Are All New Parents Incompetent?

Several months after my daughter was first born I asked my wife how we were doing such a good job of raising a happy and healthy baby, since we were so incompetent. She of course laughed and understood that I was just joking around, because we both had grown quite wary of others telling us how to raise our baby. This is something that almost every new parent can't escape from, unless you have no friends or family to speak of. Before I even took my daughter out of the hospital, I already had a number of people telling me how to put her in her car seat, what to do for her when we got home, and I even had my uncle yell at me because I had her in the sun for almost 5 seconds as I was walking to the car.

If you are a new parent then I'm sure you can relate to what I am saying, and it really is quite frustrating to deal with at first. However, I always tried to keep in mind that all of our friends and family had the best interests of our baby at heart, and they just wanted to be as helpful as possible. The problem is that they assume they are the only ones giving you advice, and when you have dozens of people offering up their own helpful suggestions, it really starts to become quite agitating and make you feel like you are incompetent. Of course, the worst thing you can do is to take offense or scold someone, but a certain point you have to let people know that you appreciate their advice, but are going to do things your own way.

This of course doesn't mean that you won't get some very helpful advice along the way, as my wife and I got some very wonderful tips from many of our closest friends and parents, which really helped us in the first few months. There is simply no way we were going to be able to know everything we needed to raise our baby, and I think this is the main reason why so many people were endlessly throwing their advice at us on a daily basis.

The best way to handle this situation is to just be humble and try to understand the position of the people who are giving you their suggestions. As I mentioned earlier, there will come a time when you have to let others know that you are doing a fine job of raising your baby, and while you appreciate the advice, you do have the situation under control. Some people may take offense, but most will understand your position and hopefully ease up on all of the advice they are giving you.


------

William Jason is a proud father who enjoys writing articles that help other new parents. His latest blog post helps to explain the most common question many new parents have; when can you find out the gender of your baby?