Learning to Wait

An American studies French parents to learn why their children don't scream and run around and raise hell all the time, like American kids:

Yet the French have managed to be involved with their families without becoming obsessive. They assume that even good parents aren't at the constant service of their children, and that there is no need to feel guilty about this. "For me, the evenings are for the parents," one Parisian mother told me. "My daughter can be with us if she wants, but it's adult time." French parents want their kids to be stimulated, but not all the time. While some American toddlers are getting Mandarin tutors and preliteracy training, French kids are—by design—toddling around by themselves.

...

Of course, the French have all kinds of public services that help to make having kids more appealing and less stressful. Parents don't have to pay for preschool, worry about health insurance or save for college. Many get monthly cash allotments—wired directly into their bank accounts—just for having kids.

But these public services don't explain all of the differences. The French, I found, seem to have a whole different framework for raising kids. When I asked French parents how they disciplined their children, it took them a few beats just to understand what I meant. "Ah, you mean how do we educate them?" they asked. "Discipline," I soon realized, is a narrow, seldom-used notion that deals with punishment. Whereas "educating" (which has nothing to do with school) is something they imagined themselves to be doing all the time.

One of the keys to this education is the simple act of learning how to wait. It is why the French babies I meet mostly sleep through the night from two or three months old. Their parents don't pick them up the second they start crying, allowing the babies to learn how to fall back asleep. It is also why French toddlers will sit happily at a restaurant. Rather than snacking all day like American children, they mostly have to wait until mealtime to eat. (French kids consistently have three meals a day and one snack around 4 p.m.)

...

French parents and caregivers find it hard to believe that we are so laissez-faire about this crucial ability [learning to wait]. When I mentioned the topic at a dinner party in Paris, my French host launched into a story about the year he lived in Southern California.

He and his wife 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 7 to 15. Years later, they still remember how the American kids frequently interrupted the adults in 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 husband said. The children did "n'importe quoi," his wife added.

I think this applies pretty well to middle-class German parents as well. The children aren't pampered, aren't always the center of attention, and have to learn how to amuse themselves and tolerate boredom. It's probably not a coincidence that German children also don't get diagnosed with attention deficit problems -- and then pumped full of amphetamines -- as much as American children do.

Comments

[Véronique]

I disagree with the conclusion, being French and having been, many years ago, Au Pair in Germany. I found German parents very lax with their children compared to the French parents I knew, and it was quite frustrating to hear from them that their children were too young to behave in ways that were perfectly normal for French children of the same age. I don't think much has changed since.

@Michael: Even now, French babies are not often breastfed. It's easier to load the evening bottle to keep a baby full for a longer time than when a baby is breastfed. (My mother swears that my siblings and I were sleeping all night through when she left the clinic with each of us, usually 10 days after giving birth: the sisters were taking the babies away from their mothers every night and "trained" them to sleep at night...)

[noribori]

Goodnight Gadgets

[M.R.]

@Sebastian my point is that Ritalin and ADHS is a problem in Germany too - maybe this stance is better promoted with an article from the not-so-obscure FAZ than a song:
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/ritalin-gegen-adhs-wo-die-wilden-kerle-wohnten-11645933.html

(The debut album of this band is btw a nr.1 hit. Wouldn't call it obscure but maybe that's just me)

[dubuc]

to Sebastian: I couldn't agree more ...
to Andrew: There are in fact ADHD children in german classrooms, but they are few. I just returned from France spending a weekend with friends and their grandchildren, two boys aged 3 and 5. And yes, they went to bed and stayed there. They got their meals as described in the article. And they got extra 'education' by their grandparents (mainly in proper french greeting and saying 'merci, granny') because these considered the upbringing of the boys a little bit too lax.
Great article, great blog, thank you.
J.-L. Dubuc

[Sebastian]

This is why I love the Internet:

Person A: "German children are diagnosed with ADHD less often than American children because they aren't pampered."

Person B: "I disagree, an obscure German rock band made a song about Ritalin."

[Michael]

There is absolutely no way to "educate" a 2-3 month old baby to sleep through the night.

[M.R.]

can't agree with the diagnose part - see maybe one of Germany's most up-to-date bands Kraftklub*: never, never, never more Ritalin ... never, never, never more Medikinet!
http://youtu.be/_Mv7sJxn0-A

(*der Freitag: http://www.freitag.de/politik/1206-ich-bin-ein-verlierer-baby)