Parenting is never easy because the “rules” and guidelines seem to change in a heartbeat. Still, some parenting tips from the past are so bad they make your toes curl.
Today, the focus is on child safety and enabling kids to become confident members of society. Hitting children goes against human rights, and everyone worries about saying or doing the wrong thing.
These are 17 of the strangest parenting tips from times gone by.
1. Leave The Kids In the Car
Once upon a time, leaving the children in the car was acceptable when you nipped into the supermarket for the weekly shop. You might come back to squabbling siblings, but you never worried about their safety.
Today, few parents would leave their kids alone in the car, not even in a locked vehicle.
2. Let the Children Play Outside
As a child, I played in the street from sunup to sundown, and my mom never checked on me. My pals and I used to play in a field with a stream (completely unsupervised) to catch newts and frogs.
Children today don’t have the luxury of so much freedom, even if they have mobile phones.
3. Keep the Children Quiet By Letting Them Watch TV
There’s a continuous movement to get children away from the TV and doing something productive. Plonking your kid in front of the TV was something parents did to get a few minutes of peace. Not anymore.
Perhaps mobile phones or video games have replaced watching TV, but sadly, parents face this dilemma now.
4. Drink a Pint of Guinness Daily When You’re Pregnant
Drinking a pint of Guinness at any time seems like an unpleasant activity, but when you’re pregnant and struggling with morning sickness, it seems like the worst advice ever.
The theory for this weird advice is to increase a mom’s iron intake during pregnancy, but there are many better ways to supplement.
5. Give The Baby a Lard Bath
The thought of having a lard bath makes me cringe, and thankfully, my parents never did it. Still, past advice was to bathe the baby in lard, liquid vaseline, or olive oil and then dry them with a soft, linen towel.
Today, parenting advice suggests not using oils on babies until they’re over a month old. Still, there are many lovely baby moisturizers available now.
6. Don’t Get Worried or Angry
When babies cried from painful colic, doctors used to advise mothers not to show they were angry or worried. The weird theory was that an adverse reaction to baby crying could cause colic and even convulsions.
Those first few months of managing a newborn are stressful, and it’s not easy to chill when you’re worried the baby might be in pain.
7. Don’t Hug Your Child
This advice is the worst ever. Imagine not hugging your child. In the late 1920s, “experts” advised parents to be objective with their children. The advice suggested no hugging, letting them sit on your lap, or kissing your child.
Even worse, they suggested shaking hands with your kid instead of showing affection.
8. Give “Delicate” Children Chocolate Milk
In the past, parents gave their toddlers and babies chocolate milk if they had sensitive tummies. Although that doesn’t sound like terrible advice, the proviso was to eat bread and butter with chocolate milk. Why? Who knows?
The mix contained fresh milk, sugar, cocoa, boiling water, and a side of bread and butter.
9. Put Your Baby Out the Window In a Cage
Hang your baby out of the window in a cage. You wouldn’t even do that with a cat, would you? The concept was that babies need fresh air. Fair enough, but dangling them out of the window if you lived in a high-rise building is just crazy.
Parents in the 1930s accepted this advice as the norm. Today, you’d be arrested for child abuse.
10. Start Toilet Training Immediately
I wonder if the person giving this advice confused babies with puppies. Seriously, the U.S. government sent a leaflet to parents advising them to start potty training as soon as possible after the baby was born.
The overarching expectation was that every child should be potty trained within six to eight months.
11. Give Your Baby Opium for Teething Pain
In the 1800s, parents could buy Mrs Winslow’s Soothing Syrup to help calm their teething babies, even though this concoction contained morphine. Worse still, in hindsight, this syrup may have been responsible for many infant deaths.
Parents assumed they were doing the best for their children but unknowingly were putting their lives at risk.
12. Solid Foods From Day Two
Doctors once advised parents to start feeding cereals on day two. The thinking was that babies should have strained vegetables at 10 days old and strained meat four days later. At three weeks, the baby can have fruit juice. After that, cod liver oil at four weeks, and they should start eating eggs at five weeks.
Doctors said babies could start on puddings at six weeks and, at nine weeks, they could have bacon and eggs. The advice seems very strange compared to how we feed babies today.
13. Restrain Your Child To Stop Thumb-sucking
I sucked my thumb much longer than most children. My habit infuriated my grandma. My mom replaced it with a pacifier, and my gran threw that in the fire. Thumb-sucking was considered a filthy habit.
The advice ranged from applying a splint to painting the nails with something disgusting or anything else to stop the habit.
14. Ignore Your Crying Baby
Even today, parents struggle to decide whether to ignore their crying babies or give them attention. In the 1960s, some doctors advised parents that pandering to a crying baby would create entitled adults who expected help from others.
The concept was to teach children to understand they don’t get everything they want by demanding it.
15. No Strollers for Babies or Toddlers
Pye Henry Chavasse was a doctor in the mid-1800s who advised mothers not to put their babies into a baby carriage. Instead, mothers were supposed to hold their children at all times.
Chavasse theorized that a baby in a carriage felt cold and unsupported and could not find comfort from its mother.
16. Don’t Give Your Child a Common Name
In the past, the consensus was not to name your child with a popular name because it meant the child would run with the crowd and not develop a unique personality.
Additionally, parents were advised not to give their children a “soft” name, something that sounded feminine and “soft” because they would grow up without a strong personality.
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