When I tell Simon about this later, he immediately asks, ‘Wasn’t it stressful?’ It probably would have been a few weeks earlier. I’d have felt overpowered by them, or too worried to enjoy it. There would have been shouting, which – since our balcony overlooks the courtyard – our neighbours would have heard.
But now that I’m the decider, at least a little bit, having three kids on the balcony with hot chocolate actually feels manageable. I even sit down and have a cup of coffee with them.
One morning I’m taking Leo to crèche by himself (Simon and I have divided the morning duties). As we’re riding down in the lift, I feel a sense of dread. I decide to tell Leo firmly that there will be no shouting in the courtyard. I present this new rule as if it’s always existed, and explain it firmly, while looking into his eyes. I ask him whether he understands, and then pause to give him a chance to reply. After a thoughtful moment, he says yes.
When we open the glass door and walk out into the courtyard, it’s strangely silent. There’s no shouting or whining. There’s just a very speedy little boy, tugging me along.
14
Let Him Live His Life
ONE DAY, A notice goes up at Bean’s school. It says that parents of students aged four to eleven can register their kids for a summer trip to the Hautes-Vosges, a rural region about five hours by car from Paris. The trip, sans parents, will last for eight days.
I can’t imagine sending Bean, who’s five, on an eight-day school holiday. She’s never spent more than a night alone at my mother’s house. My own first overnight class trip, to SeaWorld, was when I was in secondary school.
This trip is yet another reminder that while I can now use the subjunctive in French, and even get my kids to listen to me, I’ll never actually be French. Being French means looking at a notice like this and saying, as the mother of another five-year-old next to me does, ‘What a shame. We already have plans then.’ None of the French parents finds the idea of dispatching their four- and five-year-olds for a week of group showers and dormitory life to be at all alarming.
I soon discover that this school trip is just the beginning. I didn’t go to sleep-away camp until I was ten or eleven. But in France, there are hundreds of different sleep-away colonies de vacances – holiday camps – for kids as young as four. The younger kids typically go away for seven or eight days to the countryside, where they ride ponies, feed goats, learn songs and ‘discover nature’. For older kids, there are colonies that specialize in things like theatre, kayaking or astronomy.
It’s clear that giving kids a degree of independence, and stressing a kind of inner resilience and self-reliance, is a big part of French parenting. The French call this autonomie – autonomy. They generally aim to give children as much autonomy as they can handle. This includes physical autonomy, like the class trips. It also includes emotional separation, like letting them build their own self-esteem that doesn’t depend on praise from parents and other adults.
I admire a lot about French parenting. I’ve tried to absorb the French way of eating, of wielding authority, and of teaching my kids to entertain themselves. I’ve started speaking at length to babies, and letting my kids just ‘discover’ things for themselves, instead of pushing them to acquire skills. In moments of crisis and confusion, I often find myself asking: what would a French mother do?
But I have a harder time accepting some parts of the French emphasis on autonomy, like the school trips. Of course I don’t want my kids to be too dependent on me. But what’s the rush? Must the push for autonomy start so young? And aren’t the French overdoing it a bit? In some cases, the drive to make kids self-reliant seems to clash with my most basic instincts to protect my kids, and to make them feel good.
American parents tend to dole out independence quite differently. It’s only after I marry Simon, a European, that I realize I spent much of my childhood acquiring survival skills. You wouldn’t know it from looking at me, but I can shoot a bow and arrow, right a capsized canoe, safely build a fire on someone’s stomach, and – while treading water – convert a pair of blue jeans into an inflated life-jacket.
As a European, Simon didn’t have this survivalist upbringing. He never learned how to pitch a tent or steer a kayak. He’d be hard-pressed to know which end of a sleeping bag to crawl into. In the wild he’d survive about fifteen minutes – and that’s only if he had a book.
The irony is, while I have all these faux pioneering skills, I learned them in tightly scheduled summer camps, after my parents had signed legal disclaimers in case I drowned. And that was before there were webcams in classrooms and vegan, nut-free birthday cakes.
Despite their scouting badges and killer backhands, middle-class American (and British) kids are famously quite protected. ‘The current trend in parenting is to shield children from emotional or physical discomfort,’ the psychologist Wendy Mogel writes in The Blessing of a Skinned Knee. Instead of giving kids freedom, the well-heeled parents that Mogel counsels ‘try to armour [their kids] with a thick layer of skills by giving them lots of lessons and pressuring them to compete and excel’.
It’s not simply that Anglophones don’t emphasize autonomy. It’s that we’re not sure it’s a good thing. We tend to assume that parents should be physically present as much as possible, to protect kids from harm and to smooth out emotional turbulence for them. Simon and I have ‘joked’ since Bean was born that we’ll just move with her to wherever she attends university. Then I see an article saying that some American colleges now hold ‘parting ceremonies’ for parents of incoming freshmen, to signal that the parents must leave.
French parents don’t seem to have this fantasy of control. They want to protect their kids, but they aren’t obsessed with far-flung eventualities. When they’re travelling they don’t, as I do, email their spouse once a day to remind him to bolt the front door and to make sure that all the toilet lids are closed (in case a child falls in).
In France, the social pressure goes in the opposite direction. If a parent hovers too much or seems to micromanage his child’s experiences, someone else is apt to say some version of ‘Just let him live his own life’. My friend Sharon, the literary agent with two kids, explains: ‘Here there’s an argument about pushing a child to the max. Everyone will say, “You have to let children live their lives.”’
The French emphasis on autonomy comes all the way from Françoise Dolto. ‘The most important thing is that a child will be, in full security, autonomous as early as possible,’ Dolto says in The Major Stages of Childhood. ‘The trap of the relationship between parents and children is not recognizing the true needs of the child, of which freedom is one … The child has the need to feel “loved in what he is becoming”, sure of himself in a space, more freely day by day left to his own exploration, to his personal experience, and in his relations with those of his own age.’
Dolto is talking, in part, about leaving a child alone, safely, to figure things out for himself. She also means respecting him as a separate being who can cope with challenges. In Dolto’s view, by the time a child is six, he should be able to handle everything in the house – and in society – that concerns him.1
The French way can be tough for even the most integrated Anglophone expatriates to accept. My friend Andi, who’s lived in France for more than twenty years, says that when her older son was six, she found out that he had an upcoming class trip.
‘Everyone tells you how great it is, because in April there’ll be a classe verte’ – literally, a green class. ‘And you say to yourself, “Hmm, what’s that? Oh, a field trip. And it’s a week? It lasts a week?”’ At her son’s school, the trips are optional until first grade. After that, the whole class of twenty-five kids is expected to go on a week-long trip with the teacher each spring.
Andi says that by American standards, she isn’t a particularly clingy mother. However, she couldn’t get comfortable with the idea of the ‘green class’ – near some salt marshes on the western coast of France. Her son had
never even gone on a sleepover. Andi still corralled him into the shower each night. She couldn’t imagine him going to bed without her tucking him in. She liked his teacher, but she didn’t know the other adults who’d be supervising the trip. One was the teacher’s nephew. Another was a supervisor from the playground. The third, Andi recalls, was just ‘this other person [the teacher] knows’.
When Andi told her three sisters in America about the trip, she says, ‘they completely freaked out. They said, “You don’t have to do that!” One’s a lawyer, and she’s like, “Did you sign anything?”’ Andi says they were mainly worried about paedophiles.
At a meeting to exchange information about the trip, another Anglophone mum from the class asked the teacher how she would cope with a scenario in which an electrical wire accidentally fell in the water, and a child then walked into the water. Andi says the French parents snickered. She was glad she hadn’t asked the question, but it did reflect her own ‘hidden neuroses’.
Andi’s own main concern – which she didn’t dare raise at the meeting – was what would happen if her son became sad or upset during the trip. When this happens at home, ‘I try to help him identify his emotions. If he started crying and he didn’t know why, I would say, “Are you scared, frustrated, are you angry?” That was my thing. I was like, “OK, we’re going to go through this together.”’
The French emphasis on autonomy extends beyond school trips. My heart regularly jumps when I’m walking around my neighbourhood, because French parents will often let small kids race ahead of them on the pavement. They trust that the kids will stop at the corner and wait for them. Watching this is particularly terrifying when the kids are on scooters.
When I run into my friend Hélène on the street, and we stop to chat, she lets her three girls wander off a bit, towards the edge of the pavement. She trusts that they won’t suddenly dash into the street. Bean probably wouldn’t do that either. But just in case, I make her stand next to me and hold my hand while Hélène and I talk.
I live in a world of worst-case scenarios. Simon reminds me that I once wouldn’t let Bean sit in the stands to watch him play football, in case she got hit by the ball. The French are less panicked. By accident, I often run into the caregivers from the boys’ crèche leading a group of toddlers down the street, to buy the day’s baguettes. It’s not an official outing, it’s just taking a few kids for a walk. Bean went on a school trip to the zoo, which I only learn about by accident weeks later when I happen to take her to the same zoo. I am never asked to sign waivers. French parents don’t seem to worry that anything untoward might happen on these trips.
There are also many small moments in France when I’d expect to help my kids along, but they’re supposed to go it alone. When Bean has a recital for her dance class, I’m not even allowed backstage. I make sure she has a pair of white leggings, which is the only instruction that’s been communicated to parents. I never speak to the dance teacher. Her relationship is with Bean, not with me. When we get to the theatre, I hand her over to an assistant who shuttles her backstage.
For weeks, Bean has been telling me, ‘I don’t want to be a marionette.’ I wasn’t sure what that meant. It becomes clear as soon as the curtains open. Bean comes onstage in full costume and make-up, with a dozen other little girls, doing jolty arm and leg movements to a song called ‘Marionetta’. The girls are way out of synch with each other. They look like marionettes on the loose, who’ve had too much cognac.
But it’s also clear that Bean, without my knowledge, has memorized an entire ten-minute dance routine. When she comes out from backstage after the show, I gush about what a wonderful job she did. But she looks disappointed.
‘I forgot to not be a marionette,’ she says.
French kids aren’t just more independent in their extracurricular activities. They also have more autonomy in their dealings with each other. French parents seem slower to intervene in playground disputes, or to mediate arguments between siblings. They expect kids to work these situations out for themselves. French playgrounds are famously free-for-alls, with teachers mostly watching from the sidelines.
When I pick up Bean from preschool one afternoon, she’s just come from the playground and has a red gash on her cheek. It’s not deep, but it’s bleeding a bit. She won’t tell me what happened (but she isn’t in pain). Her teacher claims not to know what happened either. I’m practically in tears by the time I question the director of the school, but she, too, doesn’t know anything about it. They seem surprised that I’m making such a fuss.
My mother happens to be visiting, and she can’t believe this. She says that a similar injury in America would prompt official enquiries, calls home and lengthy explanations.
For French parents, such events are upsetting, but they aren’t Shakespearian tragedies. ‘In France we like it when kids brawl a bit,’ the journalist and author Audrey Goutard tell me. ‘It’s the part of us that’s a bit French and a bit Mediterranean. We like that our children know how to defend their territory, and quarrel a bit with other children … We’re not bothered by a certain violence between children.’
Bean’s reluctance to say how she got the gash probably reflects another aspect of the autonomy ethos. ‘Telling’ on another child – the French use the verb ‘rapporter’ – is viewed very badly. People tell me this is partly because of all the lethal informing on neighbours that went on during the Second World War. At the annual meeting of my apartment’s building association, many of whose members were alive during the war, I ask if anyone knows who’s been tipping over our buggy in the lobby.
‘We don’t rapporter,’ an older woman says. Everyone laughs.
Britons don’t like ‘grasses’ either. However, in France, even among kids, having the inner resolve to suffer some scrapes and keep your lips sealed is considered a life skill. Even within families, people are entitled to their secrets.
‘I can have secrets with my son that he can’t tell his mother,’ Marc, the French golfer, tells me. I see a French movie in which a well-known economist picks up his teenage daughter from a Paris police station, after she’s been brought in for shoplifting and possessing marijuana. On the drive home, she defends herself by saying that at least she didn’t rat on the friend who was with her.
This don’t-tell culture creates solidarity between kids. They learn to rely on each other and on themselves, rather than rushing to parents or school authorities for back-up. The trade-off is that there isn’t quite the same reverence for truth at any cost. Marc and his American wife Robynne tell me about a recent case in which their son Adrien, who’s now ten, saw another student setting off firecrackers at school. There was a big enquiry. Robynne urged Adrien to tell the school authorities what he’d seen. Marc advised him to consider the other boy’s popularity, and whether he could beat Adrien up.
‘You have to calculate the risks,’ Marc says. ‘If the advantage is not to do anything, he should do nothing. I want my son to analyse things.’
I see this emphasis on making kids learn their own lessons when I’m renovating our apartment. Like all the English-speaking parents I know, I’m eager for everything to be rigorously child-proof. I choose rubber flooring for the kids’ bathroom, lest they slip on wet tiles. I also insist that every appliance has a kid-proof lock, and that the oven door is the type that doesn’t get hot.
My contractor Régis, an earthy, roguish fellow from Burgundy, thinks I’m nuts. He says the way to ‘child-proof’ an oven is to let the kid touch it once, and realize that it’s hot. Régis refuses to install rubber floors in the bathroom, saying that they would look terrible. I concede, but only when he also mentions the apartment’s resale value. I don’t budge on the oven.
On the day that I read an English story to Bean’s class at maternelle, the teacher gives a brief English lesson beforehand. She points to a pen and ask the kids to say the pen’s colour in English. In response, a four-year-old boy says something about his shoes.
‘That has
nothing to do with the question,’ the teacher tells him.
I’m taken aback by this response. I would have expected the teacher to find something positive to say, no matter how far the answer is off the subject. I come from the American tradition of, as the sociologist Annette Lareau describes it, ‘treating each child’s thought as a special contribution’.2 By praising kids for even the most irrelevant comments, we try to give them confidence and make them feel good about themselves.
In France, that kind of parenting is very conspicuous. I see this when I take the kids to the trampolines in the Tuileries gardens, just next to the Louvre. Each child gets his own trampoline inside a gated area, and parents watch from the surrounding benches. But one mum has brought a chair inside the gates and parked it directly in front of her son’s trampoline. She shouts ‘Whoah!’ each time he jumps. I know, even before I approach to eavesdrop further, that she must be an Anglophone like me.
I know this because, although I manage to restrain myself at the trampolines, I feel compelled to say ‘Whee!’ each time one of my kids goes down a slide. This is shorthand for ‘I see you doing this! I approve! You’re wonderful!’ Likewise, I praise even their worst drawings and artwork. I feel that I must: their self-esteem is in my hands.
French parents also want their child to feel good about himself and ‘bien dans sa peau’ – comfortable in his own skin. But they have a different strategy for bringing this about. It’s in some ways the opposite of the American strategy. They don’t believe that praise is always good.
The French believe that kids feel confident when they’re able to do things for themselves, and do those things well. After children have learned to talk, adults don’t praise them just for saying something. They praise them for saying interesting things, and for speaking well. Raymonde Carroll, a French sociologist, says French parents train their children to verbally ‘defend themselves well’. She quotes an informant who says: ‘In France, if the child has something to say, others listen to him. But the child can’t take too much time and still retain his audience; if he delays, the family finishes his sentences for him. This gets him in the habit of formulating his ideas better before he speaks. Children learn to speak quickly, and to be interesting.’
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