About the Book
When French Children Don’t Throw Food was published it caused a storm, fuelling newspaper headlines and discussion in social media for months. A smart and witty account of Pamela Druckerman’s own experience of life as an expat mother of small children living in Paris, it struck a chord with many parents by asking how the French manage to raise such well-behaved children compared to ours.
Pamela Druckerman has now distilled her insights into this practical handbook, containing one hundred short and straightforward tips for making parenting that little bit easier and more pleasurable for the rest of us.
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
Pregnancy: A Croissant in the Oven
1. Pregnancy is not a research project
2. Calm is better for Bébé
3. French mothers eat sushi (sometimes)
4. The baby doesn’t need brioche
5. Eat for one (and a bit)
6. Don’t borrow your husband’s shirts
7. Don’t lose your mojo
8. Epidurals aren’t evil
9. Papa: don’t stand at the business end
Babyhood: Bébé Einstein
10. Give your baby a tour de la maison
11. Observe your baby
12. Tell your baby the truth
13. Be polite to your baby
14. French parents don’t over-stimulate
15. Nudge your baby on to a schedule
16. Baby formula isn’t poison
17. Vegetables are a French child’s first food
Sleep: Rock-a-bye Bébé
18. Understand the science of sleep
19. Babies are noisy sleepers
20. Practise ‘la Pause’
21. Set the mood for sleep
22. Try the talking cure
23. Sleeping well is better for the baby
24. Trust that your baby will ‘do his nights’
25. If you miss the window for the Pause, let your baby cry it out
Food: Bébé Gourmet
26. There are no ‘children’s’ foods
27. There’s just one snack a day
28. Don’t solve a crisis with a cookie
29. You are the keeper of the fridge
30. Make your child your sous-chef
31. Serve food in courses, vegetables first
32. Everyone eats the same thing
33. You just have to taste it
34. Keep broccoli in the mix
35. You choose the foods, she chooses how much
36. Variety, variety
37. French kids drink water
38. Looks matter
39. Talk about food
40. Keep the day’s nutritional balance in mind
41. Dinner shouldn’t involve hand-to-hand combat
42. Eat chocolate
43. Keep meals short and sweet
Learning: Sooner Isn’t Better
44. Don’t teach your toddler how to read
45. Let your child set the pace
46. Teach the four magic words
47. Let children ‘awaken’ and ‘discover’
48. Leave time for play
49. Let children socialize with people their own size
50. Back off (and quieten down) at the playground
51. Extra-curricular activities are for pleasure, not competitive advantage
52. It’s not just about results
Patience: Wait a Minute
53. Give your child lots of practice at waiting
54. Slow down your response times
55. Expect children to control themselves
56. Don’t let your child interrupt
57. It ’s mutual: don’t interrupt your child
58. Observe the French food rules
59. Let them eat cake
60. Treat coping with frustration as a crucial life skill
61. Cope calmly with tantrums
62. Teaching patience requires patience
The Cadre: Free to Be Vous and Moi
63. Give children meaningful chores
64. Build your child a cadre
65. Everybody needs a swear word
66. Your child can benefit from time away from you
67. Don’t be the referee
68. Keep the risks in perspective
69. Don’t raise a praise addict
70. Encourage children to speak well
71. Watch for the ‘déclic’
72. Allow your child to keep a ‘jardin secret’
73. Respect your child, and he’ll respect you
Motherhood: Cherchez la Femme
74. Guilt is a trap
75. Show your children that you have a life apart from them
76. Birthday parties are for children
77. Lose the baby weight
78. Don’t dress like a mum
79. Don’t become a ‘taxi mother’
80. You’re allowed to be happier than your least happy child
Your Relationship: Adult Time
81. Your baby doesn’t replace your partner
82. Your bedroom is your castle
83. Beware of ‘le baby-clash’
84. Pretend to agree
85. Don’t aim for absolute equality
86. Fathers are a separate species
87. Praise mum for her mastery of the mundane
88. Maintain some mystery in your marriage
89. Evenings should be adult time
90. No teepees in the living room
Authority: Just Say ‘Non’
91. Say ‘no’ with conviction
92. Say ‘yes’ as often as you can
93. Explain the reason behind the rule
94. Sometimes your child will hate you
95. De-dramatize
96. You’re not disciplining, you’re educating
97. Make ‘the big eyes’
98. Give children time to comply
99. Punish rarely, but make it count
100. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do
Favourite Recipes from the Parisian Crèche
Appetizers and Side Dishes
Carottes râpées à l’orange
Velouté d’artichaut à la crème
Brocoli braisé
Main Courses
Saumon à la créole
Flan de courgettes
Tomato coulis
Potage complet lentilles
Desserts
Purée de poire et banane
Pomme au four à la cannelle
Gâteau au chocolat
Sample Weekly Lunch Menu from the Parisian Crèche
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Pamela Druckerman
Copyright
For Simon
and the individuals
Introduction
When I wrote a book about what I’d learned raising three kids in France, I wasn’t sure that anyone besides my mother would read it. Actually, I wasn’t even convinced that she would make it all the way through (she tends to prefer fiction).
But, to my surprise, many non-relatives read the book too. For a while there were lots of angry articles about it. Who was I to insult British and American parenting – if there really is such a thing? Surely there must be lots of little French brats? Had I only researched rich Parisians? Was I extolling socialism – or, worse, bottle-feeding?
I’m the sort of person who hears any criticism of herself and immediately thinks: that’s so true! I fell into a funk. But then I started getting emails from ordinary parents like me. (I’ve posted many of these on my website.) I quickly cheered up. They didn’t think I’d falsely accused Anglophones of having a parenting problem. Like me, they were living that problem, and they were eager to hear about an alternative.
Some parents told me that the book validated what they had already been doing privately – and often guiltily. Others said they’d tried the book’s methods on their kids, and that these really did work. (No one was more relieved to hear this than me.) Many asked for more tips and specifics, or for a version of the book – without my personal back-story and voyage of discovery – that they could give as a kind of manual to grandparents, partners and babysitters.
This is that book. The 100 tips are my attempt to distil the smartest and most salient principles I’ve learned from French parents and childcare experts. You don’t have to live in Paris to apply them. You don’t even have to like cheese. (Though you should have a look at the recipes at the end of the book. They’re a sampling of what kids in French nurseries eat, and they’re delicious for grown-ups too.)
I believe in all 100 keys. But they’re not my inventions, or my personal proclamations. And they’re not all right for everyone. The French are very clear that every child is different, and that there are no recipes for raising kids. As you read the keys, you’ll start to notice that behind many of the individual tips are a few guiding principles. One of these principles was radical for me, as an American: if family life is centred entirely on the children, it’s not good for anyone, not even for the kids.
I think American parents have already worked this out. Statistics show that as this new intensive style of parenting has taken hold – the one that’s popped up seemingly out of nowhere in the last twenty years – marital satisfaction has fallen. Parents are famously less happy than non-parents, and they become more unhappy with each additional child. (Working mothers in Texas apparently prefer housework to childcare.) The most depressing study of middle-class American families I’ve read describes how parents have gone from being authority figures to being ‘valet[s] for the child’. Given the amount of cooking-to-order and schlepping around that goes on, I would add ‘personal chefs’ and ‘chauffeurs’ too.
The clincher is that we’re starting to doubt whether this demanding style of parenting is even good for children. Many of our good intentions – from baby-brain-training videos to the all-consuming quest for the best university place – now seem to be of questionable value. Some experts call the first generation of kids to graduate from this brand of child-rearing ‘teacups’ because they’re so fragile, and warn that the way we’re defining success is making these children quite unhappy.
Obviously, French parents don’t do everything right. And they don’t all do the same things. The tips in this book refer to conventional wisdom. They are what French parenting books, magazines and experts generally say you should do – and what most of the middle-class parents I know actually do do, or at least believe they should be doing. (Though a French friend of mine said she planned to give a copy to her brother, so he could ‘become more French’.)
A lot of ‘French’ wisdom just feels like common sense. I’ve received letters from readers describing the overlaps between French parenting and Montessori, or the teachings of a Hungarian-born woman called Magda Gerber. Others assure me that we Americans used to bring up our kids this way too, before Reaganomics, the psychotherapy boom and that study which said that poor children don’t hear enough words when they’re little. (Let’s just say that the American middle class massively overcompensated.)
But some French ideas have a power and elegance that’s all their own. French parents widely believe that babies are rational, that you should combine a little bit of strictness with a lot of freedom, and that you should listen carefully to children, but not feel obliged to do everything they say. Their ability to move their offspring on from ‘children’s foods’ is remarkable. Above all, the French think that the best parenting happens when you’re calm. What’s really neat is that, in France, you have an entire nation, in real time, trying to follow these principles. It’s like a country-sized control group. Come and visit. You’ll be amazed.
tantrums