four-course meal, or play quietly when I’m on the phone. I’m not even sure I want her to do those things. Will it crush her spirit? Am I stifling her self-expression, and her possibility of starting the next Facebook? With all these anxieties, I often capitulate.
I’m not the only one. At Bean’s fourth birthday party, one of her English-speaking friends walks in carrying a wrapped present for Bean, and another one for himself. His mother says he got upset at the shop because he wasn’t getting a present too. My friend Nancy tells me about a new parenting philosophy in which you never let your child hear the word no, so that he can’t say it back to you.
In France, there’s no such ambivalence about
non
. ‘You must teach your child frustration’ is a French parenting maxim. In my favourite series of French children’s books,
The Perfect Princess
, the heroine, Zoé, is pictured pulling her mother towards a crêpe stand. The text explains, ‘While walking past the
crêperie
, Zoé made a scene. She wanted a
crêpe
with blackberry jam. Her mother refused, because it was just after lunch.’
On the next page, Zoé is in a bakery, dressed as the Perfect Princess of the title. This time she’s covering her eyes so she won’t see the piles of fresh
brioche
. She’s being
sage
. ‘As [Zoé] knows, to avoid being tempted, she turns her head away,’ the text says.
It’s worth noting that in the first scene, where Zoé isn’t getting what she wants, she’s crying. But in the second one, where she’s distracting herself, she’s smiling. The message is that children will always have the impulse to give in to their vices . But they’re happier when they’re
sage
, and in command of themselves.
In the book
A Happy Child
, French psychologist Didier Pleux argues that the best way to make a child happy is to frustrate him. ‘That doesn’t mean that you prevent him from playing, or that you avoid hugging him,’ Pleux says. ‘One must of course respect his tastes, his rhythms and his individuality. It’s simply that the child must learn, from a very young age, that he’s not alone in the world, and that there’s a time for everything.’
I’m struck by how different the French expectations are when – on that same seaside holiday when I witnessed all the French kids happily eating in restaurants – I take Bean into a shop filled with perfectly aligned stacks of striped ‘mariner’ T-shirts in bright colours. Bean immediately begins pulling them down. She barely pauses when I scold her.
To me, Bean’s bad behaviour seems predictable for a toddler. So I’m surprised when the saleswoman says, without malice, ‘I’ve never seen a child do that before.’ I apologize and head for the door.
Walter Mischel says that capitulating to kids starts a dangerous cycle: ‘If kids have the experience that, when they’re told to wait, if they scream Mummy will come and the wait will be over, they will very quickly learn not to wait. Non-waiting and screaming and carrying on and whining are being rewarded.’
French parents delight in the fact that each child has his own temperament. But they take for granted that any healthy child is capable of not whining, not collapsing after he’s told no, and generally not nagging or grabbing things.
French parents are more inclined to view a child’s somewhat random demands as
caprices
– impulsive fancies or whims. They have no problem saying no to these. ‘I think [French women] understand earlier than American women that kids can have demands and those demands are unrealistic,’ a paediatrician who treats French and Anglophone children tells me.
A French psychologist writes 8 that when a child has a
caprice
– for instance, his mother is in a shop with him and he suddenly demands a toy – the mother should remain extremely calm, and gently explain that buying the toy isn’t in the day’s plan. Then she should try to ‘bypass’ the
caprice
by redirecting
I’m not the only one. At Bean’s fourth birthday party, one of her English-speaking friends walks in carrying a wrapped present for Bean, and another one for himself. His mother says he got upset at the shop because he wasn’t getting a present too. My friend Nancy tells me about a new parenting philosophy in which you never let your child hear the word no, so that he can’t say it back to you.
In France, there’s no such ambivalence about
non
. ‘You must teach your child frustration’ is a French parenting maxim. In my favourite series of French children’s books,
The Perfect Princess
, the heroine, Zoé, is pictured pulling her mother towards a crêpe stand. The text explains, ‘While walking past the
crêperie
, Zoé made a scene. She wanted a
crêpe
with blackberry jam. Her mother refused, because it was just after lunch.’
On the next page, Zoé is in a bakery, dressed as the Perfect Princess of the title. This time she’s covering her eyes so she won’t see the piles of fresh
brioche
. She’s being
sage
. ‘As [Zoé] knows, to avoid being tempted, she turns her head away,’ the text says.
It’s worth noting that in the first scene, where Zoé isn’t getting what she wants, she’s crying. But in the second one, where she’s distracting herself, she’s smiling. The message is that children will always have the impulse to give in to their vices . But they’re happier when they’re
sage
, and in command of themselves.
In the book
A Happy Child
, French psychologist Didier Pleux argues that the best way to make a child happy is to frustrate him. ‘That doesn’t mean that you prevent him from playing, or that you avoid hugging him,’ Pleux says. ‘One must of course respect his tastes, his rhythms and his individuality. It’s simply that the child must learn, from a very young age, that he’s not alone in the world, and that there’s a time for everything.’
I’m struck by how different the French expectations are when – on that same seaside holiday when I witnessed all the French kids happily eating in restaurants – I take Bean into a shop filled with perfectly aligned stacks of striped ‘mariner’ T-shirts in bright colours. Bean immediately begins pulling them down. She barely pauses when I scold her.
To me, Bean’s bad behaviour seems predictable for a toddler. So I’m surprised when the saleswoman says, without malice, ‘I’ve never seen a child do that before.’ I apologize and head for the door.
Walter Mischel says that capitulating to kids starts a dangerous cycle: ‘If kids have the experience that, when they’re told to wait, if they scream Mummy will come and the wait will be over, they will very quickly learn not to wait. Non-waiting and screaming and carrying on and whining are being rewarded.’
French parents delight in the fact that each child has his own temperament. But they take for granted that any healthy child is capable of not whining, not collapsing after he’s told no, and generally not nagging or grabbing things.
French parents are more inclined to view a child’s somewhat random demands as
caprices
– impulsive fancies or whims. They have no problem saying no to these. ‘I think [French women] understand earlier than American women that kids can have demands and those demands are unrealistic,’ a paediatrician who treats French and Anglophone children tells me.
A French psychologist writes 8 that when a child has a
caprice
– for instance, his mother is in a shop with him and he suddenly demands a toy – the mother should remain extremely calm, and gently explain that buying the toy isn’t in the day’s plan. Then she should try to ‘bypass’ the
caprice
by redirecting
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