This was what my fortune cookie read the other night while out to dinner with my family. The only problem is, whose mom’s advice are they talking about?

If you should Google “mom’s advice” you will receive 320,000 results. That is a lot to sift through!

So where do you begin as a new mom? Teen mom? Etc….

As a new mom myself, I found it relatively overwhelming going through all the advice columns, websites, and books. Until finally I just sought the advice of someone so obvious…my own mom.

I’m not trying to detour you away from here or anywhere else, the “rules” of child rearing change quite frequently (so mom can only help so much). When I was a small child, for example, doctors, media, books all stated that babies must sleep on their stomachs. Today, all we hear is put them on their backs to reduce the risk of SIDS. Thirty years ago, there were no car seat laws, let alone seat belt laws. Nowadays, children must be in a car seat/booster seat until their 4’9 and between the ages of 8 and 12. (For more information check out this car seat guide.)

However, you must remember that advice is defined as an opinion or a recommendation. So whether it is good or not really depends on you.

For example, when my son was 3 months old, another mom friend came to visit me with her son. “You should start feeding him solids” was her advice to me. And even though my son’s pediatrician did say that I could start, my mom instinct told me to hold off a little while longer. Not that this advice was bad, considering his pediatrician okayed it. I just didn’t want to take advice from a mom who admitted to feeding her son chocolate ice cream at two weeks old.

My mom’s most recent advice to me: enjoy each and every milestone my son reaches (more on this in my blog; www.ranchingmom.blogspot.com) And while I took this advice to heart, the best advice I ever received from another mom, “Screw what everyone else says, you’re his mother, do what you feel is right!”

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