Spirit of OMFG Please Stop Giving Me Outdated Advice

I'm sure everyone either has, had, or knows of a grandparent like my grandmother.

My grandmom is about a million years old. She's tough as nails, having survived multiple wars, economic depressions, and several occasions where she thought it'd be fine to just take the car for a drive, despite the fact that she doesn't have a license and can barely reach the pedals. She distrusts doctors and most non-European races (especially Puerto-Ricans, or "the PRs," as she loves to say. And then she does high kicks and snaps her fingers and plots to overthrow The Sharks). She gets confused when I tell her I'll call her from the grocery store (until she assumes they must have a payphone) and she's pretty sure my iPad was developed by the Russians. Or Aliens.

In other words, she's from another era.

Cranky and evil-spirited as she can be, she loves my boys. She truly does. But with this love comes a form of parenting that leaves me in wonder and amazement that my mother survived to create the next generation. Of course, this started when the boys were still in utero, and she berated me severely for sitting with crossed legs.

Because everyone knows that if you cross your legs you'll kill your unborn children.

Of course, I tried to explain to her that we have this thing now called science, which has pretty much confirmed that I can cross my legs and breathe easy that my fetuses are doing the same. But then she started going off on how all doctors are quacks and how most don't even have medical degrees (I know - don't get me started). So in the end, I uncrossed my legs, and made a mental note not to wear a skirt to her house again.

She also thinks that every time the kids move, they have gas. When my husband came home and Simon turned his head in the direction of the front door, Gramdmom declared that Simon had gas and I should try burping him.
The thing is - every time I burp the kids in front of her, she's convinced that I'm beating them to death.
Listen - I took a course in Burping 101 from the NICU nurses, and if you think I hit them hard, you should SEE the beating they administered to my 3-pound children in the name of gas liberation. It was like a Rhianna and Chris Brown reunion

What? Too soon?

But of course, try telling that to Grandmom.

So I patted them gently to release the gas they didn't have. And Grandmom heaved a sigh of relief that I wasn't killing her great-grandchildren.

Our most recent episode of Guess Which Century I Was Born In played out two nights ago when I told Grandmom that Isaac was teething. Explaining that I put something on his gums to help with the pain, she suddenly burst out, "Oh they still have Spirits of Nitre?"

...*awkward pause*...


And I'm like OMFG, here we go again.

So I say, "No, Grandmom, it's called Baby Orajel."
And she goes on (as if I hadn't even said anything), "All you do is turn the bottle over so you get a little on your finger, and then you rub their gums."
So I repeat myself (louder, because she's more than a tad hard of hearing), "NO, GRANDMOM, IT'S CALLED BABY ORAJEL. IT COMES IN THESE PRE-MEASURED COTTON SWABS. SEE?"

And I hold up the packet, which she squints at, frowns, and then mutters, "well, just make sure it's safe for the babies. It doesn't look safe."

And while I'm sure Spirits of Nitre was probably made out of formaldehyde and asbestos and mercury, and was just as likely to make you blind, deaf, and dumb as numb your gums, there's just no point in explaining the modern processes of the FDA to her. So I simply said "OKAY" and we moved on to more benign subjects, like how the PRs are ruining the country.

*sigh*

Of course, back in the day, giving your children substances that were more likely to harm them than help them was considered giving them character. I suppose it was a form of natural selection, where only kids who could survive food poisoning, exposure to toxic substances, and being hit with a belt for speaking at the dinner table survived.

And while I've been told that, for a new parent, I'm very relaxed with my kids (which seems to be mostly a good thing, provided they don't have any unforeseen allergies or immune issues), even I have some trepidation giving them any medications that have the words "spirit" or "tincture" or "essence" in the name.

But again, this is probably due to the fact that I was born in 1982 instead of 1882.

So while I love my Grandmom, let's just say that she won't be babysitting for me anytime soon. Natural Selection aside, I'm just not prepared to give my kids that kind of character.