so little time to see me. :rolleyes:
Always question your doctors and never accept that they know everything.
But I’m going to assume that the expert has listened to and benefited from the experience of not one but several experienced fathers and mothers who have raised several children for 20 years.
While the uneducated experienced parent is more likely to treat their own personal experience as more universal than it actually is, confusing anecdotes with data.
I couldn’t answer the poll because there isn’t enough information. What type of problem am I asking advice about? Is it a run-of-the-mill issue or something deeper? Are we talking about kids not picking up dirty socks or are they on the autism spectrum?
What is the expert’s expertise? Is the parent someone I trust and who has similar philosophy to me?
Some problems are better solved by people who have seen hundreds of children. Others maybe better served by someone who has gone through the same wringer you find yourself in.
I read the baby and books and picked up some important tips. I also found out a lot by talking to friends and family who had children. Some of the best advice I got from the latter was concerning the changes I had to make in myself in order to be a better parent.
Who would you want to land the airplane after the pilot died? The guy who knows all the facts and figures, or the guy who has actually landed an airplane?
I’m a parent. There’s a lota on parent cannot know.
I’d still choose the expert without kids.
Here’s the thing - I’m a parent. The perspective of another parent may be useful, or it may be nonsense. If I need advice, that kind of proves parents aren’t perfect.
An educational expert brings to the table specific ideas, resources, and perspectives I do NOT have, and cannot get from a schmoe. I can turn to such an expert for specific advice grounded in the latest research and objective evidence, while another parent presumably offers none of those things, and their opinions is subject to logical errors, cognitive biases, prejudices, and any number of things. the point being, I can only turn to another parent for their opinion, and opinions and assholes share many characteristics.
Raising children in what is for me a foreign country (although it’s my wife’s home) after they were born in Japan, it’s clear that not having that many child experts isn’t a great idea.
The West is decades ahead of East Asia in the approach of how to handle children with issues such as being on the autism spectrum. I personally know several families with such children who returned to the West in order to get better treatment and education.
I disagree. I have a wonderful friend who has been a first-grade teacher for many years. She’s childless (not by choice but due to infertility coupled with life circumstances that made adoption impossible). I would definitely listen to her advice about child-rearing.
I didn’t vote as there is no definitive answer. As others have noted, it depends on the type of problem as well as on the individuals being consulted. I’d trust the advice of loving parents who successfully raised several well-adjusted kids over an arrogant prick with a degree. But I’d trust a compassionate expert who explained the reasoning behind their suggestions more than I would trust parents who smacked their kids around all the time.
Wait, wait… we never got grounded. Does that mean my parents cannot understand what parenting is?
It would depend on the individuals involved and the question asked. But then, I’m a childless woman with no training in pedagogy who coparented her brothers and who was often asked by parents for advice on how to deal with their teenager sons’ issues, so I’ve got Issues of my own with the whole division between “has had children” and “has not had children” being treated as some sort of hard barrier; the boundary is IME a lot fuzzier than people think.
Since I am replying to this downthread, I will restate what I just posted above you:
My sister has no kids but has been counseling kids from Junior High to High School for 25 years. At various points in the raising of my kids, my wife wanted to take significant action to address something we saw happening with one of our kids - start meds, change schools, see a therapist, etc. I usually wanted to give it time and let things play out. We would check in with my sister who would discuss the dozens of examples she had seen and relate them to our situation. It helped us make our decisions.
It always comes down to the respect you have for the source.
I’ve been a kids-at-home parent for damn near 30 years (man I am so tired!) aside from what everyone else has said, in my experience, the best advice from other parents is always solicited and almost always starts with, “this is what worked with my kid, you should change it to fit your kid”
