Ahead of Mother’s Day, a group of grandparents have shared their best parenting advice for new mums – and their wisdom is as useful as it is sweet.
Mother’s Day is fast approaching, with kids wrapping up the best Mother’s Day gifts to make mums feel special, planning trips to the places where mums can get a freebie for Mother’s Day, and perfecting a Mother’s Day breakfast in bed with the best Mother’s Day recipes.
But even with the day’s focus on resting on letting mum relax – hopefully by indulging in the best bath oils or most luxurious self care products for mums – Mother’s Day will still likely be filled with parenting challenges for mums – isn’t every day?
With that in mind, residents of Lottie’s care home, who are both parents and grandparents themselves, have shared some words of wisdom with The Huffington Post for new mums to give them advice, parenting tips, and some simple words of encouragement.
96-year-old Joyce, who is a proud mother to her daughter Jane, says to ‘Learn as you go along.’ She has especially fond memories of her first years as a mother, years that were filled with big family holidays where her sister and her own children, who were close in age to Jane, spent days bathing in the sunshine on the Isle of Wight and in Cornwall.
This Mother’s Day, Joyce wants new mums to remember that ‘there are no rules’ and recommends to ‘just learn as you go along.’
Jean, who is also 96-years-old, stresses to ‘be patient’ as a mother. It’s easier said then done, though there are ways to manage stress and plenty of tips to quickly calm down when parenting gets a bit too much that can help.
Jean says she was a ‘lucky’ mother from the minute she bought her daughter, Susan, home – a day she remembers like it was just yesterday. But no matter how angelic your child is, there will always be times when you get stressed or feel stuck. In those moments, Jean says to ‘be kind, helpful and tolerant. Don’t expect them to be perfect.’
80-year-old Brenda, who was always worried about her three adventurous children hurting themselves while out exploring, wants to remind mothers to ‘understand their child’s needs.’ Whether that means learning how to better support a child with ‘explosive’ emotions or figuring out how to properly talk to your kid about feelings, you’ll never regret giving your child what they actually need.
Mother of two, 90-year-old Dorothy, is the adoptive mum of son and daughter Kevin and Tracey. She is especially proud to be a parent and even happier to now be a grandparent to baby Elliott. She has two pieces of advice for millennial mums, one easier than the other. The first? To ‘help your children as much as you can and try and always be a good parent.’ That’s something many millennial parents feel they can do. In fact, nearly all millennials believe their approach to parenting is ‘better’ than previous generations. But her second piece of advice, to always ‘tell your children the truth,’ may be a bit harder to follow – we all rely on white lies from time to time!
We all rely on grandparents to give a helping hand or a bit of advice here and there, though sometimes we’re left wondering if grandparents really love their grandkids more than their own children. There has even been increasingly positive research showing that kids are turning to grandparents for life advice and, in return, grandparents say they learn more from their grandkids than their own children.
