COMMON SENSE? THE WAY THINGS WERE

OKAY. We have a sixteen year old foster daughter and her 4 mo old baby--new ground for the DSS and for us.

"Mentor her, " they said. Teach her how to parent. So I tried. turns out, everything I did with my kids was wrong.

I put my kids on their stomachs to sleep. Why? The doctor warned me that putting them on their backs could lead to them spitting up and choking to death. But we don't put babies on their stomachs to sleep now. We put them on their backs. By the time the foster baby has kids, they'll want you to suspend them upside down from a harness.

Doctors warned parents against giving kids pacifiers when my children were little. I did it anyway--it made the nights longer. But they said not to do it. It creates dependency and malformed teeth.
The WIC nurse told our foster daughter to give her baby a pacifier until he was 9 mo old, then take it away. It seems to lessen the incidence of SIDS, she said. But after 9 mo, it deforms their mouths. That explains why my kids always talked out of both sides of their mouths when they were teenagers.

I gave my babies bottles of water once in a while. Especially in the heat--especially when I ran out of formula and couldn't fix a bottle until I went to the store ( first I had to find my shoes)
That was wrong. You should never ever ever give a baby water. Nowadays, wisdom says they could drown if given too much water. Who knew?

And when my babies had constipation--when all they could pass was hard little rabbit pellets, I swished a little Karo syrup in their formula. ( I used the rest to stick bows into their hair)
Another no-no. The sage advice now? Give them a little bit of water ( but they just told us---)

I kept my babies warm. Wrong, they say. If you are warm, your baby is warm. Don't cover him.

My mother fad me with a bottle. Doctors told my mother breast feeding wasn't good for babies--not enough nutrients.
My doctor assured me it was best to breast feed. But on a schedule.
My girls were told to feed their babies whenever the kids wanted to be fed. Now that's a good idea. They walk around with the equivalent of two milk cartons on their chests. The law of supply and demand. They are constantly re-filling.

I am living with a load of guilt today. It seems my children were lucky to survive with me as their mother. I am a horrible example to follow.

So why is DSS trusting me to mentor the sixteen year old mother?

They figure I've raised four kids of my own and maybe I have what it takes to raise some others.
Common sense, i think is what you call it.
Wait. I don't think we're supposed to count on that any more.