by Pamela Druckerman
Hennepin County Library hardcover 263 pages
Published: 2012
Genre: non-fiction parenting
This book was recommended by my grandson's substitute ECFE parenting education teacher. . . and I'm glad I got it and read it! Although I don't need to deal with parenting issues much these days (my sons are in their thirties and are lovely men), there were ideas that I would have appreciated knowing about when I was raising children.
Druckerman was in Paris, France with her partner and writing a book on infidelity. She noticed the stark contrast between how young children behaved in public there than at home in the United States. She started asking questions and had her own child ("Bean") and wrote this book. Fascinating perspective! I have a LOT of post-it notes in the book (and a few fell out as I was toting it around) so I'll try to keep this brief. My upshot: I loved some of the ideas (food exposure, limits - the "cadre", teaching children to wait and be patient, parents not being 100% focused on their children at all times) but I am not a fan of some aspects of French parenting that seem a bit too impersonal and even selfish. Druckerman's writing is fantastic! She openly recognizes her own shortcomings and makes some really insightful observations. I won't comment too much on the excerpts . . . because there are a lot!
Page 45: "For Cohen, this pause - I'm tempted to call it "La Pause" - is crucial. He says that using it very early on makes a big difference in how babies sleep. 'The parents who were a little less responsive to late-night fussing always had kids who were good sleepers, while the jumpy folks had kids who would wake up repeatedly at night until it became unbearable,' he writes."
Page 46: "If parents do The Pause in a baby's first two months, the baby can learn to fall back to sleep on his own. So his parents won't need to resort to 'crying it out' later on."
Page 52: "Laurence adds that a crucial part of getting a baby to do his nights, at any age, is to truly believe that he's going to do it. 'If you don't believe it, it's not going to work,' she says. 'Me, I always think that the child is going to sleep better the next night. I always have hope, even if he wakes up three hours later. You have to believe.' . . . Perhaps we all get the sleepers we expect, and the simple fact of believing that babies have a rhythm helps us to find it."
Page 59: "Could it be that making children delay gratification - as middle-class French parents do - actually makes them calmer and more resilient? Whereas middle-class American kids, who are in general more used to getting what they want right away, go to pieces under stress?"
Page 60: "Having kids who can wait makes family life more pleasant."
Page 62: "This is exactly what I've been seeing French parents doing. They don't explicitly teach their kids distraction techniques. Mostly, they just seem to give them lots of opportunities to practice waiting."
Page 74: "In the French view, I'm doing Bean no service by catering to her whims. French experts and parents believe that hearing 'no' rescues children from the tyranny of their own desires."
(I just love that last phrase! Rescuing "children from the tyranny of their own desires" is a fantastic concept!)
Page 118: "Granted, I'm in the middle of Paris, surely one of the world's least friendly places. The sneer was probably invented here. Even people from the rest of France tell me that they find Parisians cold and distant."
Page 127-8: "I also like the neutral, pragmatic French formulation 'paying attention' over the value-laden American one, 'being good' (and it's guilt-ridden, demoralizing opposites: 'cheating' and 'being bad'). If you've merely stopped paying attention and had some cake, it seems easier to forgive yourself and to eat mindfully again at the next meal."
(Losing weight . . . body image . . . post-birth mom body . . . this is another whole area of discussion! But I do love the idea of "paying attention" to what I eat and do.)
Page 129: "What's different about French moms is that they get back their pre-baby identities, too. For starters, they seem more physically separate from their children. I've never seen a French mother climb a jungle gym, go down a slide with her child, or sit on a seesaw - all regular sights back in the United States and among American visiting France."
Page 139: "The practice of narrated play is so common that Cohen included a section in his parenting book called Stimulation, which essentially tells mothers to cut it out. 'Periods of playing and laughing should alternate naturally with periods of peace and quiet,' Cohen writes. 'You don't have to talk, sing, or entertain constantly.'"
Page 157: "Saying bonjour signals to the child, and to everyone else, that she's capable of behaving well. It sets the tone for the whole interaction between adults and children."
(The idea of children greeting adults is not that revolutionary . . . yet reading this section reminded me of how off-putting and rude it feels when children behave as though they are the center of the universe and acknowledging me is not worth their bother.)
Page 199: "And then there are snack foods. When I'm with friends and their kids in America, little bags of pretzels and Cheerios just seem to appear all the time in between meals. Dominique, a French mother who lives in New York, says at first she was shocked to learn that her daughter's preschool feeds the kids every hour all day long. She was also surprised to see parents giving their kids snacks all throughout the day at the playground."
Page 221: "Saying no isn't exactly a cutting-edge parenting technique. What's new is Fredrique's coaching me to drop my ambivalence and be certain about my own authority. What she tells me springs from her own upbringing and deepest beliefs. It comes out sounding like common sense."
(By now, the author has twin boys in addition to Bean. She writes honestly about her struggles as well as her observations and research on cultural differences in child rearing.)
Page 228: "Marc adds, 'We have a saying in French: it's easier to loosen the screw than to tighten the screw, meaning that you have to be very tough. If you're too tough, you loosen. But if you are too lenient . . . afterward to tighten, forget about it.'"
(That made me think of the teacher adage "Don't smile until Christmas." It's a similar principle.)
I really enjoyed reading this book. But it also made me wish for a similar perspective on other cultures. What makes child rearing in other parts of the world unique? There are some things about American culture that really concern me for the future. This book was instructive and insightful.
