The French want their kids to be successful, too. (They have their own version of the Ivy League, called the grandes écoles.) But they probably wouldn’t use the marathon analogy. They don’t tend to think there’s any point in rushing little kids through developmental milestones, or teaching them skills like reading and math before they are most ready for them. French preschoolers learn some letters, but they don’t actually learn to read until the equivalent of first grade—about age six. (Teenagers in Finland have some of the highest average reading and math scores in the Western world, and kids there don’t learn to read until they’re seven.)
The latest American research validates this slower approach. It turns out that it’s more important to teach preschoolers skills like concentration, getting along with others, and self-control (more about self-control in chapter 6). These abilities—more than math worksheets or preliteracy training—create a strong basis for later academic success. And as the French can affirm, avoiding the baby marathon is a lot more pleasant for both parents and kids.
44. Don’t Teach Your Toddler How to Read
Yes, it’s technically possible to teach three-year-olds how to recognize words. But what’s the rush? You don’t want to take time away from teaching children the things they most need to learn at that age, like how to be organized, articulate, and empathetic. French preschools teach kids how to have conversations, finish projects, and tackle problems. In my daughter’s Parisian kindergarten class one day, the assignment was for twenty-five illiterate five-year-olds to give talks on “justice” or “courage.” When these kids are six, they’ll learn to read in much less time than it would take to teach them at three.
45. Don’t Rush the Developmental Stages
The French have a saying: “You can’t go faster than the music.” They believe that a child will roll over, rise up, get potty-trained, and start to talk when he’s good and ready. Parents should lovingly encourage and support him—not turn his childhood into boot camp. Anyway, being a little kid shouldn’t be hard work. There’s enough time for that later.
46. Teach the Four Magic Words
We Americans have “please” and “thank you.” The French have those plus two more: “hello” and “good-bye.” They’re especially zealous about making a child say bonjour as soon as he walks into someone’s house. He doesn’t get to slouch in under the cover of his parents’ greeting.
French parents view bonjour as a critical lesson in empathy. Saying it forces a child out of his selfish bubble and makes him realize that other people have needs and feelings, too—such as the simple need to be acknowledged. Bonjour also sets the tone for him to observe other rules of civility. If he says bonjour, he’s less likely to draw on the walls afterward. He’s been counted as a person; a little person, but a person nonetheless.
47. Let Kids “Awaken” and “Discover”
Centuries of great French art, cooking, and design have left their mark on French parenting. Today’s French parents teach kids about sensory pleasures like tasting new foods, “discovering” their bodies through movement (Americans might call this exercise), or “awakening” to new sensations like splashing in a pool (this comes long before French children actually learn to swim). Awakening often doesn’t require much hard work from parents. It can come from rolling around on a picnic blanket and studying the grass. It probably helps forge some neural pathways. But the real point is to teach children how to enjoy just being in the world.
48. Encourage Insouciance
A few music classes are fine. But try to give little kids lots of free time just to play. “When the child plays, he constructs himself,” one of my daughter’s Parisian day-care teachers explained. (By design, the day care gives kids large quantities of unstructured time.) The latest science seems to side with the French. A roundup of neuroscience research couldn’t say enough about the benefits of exploratory play: it teaches kids persistence, relationship skills, and creative problem solving; it improves their attention spans and their confidence; and it gives them a chance to master activities. But playing isn’t just developmentally important; it’s also fun.
49. Let Your Child Socialize with Other Kids
You know how you crave adult company after being alone with a three-year-old all day? Well, just imagine how that three-year-old feels—in reverse. French mothers want to spend time with their offspring. But they also think it’s crucial that kids socialize with people who are equally enchanted by fire engines and princess paraphernalia. They want their children to learn how to make friends, to wait their turns, and to get along in a group. In general, middle- and upper-middle-class working parents would rather put their children in high-quality day care than leave them at home alone with a nanny.
50. Back Off at the Playground
French parents believe that once a child can walk on his own and safely climb up the slide, their job is to watch from the sidelines as he plays. At French playgrounds, you don’t see parents narrating a child’s every move, going down the slide behind their kids, or automatically leaping to their child’s defense in every dispute. They give him a chance to work out conflicts on his own.
Resist the urge to cross wobbly wooden bridges or to provide constant commentary and encouragement. Just sit on a bench, watch, and recharge. That way you’ll be a lot more joyful and patient when he does need you.
51. Do Extracurriculars for Pleasure
You’re not building a bionic child. Do not give him violin lessons or read him the twelfth book of the day merely to help him gain hypothetical IQ points. Choose activities that your child enjoys, then do them at a natural pace. Read the child-development studies if you want, but don’t let them plan your child’s day.
52. It’s Not Just About Outcomes
Yes, it’s a competitive world. Of course you want to position your offspring to beat out that trilingual rug rat next door. But childhood is not merely preparation for the future. The quality of the nearly two decades you’re spending together matters, too. Learn to identify and enjoy what the French call moments privilégiés, little pockets of joy or calm when you simply appreciate being together.
Chapter 6
wait a minute
One reason why French family life often feels calm is that parents emphasize patience. They don’t treat waiting and related skills—like coping with frustration and delaying gratification—as innate qualities that kids are born with (or without). They believe these can be learned. French parents aim to teach their kids patience, the same way they will later teach them how to ride a bicycle.
Also, they find the alternative intolerable. French parents can imagine a world in which they could never finish a phone call or a cup of coffee, and where kids collapse each time they’re denied a candy bar. They’ve seen children who regularly go from calm to hysterical in seconds and make everyone miserable in their wakes. They don’t want to live in that world or think it’s inevitable to do so. And they don’t think that living there would make children happy either.
53. Give Kids Lots of Chances to Practice Waiting
The secret to patience isn’t expecting a child to be a stoic who freezes and silently waits. Scientists have found that kids become good at waiting once they learn how to distract themselves—by inventing a little song or burping at themselves in the mirror, for instance. This makes the waiting bearable.
French parents have discovered this, too. They know that they don’t even have to teach a child how to distract himself. If they simply say “wait” a lot (attend in French) and make a child practice waiting on a daily basis, she’ll figure out how to distract herself. But if they drop everything the instant she complains that she’s bored, or if they get off the phone when she interrupts, the child isn’t going to get good at waiting. She’s going to get good at whining.
54. Slow Down Your Response Times
Embrace a French pace of life. When you’re busy scrambling eggs and your daughter as
ks you to inspect her tower of toilet paper rolls, explain nicely that you’ll be there in a few minutes. At dinner, don’t leap up to grab a napkin the moment she demands it (or, better yet, put the napkins on a low shelf so she can get one herself). When you’re busy, politely point out to your child what you’re doing, and ask her to take it in.
This doesn’t just make life calmer. It’s also what the French call an obligatory passage for the child, when she learns that she’s not the center of the universe. Parents believe that a child who doesn’t realize this—and who feels she’s entitled to anything she wants—won’t see any reason to grow up.
The French have reasonable expectations. They wouldn’t ask a young child to sit through Shakespeare (or Molière). They just want her to be able to wait a few seconds, or a few minutes. Slowing things down even this little bit will make her better at coping with boredom, and take the panicky edge off things. Patience is a muscle. The more a child plays on her own, the better she gets at it.
55. Treat Kids as if They Can Control Themselves
Play to the top of a child’s intelligence. Expect her not to grab things and to be able to put all her LEGOS back in their box. Get down on the floor and gently tell a toddler who’s pulling books off the shelf that she should stop, and show her how to put them back. When she tosses grapes on the floor, show her how to keep them on her plate. Do this patiently and face-to-face. A child needs to learn the limits, but she also needs love. “It takes both love and frustration for the child to construct himself,” one expert explains. If you give the child just love without limits, she’ll soon become a little tyrant (the French call this an enfant roi—a child king).
56. Don’t Let Your Child Interrupt You
When a child interrupts (assuming she’s not hemorrhaging), French parents believe that you should calmly say some version of “I’m in the middle of speaking to someone. Please wait and I’ll be with you in a moment.” Then make good on that promise. Continue your conversation, but when you’ve finished, turn back to the child and listen to her. Have her wait her turn to speak at the dinner table, too, and teach her at least to say “excuse me” if it’s urgent.
Remember that you’re not just trying to enjoy the simple pleasure of completing a thought. You’re also teaching your child to respect others and to be aware of what’s happening around her. One Frenchwoman says that when her son interrupts, she has him look at the person she’s speaking to so that he fully registers what’s going on. “It’s a way of living together,” she explains. All this practice won’t prevent your child from ever interrupting again. But she’ll gradually get more in touch with the rhythm of the room.
57. Don’t Interrupt Your Child
Everyone in the house has a right to be absorbed in something without being interrupted. When a child is happily caught up in an activity, parents should try not to come charging over with a question or a change of plans. When people aren’t bursting in on one another, the whole pace of family life slows down a notch.
58. Observe the French Food Rules
French food rituals offer a daily exercise in teaching children how to delay gratification. Kids eat most meals in courses, rather than all at once. They taste foods, even ones they don’t like—a form of coping with frustration. They wait to eat at mealtimes. If they get some chocolate in the morning, they typically don’t eat it until the afternoon goûter. With practice, all of this gets much easier; in fact, it becomes natural and not arduous at all.
59. Let Them Eat Cake
Baking is a regular weekend activity for many French families, starting practically from the time kids can sit alone in a chair. The measuring and sequencing are excellent lessons in patience. So is the fact that once the cake is made, families usually wait until the goûter to eat it. And everybody—parents included—aims to eat reasonable portions (they’re trying to model restraint for their kids).
60. View Coping with Frustration as a Crucial Life Skill
French parents don’t worry that they’ll damage a child by frustrating her. Au contraire, they think a child can’t be happy if she needs to have things instantly, and if she’s constantly subject to her own whims. They believe that kids get pride and pleasure from being able to choose how they respond to things.
Teaching kids to handle frustration also makes them more resilient later on. Young children who are good at delaying gratification are more likely to grow into teenagers who can handle setbacks, and who are good at concentrating and reasoning. Consider it a French paradox: trying to make kids happy all the time will make them less happy later on.
61. Cope Calmly with Tantrums
French parents are just as flummoxed and distressed by tantrums as the rest of us. They don’t have a magic recipe to make the crying stop. What they generally agree on is: you shouldn’t concede to an unreasonable demand. (“Above all, don’t give in,” one father tells me.) Tantrums don’t change the rules.
This doesn’t mean that you should be cold. French parents say that kids are understandably angry when they can’t have or do something. The parents try to show sympathy (“Who wouldn’t want to have a cookie just before lunch?”) and to let kids express their discontent. Some parents say they ask the child what she thinks a good solution is, given the constraints. If the child can calm down enough to talk, she’ll often have some reasonable ideas—like having the same cookie as an afternoon snack.
Sometimes, giving an upset child more autonomy can change the mood and calm her down. Let her help you prepare dinner or serve herself. Be in touch with her rhythms. Don’t expect an overtired child to go grocery shopping or out to dinner.
When the tantrum happens at home and goes on for too long, parents typically send the child to her room and tell her to come out when she’s calm again. “If it’s too loud I say, ‘Go yell in your room.’ But I understand that it makes her very angry,” the mother of a five-year-old explains. Typically, “she goes into her room and yells, then she comes back out and does what I asked,” this mom claims. If a child manages to come out calmly, parents respond positively and then everyone moves on.
In short, be calm and sympathetic without giving in.
62. Be Patient About Teaching Patience
Your child won’t become an expert delayer in a day. Learning to wait is part of what the French call her éducation—an ongoing process of teaching her skills and values, which has nothing do with school. Be consistent. Whenever you start to waver, consider the alternative.
Chapter 7
free to be tu and me
When a mother hovers over her child too much in France, someone is apt to say: “Just let him live his life!” French parents do a lot for their kids, but they don’t try to clear away all obstacles, physical and emotional. Instead, they strive to treat children as independent beings who can, more and more as they get older, cope with challenges on their own.
This autonomy develops at a reasonable pace. Little French kids don’t drive cars or operate heavy machinery. Parents supervise closely and judge when the child is ready to take the next step. But they believe that autonomy is crucial for children. When you treat kids as capable and trustworthy, they respond by taking on more responsibility and behaving better. And giving kids a bit of space can actually bring you closer.
63. Give Kids Meaningful Chores
Don’t underestimate what children can do, with some guidance. It’s quite normal for French three- and four-year-olds to help load the dishwasher after dinner, for instance. (Moms I know report no more than a few broken plates.) A friend of mine’s six-year-old says her favorite activity is taking out the garbage all by herself. She also proudly describes the time when her mom stood outside a small shop and let her go inside alone to buy some lemons.
When done on a regular basis, these small acts of autonomy are very meaningful. Kids who play an active role in the household become more self-reliant and learn that adults are not just there to s
erve them. Weirdly, children also find these activities fun. Obviously, the thrill won’t last forever. But the idea that their contribution to the family matters probably will.
64. Build a Cadre
The cadre (meaning “frame” or “framework”) is the mental image that French parents have about how best to raise kids. They strive to be very strict about a few key things—that’s the frame. But inside the frame, they aim to give kids as much freedom as they can handle.
Parents decide which things they will be strict about. Parisians I’ve met often choose respect for others, how much screen time kids are allowed, and anything dealing with food. French children categorically aren’t allowed to hit their parents.
You can apply the cadre’s cocktail of strictness and freedom to lots of different situations. Some that I’ve heard from French parents are:
•At bedtime you have to stay in your room, but inside your room you can do whatever you want.
•You can watch only two hours of television this weekend, but you choose when to use these two hours and you choose the DVD or the show you want to watch.
Bringing Up Bébé Page 31
