What Is Good Parenting Advice?

Good parenting advice is anything a parent might find useful.  That might seem like a simple enough answer, but I have noticed a lot of comments about advice on this site being irrelevant to parenting.  I'm going to list all the things that I see as being relevant advice to me, as a parent, and why it's relevant.

Advice on caring for children.  Everything from breastfeeding and nappy changes, to explaining the birds and the bees and dealing with children leaving the nest.  I think this is important because a functioning reproductive system is the only qualification anyone needs to be a parent, and there is so much more to know and learn.

Advice on anything that can save money.  Anything at all that can save us money gives us money to invest in better caring for our children.  Be it extra tutoring for school, a trip to the zoo, sports fees, better food, or a little bit more pocket money for the kids, every penny counts when you are a parent.

Advice on anything with how to improve interpersonal relationships.  Whether is resolving conflict, trying to negotiate a home loan, communicating better with your family members, or explaining social expectations to our children, these are things that are learned.  It's not instinct to stay calm and polite when someone is screaming torrents of verbal abuse at you, but it's still the best way to deal with such a situation - and not everyone knows that.  If we as parents don't know it, how can we teach our children?  If we are to give our children the best start to life, we need to give them the best possible skills for interacting with the outside world, and we can't do that unless we have learned how to do it first.

Advice on housework and odd jobs around the house.  As parents, it is our responsibility to ensure that our children have a clean, healthy, safe, and functional home to live in.  When we can't afford an electrician to fix a powerpoint that is in our child's reach, we need to know something we can do to make it safe, without having to go without electricity in the rest of the house, until we can afford an electrician.  This sort of knowledge not only allows us to better look after our family in general, but it can keep our family safe from illness and injury.

Advice about pets.  Most families don't just have children, they also have pets.  If they don't, eventually a child will bring a pet home at some point, even if they aren't allowed to keep it.  Anything from cats & dogs, to lizards & frogs.  If a parent is going to teach their children how to deal with animals, they have to know how themselves.  If they are going to keep their children's pets safe and healthy, they need this advice.  It's just another part of parental responsibility.

Advice relating to activities and hobbies.  Parents the world over share activities and hobbies with their children.  Be it knitting clothes or making toys for their children, to playing games with their children, or coaching their children's sports team, we pass on the skills and knowledge we have and our children benefit in many ways.

Advice pertaining to medical, legal, financial, and other such specialized services.  Without such information, we can easily become lost and even get ourselves into a lot of trouble - which impacts on our children.  We want to keep our own lives in proper order so that we can do our best for our children, and information about these types of things is definately useful for parents to know.

Advice relating to parents and/or their children gaining and maintaining employment and education.  Anything we can do to better ourselves and our lives improves the lives of our children if we do it right.  And of course what parent wouldn't want to know how these things effect our children?

Advice pertaining to the Minti site.  Of course, how to use and contribute to this web site can improve our chances of learning the things that we, as parents, need to know.

This covers a lot of ground.  Everything we know and learn, we can teach our children.  Knowledge is priceless.  Use it, share it around, and don't condemn something that you feel is irrelevant to parenting just because it isn't relative specifically to you.  There are many parents out there that need to know about some things that may seem pretty obscure, but they could do their jobs as parents better if they were armed with that "irrelevant" information.

Bad parenting advice is anything that is detrimental to the well-being of our children, or ourselves as parents. Advertising is not advice, it's just another way to sell a product or service. Imposing a biased personal opinion on a contraversial social, political, or religious issue is not advice, it's just an opinion. If you write an advice, be sure that it actually contains advice - something informative, constructive, helpful, and inspirational to another person that may need to know the information.