Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman

and caregivers can’t believe that we’re so laissez-faire about this crucial ability. For them, having kids who need instant gratification would make life unbearable. When I mention the topic of this book at a dinner party in Paris, my host—a French journalist—launches into a story about the year he lived in Southern California. He and his wife, a judge, had befriended an American couple and decided to spend a weekend away with them in Santa Barbara. It was the first time they’d met each other’s kids, who ranged in age from about seven to fifteen.
    From my hosts’ perspective, the weekend quickly became maddening. Years later, they still remember how the American kids frequently interrupted the adults midsentence. And there were no fixed mealtimes; the American kids just went to the refrigerator and took food whenever they wanted.
    To the French couple, it seemed like the American kids were in charge. “What struck us, and bothered us, was that the parents never said ‘no,’” the journalist said. “They did
n’importe quoi
,” his wife added. This was apparently contagious. “The worst part is, our kids started doing
n’importe quoi,
too,” she says.
    After a while, I realize that most French descriptions of American kids include this phrase “
n’importe quoi
,” meaning “whatever” or “anything they like.” It suggests that the American kids don’t have firm boundaries, that their parents lack authority, and that anything goes. It’s the antithesis of the French ideal of the
cadre
, or frame, that French parents talk about.
Cadre
means that kids have very firm limits—that’s the frame—and that the parents strictly enforce t [tlyabohose limits. But within those limits, the kids have a lot of freedom.
    American parents impose limits, too, of course. But often they’re different from the French ones. In fact, French people often find these American limits shocking. Laurence, the nanny from Normandy, tells me she won’t work for American families anymore, and that several of her nanny friends won’t either. She says she quit her last job with Americans after just a few months, mostly over the issue of limits.
    “It was difficult because it was
n’importe quoi;
the child does what he wants, when he wants,” Laurence says.
    Laurence is tall with short hair and a gentle, no-nonsense manner. She’s reluctant to offend me. But she says that compared with the French families she’s worked for, in the American homes there was much more crying and whining. (This is the first time that I hear the onomatopoeic French verb
chouiner—
to whine.)
    The last American family she worked for had three kids, ages eight, five, and eighteen months. For the five-year-old girl, whining “was her national sport. She whined all the time, with tears that could fall at a moment’s notice.” Laurence believed that it was best to ignore the girl, so as not to reinforce the whining. But the girl’s mother—who was often home, in another room—usually rushed in and capitulated to whatever the girl was asking for.
    Laurence says the eight-year-old son was worse. “He always wanted a little bit more, and a little bit more.” She says that when his escalating demands weren’t met, he became hysterical.
    Laurence’s conclusion is that, in such a situation, “the child is less happy. He’s a little bit lost. . . . In the families where there is more structure, not a rigid family but a bit more
cadre
, everything goes much more smoothly.”
    Laurence’s breaking point came when the mother of the American family insisted that Laurence put the two older kids on a diet. Laurence refused, and said she would simply feed them balanced meals. Then she discovered that after she put the kids to bed and left, at about eight thirty P.M. , the mother would feed them cookies and cake.
    “They were stout,” Laurence says of the three children.
    “Stout?” I ask.
    “I say ‘stout’ so I don’t say