Responding To Unwanted Parental Advice From Strangers

Unwanted advice from strangers.

This starts happening as soooooon as anyone knows you’re pregnant.

“Sleep with your legs in the air. Then you’ll have a boy.”

“Your hips are really wide. You must be having a girl. Make sure you wear lots of makeup cause they’ll suck the beauty right out of you!” (Yes, I actually had someone say this. No, no one really said the first thing. I made it up to get your attention.)

Anyways, from the nosy old lady at the gynecologist’s, to the deli guy at Albertsons–the average stranger is loaded with valuable information that will improve your parenting. Except it doesn’t improve anything, does it? Unless my kid is in SERIOUS and IMMINENT danger I don’t really want people slamming me with their advice. It’s just too much for this little brain of mine to process.

I must be honest. For whatever reason, when people decide to put their two cents in, I typically smile, nod, and then steer my kids away from their critical gaze. However, I’ve come to a decision: next time someone gets all up in my business I’m gonna pull out one or two or ten of these great one liners. I’m actually not too fast on my feet, so this list is gonna go somewhere in my purse. Or…just stay on this blog.

But I’m gonna rehearse it every night.

Is that weird?

Here’s a list of things I plan on saying next time a stranger offers their unsolicited advice about my parenting:

1.) “They’re not your kids.”

2.) “They’re not my kids.”

3.) “This is a healthy response in our family. When the going gets tough, just drop it like it’s hot and let yourself collapse. You should try it sometime.”

4.) “I KNEW we shouldn’t have given him that Red Bull! Dangit!”

5.) “My child has multiple personality disorder. We’re on our way to the therapist right now.”

6.) “Thank you for telling me that! Absolutely groundbreaking! I’m totally gonna blog about you. Mind if I take your photo?”

7.) “This is NOTHING! You should see her at HOME!”

8.) “He hasn’t eaten in days.”

9.) “We’re weaning her off cigarettes. Its been a rough week.”

10.) “Can I have your phone number and email address? I wanna be sure to have that handy next time something like this comes up. Thanks!”

11.) “He ate his twin in the womb. What do you expect?”

12.) “I have no idea who this kid is. He just started following me in the cereal aisle. You should go alert the store manager.”

13.) From my oh so eloquent father-in-law, “Buzz off, freak!”

14.) “I’m actually a sociologist. He’s the experiment and she’s the placebo.” (You can switch this up from time to time with big terms like Pavlovian and cultural relativism. Just watch Big Bang Theory for a while and latch on to some of Sheldon’s lines.)

15.) “I think what we’re seeing here is the direct result of all the gum he swallowed. The doctor said it would re-manifest at some point.”

16.) You could always opt for the “no hablo,” and here are a few other options if you want to play a different part. For example, I would just love to respond in Norwegian, “Jeg snakker ikke norsk” or how about in Dutch, “Ik spreek geen Nederlands.” So fun.

17.) Change the subject to something really uncomfortable for them like, “Since we’re so comfortable with one another I just cannot NOT help you out here. You totally have something HUGE stuck in your teeth.” {As this is my greatest fear (being caught with food in my teeth) I reserve this for the really mean ones.}

18.) “I’m kind of off my game. You see, I just found out I’m pregnant with triplets.”

19.) “He had gluten today.”

20.) “Wow! So brilliant you should tweet it #mindyourownbusiness.

***

I like shock value. I think that’s the way to go with annoying people. Now, if a stranger is in fact so off-base that they will actually give you advice–I must caution you in saying any of the above things. Especially the one about cigarettes. Child services might follow you out of the parking lot…But it is awfully fun to daydream.

What do you say to nosy strangers? Got any awesome one liners to add to my list?

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33 thoughts on “Responding To Unwanted Parental Advice From Strangers”

Jennifer January 7, 2017

Yeah, I got the one about my girl sucking the beauty out of me too, I was stunned. When I was pregnant with my second (I am 5’2″ and she weighed 8lbs 12 oz at birth) I had several doctors and nurses (who should know better) joke with me about was I sure I wasn’t having twins because my belly was so huge. I mean.. REALLY!

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33 thoughts on “Responding To Unwanted Parental Advice From Strangers”

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