A couple of weeks ago I found myself being shouted at by another parent.
Someone semi well known, a parent to several children. This person has their fingers in a few pies, some might be called parenting advice adjacent, but to my knowledge they lack formal qualifications.
They delivered their passionate message via Facebook couched as a public service to ALL parents. I am wary of all unsolicited parenting advice. My aversion to it stems from my first pregnancy and early first-time motherhood.
Back then I eagerly soaked up all the information, like a stray kitten lapping up a saucer of milk. The need to have a vaginal birth. How essential breastfeeding would be for my baby.
I made myself sick on information.
In fact, had I stubbornly clung to it, that information could have killed both my baby and I. (A baby in the posterior position, postnatal psychosis brought on (in part) by sleep deprivation, a lot of medication to treat the postnatal psychosis that passed into breastmilk).
But back to the Facebook tirade I found difficult to look away from.
The message was completely overshadowed by the breathless anxiety in its delivery. I’ve never been a proponent of parenting out of the fear of what could happen based on general information. The topic of this particular rant is almost irrelevant because it could have been about anything. It happened to be about Tick Toc. More specifically a call to ban it from our children’s devices.
Personally, I would not give my primary school student access to any social media. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.
Personally, I believe banning Tick Toc from high school students’ phones rather than letting them have it and teaching them about the dangers, is a bit like banning sex instead of providing good quality sex education. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.
Reflexively banning anything because you’ve come across some frightening information about it will just make it more appealing to many teenagers. Like the kid who has never been allowed sugar… But stop I am straying from the point I am trying to make, which come to think of it can still be made with the kid who has never been allowed sugar.
Take two kids with the same parent and apply the No Sugar rule.
It might work perfectly for one kid who is pretty compliant, naturally eats a wide variety of foods, and happens to love taking vegetable muffins for lunches. They grow into an adult who carries their childhood eating habits into adulthood and live happily ever after.
The other kid might be more rebellious. They might gorge on sugar at every birthday party they go to and resent their parents’ strict (though well intentioned) food rules. They trade their vegetable muffins for chocolate bars at school lunches. They feel guilt and shame associated with eating sugar and grow into adulthood with disordered eating that takes years of intensive therapy to manage.
Whether it is sugar or social media – I no longer make blind decisions based only on external information (be it expert or the anecdotal variety hurled at me by social media). I aim to interpret parenting information in the context of my child(ren) and my family before I lay down any laws.
Favouring my intuition over information isn’t easy. In other areas of my life – such as my veterinary work and the management of my Bipolar 1 Disorder, I have always relied heavily on information to help me make decisions.
But I can’t count the number of times information (even expert information) has failed me as a parent.
In this age we are assaulted by information wherever we look. It can overwhelm and make us doubt our knowledge of our children. And if we let it, the information and opinion overload becomes a stick to beat ourselves to an indecisive mess with.
It has taken me years and plenty of mistakes to marry my intuition and knowledge of my children with a scant amount of trustworthy information to find the formula that works (not all but) a lot of the time, for this family.
I am not against parents sharing information and opinions. I share my own frequently. This post is a case in point. But I find it helpful to remember that ultimately we need little information to parent well, and it is information most parents agree on anyway:
Love your children unconditionally; provide them with food, water, shelter, the opportunity to exercise, and the best medical care you can access; don’t expose them to any forms of abuse; teach them how to navigate the world they inhabit; and if you are fortunate enough to be able to – provide them with an education.
Beyond that, you can ignore what everyone else is doing. It’s down to what works for you and your child.
You may also like to check out:
Rewards For Reports: Entitled or Deserved?
Mental Health Parenting Truths 101
If you enjoy my writing, my recently published memoir Abductions From My Beautiful Life is available on most online bookselling platforms including Amazon, Fishpond, and Booktopia. You can find an excerpt here: Book
Thought Food 
Good post. I particularly enjoyed the last couple of paragraphs ! xxx
I have received such positive comments on your book from my friends, Morag and Di and from Jude and Shiri .
Di wrote…”.i read Anita’s brave and very honest book, not in one sitting as it was so real and direct I needed time to digest it . It must surely help others and their loved ones to understand and support people with this condition……………. ……I hope she and her family are well now andI send all my positive thoughts…”
Morag wrote…..” ….Congratulations to Anita. She has succeeded in producing a very readable and detailed account of her painful experience through a careful amalgam of personal, professional and family life. She obviously enjoys the creativity of writing. Her original imagery is very memorable……”
Shiri sent me a text”….It’s amazing…” From Shiri, I know she thinks just that !
I think Jude wrote to you which was nice .She was really moved when she spoke to me on the phone about it and I was moved by the level of her admiration for your book.
Love from Mum
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Thank you very much for passing on all that lovely feedback. X
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