The Worst Parenting Advice Ever? | QI

This clip is from QI Series P, Episode 12, 'Procrastination' with Sandi Toksvig, Alan Davies, Aisling Bea, Nikki Bedi and Holly Walsh.

[ellicooper]

I’ve always thought that if you ignore crying babies they learn that no one cares and no one will come when they are needed. Babies cry for a reason, it’s their only means of communicating. They are wet, hungry, lonely, tired, frightened, bored, or just want a smiling face to say hi, I love you. I’ll never forget the baby crying due to a safety pin that had come undone.

[violetskies]

My mum always went for the if your baby is crying, pick it up and give it what it wants and some cuddles, if it's still crying pass it around the family until someone can stop it approach. It seems to work pretty well. One of my little brothers generally stopped crying if I held him and I always wanted to anyway because I adored him, still do, so I spent a lot of time cuddling him and he's 6 now and we have a very special bond. Recently I read an article saying picking up babies whenever they cry means they generally cry less and form stronger attachments with their caregivers. The one baby in my family who had the leave them cry approach used on her is a cousin who is a bit cold and has trouble making friends and being around others compared to the rest of us (we all still love her to bits though we just blame her mum for insisting on that weird nonsense).

[ratholin]

holly and alan were having so much fun there.

[EebstertheGreat]

Actually, the worst advice Sackett gave might not have even been feeding infants meat and coffee. It might have been putting them to sleep on their stomach. Tens of thousands of babies die suddenly in their sleep, and this is far more common when they sleep on their stomach.

[fredsmith-kingofthelunatic]

It's currently 5:17am and I've had insomnia for 20 years.
I think I'm going go buy a hair dryer tomorrow, might as well give it a try.

[DavidOakesMusic]

That Sackett thing sounds exactly like " you've got a headache because all those video games you play that *I* don't like *

[EebstertheGreat]

It looks like the pediatrician's name is Walter W. Sackett, not Walter J. Sackett. The W stands for Wallace.

He's not that well known, but you can find some stuff about him online and even reviews for his book. Prominent results are an obit (he died in Miami in 1985, at age 79), an Amazon listing for his book, and for some reason, a brief 1956 segment from Time magazine describing his revolutionary "speedup feeding" approach. It states that by 1956, most mothers were feeding their children cereal by 3 months, but that Sackett thought it should instead start almost immediately after birth. Of course, these days, exactly the opposite recommendation is usually given, as we are discovering the benefits of extended breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding rates are rising, as is infant health, and sure enough, we are seeing the beginnings of a sort of socialism take root in the U.S. If we keep this up, we'll all be milk communists before the century is out.

[kalinaphillips]

My older brother was a crying baby. After quite a few nights without nearly any sleep, our dad took my brother in the pram and left him overnight on the stage in the theatre he work at. He did that for 2 nights on the third my brother slept like a log in his cot.
Before anyone try to crucify our dad it was in 1955, and it was common to leave small children alone when they cried and you couldn't pacify them.

[neutronpixie]

My dad once told me to wash the car and he'd give me a tip.
"Ok. It's clean! Where's my tip?"
"Don't have kids."

[telectronix]

0:53 Sandi thinking "Now why did no one tell me this before?"

[rolandcooke]

Guess what's getting played during the Best Man's Speech twenty years from now....

[decodolly]

I always ignore crying babies. If the noise becomes really intolerable, I simply move to the next train carriage.

[rockysquirrel]

My Mom had a copy of this book in her bookcase, just so she could have a proof that men didn't know anything about childrearing.

[wdwerker]

As an adult he will need to convince his partner that he needs the hair dryer to cure insomnia !

[fariesz]

i'm sure giving your baby cuban coffee is a great way to put them off the idea of communism. or coffee. or anything.

[DavidSmith-yxkn]

At 15, Mother: It's time for bed do I have to bring the hair dryer in there? Son: Yes, please.

[deadweasel]

Oh my...this makes me wonder what my parents did to me to make me fall asleep.

[michaelcook]

I now have a use for my old blowdryer!

[just-tess]

this is the kind of person who makes me hope there is an afterlife, and that his is listening to the incessant crying of all the babies he traumatized

[jimcy]

I wanted to know where his children are now.