Reply to Immigrant/similar families: how did you handle entrenched folk beliefs?

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[quote=Anonymous]For people from immigrant families or families with entrenched folk beliefs:

How did you handle the sincere insistence from grandparents that you must do X for the baby’s sake?

I’m talking parents-grew-up-in-rural-mountains kind of entrenched beliefs, where they sincerely think not doing certain things is harmful for babies

Our baby’s grandma is insisting we do a red string on his forehead to cure hiccups, and when I said “well the hiccups are because he ate too much and his tummy is pressing against his diaphragm” she later told our cousin, in a bummed out but also exasperated tone “these kids don’t believe in these things any more”

We have also been gifted a red and gold bracelet to tie around our baby’s ankle or wrist to protect against evil eye. Grandma asked us “so are you going to put it on?” And I said “we’ll see”

(Wife and I had already said before the pregnancy we wouldn’t do that)

The thing is, it’s not just that we “don’t believe in these things” but from their perspective, when you grow up in rural mountains with a subsistence farmer family while your own children grow up in a major metro in the U.S. the culture is entirely different.

Yes we don’t believe in the red string for hiccups, but also [i]this was the first time in our lives we had ever heard such a thing[/i]

To them they assume we know these things because to them it was their entire world, it’s the only thing they were exposed to

We don’t want to be rude, but we’re also not going to do these folk beliefs. (There’s also the issue of them seeing us do something they’re not familiar with, feeling weird about, then rationalizing a reason to object to it)

How have other people handled this? I would really appreciate any experience or advice from people who know how entrenched these beliefs are and that they are shared from a place of sincerity to help the baby[/quote]

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