Still Talking About Advice

And how not to give it

Something intriguing happened with last week’s Kick-Ass Heroines post - I lost subscribers. That by itself isn’t the interesting part: I gain and lose subscribers every week, usually a net positive on the gains, which is nice because it means that people are sharing my posts with friends and family. The remarkable thing is how many subscribers I lost on what I thought was a benign post about the ineffectiveness of telling other people what to do.

A couple of things could be at play - it’s the holidays, so everyone is sending out advertisements and newsletters and people’s inboxes are jammed to the gills, so that random author chick you subscribed to that one time has sent one too many emails and has to go. Or another possibility is that people are really attached to the idea that they know what’s best for other people and have an absolute right to give them advice, and who am I anyway to tell them giving advice doesn’t work? Especially since one of my newsletters is called The Lazy Person’s Guide to Parenting, so how is that not the height of hypocrisy?

Anyway, I found it intriguing, and if you have any thoughts on why Sharing What We Know inspired so many unsubscribes, I’m interested in your insights.

That post was on my mind during a conversation I just had with a dear friend who is an unpublished author and a new mom. She’d called for specific publishing advice, which I offered with the caveat that she was welcome to try it on for fit, but if it didn’t feel right, she should absolutely try on something else that felt better. Eventually our conversation turned toward international air travel with the baby. I told her that I was really lucky that my kids breastfed as long as they did, because nursing on take-off and landing was an almost sure fire way to pressurize a baby’s ears. Also, it was only a couple of years ago that I finally stopped packing an extra t-shirt for myself as well as my kids into my carry-on bag as an antidote to mid-flight vomit and spillage.

There I was, telling stories about parenting that might sound like advice to someone looking for (or resisting) advice, but because I’m not attached to any particular outcome (yes, I feel sorry for babies who scream during take-off and landing, but no, I don’t judge parents for not breastfeeding ANY time, much less during stressful travel situations) to me it was just sharing myself.

I’m very clear that my experiences with my kids do not represent the sum total of successful parenting moves, and frankly, some people might not even consider them to be all that successful. But as someone who believes wholeheartedly that the adage “everything you pack is stuff you have to carry” is a life lesson, not just travel advice, I feel pretty good about most of the parenting choices we’ve made. The evidence stands in front of us in the form of two 6-plus-foot tall kids who we really like, and whose raising made us more interesting, more tolerant, and more compassionate people.

I always resisted the idea that we “got lucky” with how great our kids are. Sure, we got lucky with their heath and general well-being, but a lot of work went into fostering an environment for them to become who they are, and luck played very little part in that. More useful than luck was listening - to them, to other parents, and to ourselves as we figured out what fit and felt good about the parents we wanted to be.

Merry Christmas Eve to all who celebrate Christmas Eve, and Happy Holidays to all.