Honey, chamomile and yiayia: handling well-meant advice in Greece

Greece loves babies. Strangers will bless yours in the street, the baker will hand over a breadstick, and the whole building will have an opinion about socks. It is one of the best things about raising a child here.

It also means advice arrives constantly, mostly from people who raised healthy children of their own. Three pieces come up again and again. On all three, Greece's own Ministry of Health disagrees with yiayia.

"A little honey on the pacifier"

It calms the baby, they say. It may. It is also the one food on this list with a specific danger behind it.

The Ministry's guidance lists honey among the foods to avoid for the whole first year, because it can carry spores of the bacterium that causes botulism. This is not a modern fashion, and it applies just as much to the thyme honey from the family's own hives.

"Chamomile for the tummy"

Chamomile tea in a bottle is the Greek answer to wind, colic, a cold, and teething. It is offered with real love.

The Ministry's list of things to avoid in the first year includes "tea and other herbal infusions". The AAP says the same from the other direction: under 6 months, breast milk or formula only; from 6 to 12 months, breast milk or formula and a little water (about 120 to 240 ml a day). Nothing else.

A bottle of chamomile also fills a small stomach with something that is not milk.

"It has no taste, add a little salt"

Or sugar in the fruit cream. Or a rusk dipped in sweet tea.

The guidance is plain: avoid added salt and added sugar through the first year. It gives two reasons: the load they put on a baby's metabolism, and the tastes being set now. Babies are born liking sweet and salty. They learn to like vegetables by meeting them, repeatedly, as they are. The same guidance says a new taste may need 8 to 10 tries.

It also warns about shop products sold as baby food that contain sugar or salt: yogurt desserts, creams, biscuits. Read the label.

How to say no and keep the peace

Most overstepping comes from love and from the fear of mattering less. Treat it that way and it usually goes well.

• Decide what is truly non-negotiable. Honey, anything in the bottle that is not milk or water, sleep position, the car seat. Hold those. Let the rest go.
• Say it early and directly. "We'd love your help with lunch. No salt and no honey until the baby is one, please." This lands better than a correction in the moment.
• Let the right person say it. If it is your partner's mother, your partner is the best messenger.
• Borrow authority. "The pediatrician said so" ends most discussions in Greece. It also happens to be true: this is the Greek state's own guidance, not a foreign idea.
• Give them a job. The grandmother who cannot give honey can be the one who cooks the first fish soup.

Different houses can have different rules about small things. Children manage that well. On the few things that are about safety, there is one rule everywhere.