Take your advice and …

By Phil Stott

My wife took my daughter to the grocery store, and got reprimanded for her parenting by a complete stranger, which infuriated me, and led me to consider: what's the best way to deal with an interfering busybody (however well-meaning)? And just where the hell do they get off anyway?

Thus far in our parenting careers, my wife and I have received exactly four pieces of unwanted information from random strangers, and every single time it's been in the supermarket. That's once every three months on average, provided no one else assails us between now and Maeve's birthday at the end of the month. What it is about our parenting skills that compel someone to interrupt their shopping to pronounce judgment on us is beyond me - our "offences" to date have included:

- Not having her in a sweater (granted, the store was over-air-conditioned, but it was 95 outside, not an unreasonable temperature for not having a sweater in the diaper bag).

- Having her sockless (again in summer). Because having an infant in socks for more than 45 seconds is completely do-able.

- Giving her our keys to play with to stop her from screaming the store down - not something we do on a regular basis (there's a lot of monitoring to make sure she doesn't try to eat them), but sometimes it's the only thing that works.

Looking at the list of offences, there's one common thread - not having enough junk in the diaper bag - that probably could have prevented all three instances. Having said that, the reality of parenting, at least for me, is that we spend our lives running around doing all the things we forgot to do yesterday while forgetting what we were supposed to do today. Assuming that anyone with the gall to offer unsolicited advice on a subject is presumably an expert (i.e. a parent or childcare specialist), wouldn't you think they'd recognize that and just cut you some slack?

Anyway, it seems like the person sticking their nose in where it isn't even remotely wanted is likely to be more or less a constant for the foreseeable future, so the question then becomes: how do we deal with it?

It seems to me that there's a sliding scale of appropriateness in terms of reaction, with my initial instinct tending towards the less polite end of it. Thankfully, I haven't been in the immediate vicinity on most of the occasions, so my two favorite words haven't been aired in public quite yet - and for the sake of an easy life, I have no desire for that ever to happen. With that in mind, I had a long think (and canvassed some friends) regarding what might be termed "more appropriate verbiage" in business-speak. Here are some of the best suggestions I garnered:

1) It occurs to me that just accepting the advice (or pretending to) might be a viable option, ruling out any potential conflict. Saying something like "You're absolutely right. Normally we'd have a sweater handy, but we only popped in for milk." Not my favorite suggestion, as I'm not in the habit of justifying my actions to a complete stranger, but definitely likely to diffuse an awkward situation.
2) A friend, meanwhile, agrees with me on the psychological satisfaction that comes with a decent brush-off, but has developed a more appropriate manner of delivering it. Basically, she pays the person scant attention and says something like "Thank you. She's fine." Short, to the point, and with the added benefit of pointing out that, yes, you do know what your kid's up to, and are aware of how to take care of them.
3) Further along the scale, another friend admitted that he once opted for the slightly more aggressive "If I'd wanted your advice, I'd have asked for it." The result? Stunned silence, and fleeting satisfaction, but a guilt trip at a later date. Probably best to reserve this one for the dealing with the rudest of the rude.
4) At the very end of the scale, the best lines are the ones you know you'll never use. In my head, I have a retort that goes something like "Thanks for your concern, I guess we just got so caught up in teaching her how rude it is to offer advice to complete strangers that we totally forgot to put her hat on."

Still, I'm pretty sure that there are some other ideas out there about how best to deal with the busybody (both tried and tested, and lurking in the recesses of the imagination). Feel free to share your best suggestions and war stories below.