Bringing Up Bebe

I just read a book by this title, and loved it.  It was written by an American woman living with her husband and three kids in Paris.  She saw so many differences between the American style of parenting and the French style, she decided to research the topic extensively and write a wonderful book about it, including her own experiences. What I love about parenting books, now that I have found my groove and feel confident as a parent, is that I can take what I like from each book and discard the rest, whereas before I had any parenting experience, I tended to take each book's philosophy as gospel.

This book, I found a lot that resonated with me, namely as far as expectations adults have for children.  In France, parents have vastly different expectations for their children as far as sleeping, food, leisure time and education.

Food, I found to be the most fascinating.  First of all, there are no kids' menus in France.  Kids don't eat bland chicken nuggets and mini corn dogs while the adults dine on good, fresh food.  Kids eat good, fresh food from birth.  Also, French children don't snack.  Mothers don't carry purses full of goldfish crackers.  That concept alone is hard for me to wrap my head around, until I start thinking how liberating it would be not to have to plan snacks for every situation.  We are conditioned to expect food to smooth over problems, divert our attention and fill up time.  By contrast, the reverence people in France have for food can seem a little over-the-top to us.  But waiting for something more worthwhile and delicious, rather than popping a handful of fruit snacks, kinda makes sense.  If you think about it, it teaches more than one lesson.

Speaking of waiting, the concept of waiting is a central tenet of child-rearing in France.  From birth, parents intentionally wait maybe one or two minutes when a baby cries, to determine why she is crying and whether she can solve the problem on her own.  They use this brief time to listen to their child, and to consciously teach the child patience and self-reliance.  As the child grows, parents teach them in very brief moments to wait.  For example, they take a moment when adults are talking to hold up a finger to a child and say, "Wait."

I'm not saying American parents don't do this, but it is interesting that "wait" is a concept that French parents believe to be essential to their child's well-being, and one that is consciously developed.  It goes along with the French obsession to teach manners.  The words "please" and "thank-you" are essential, as well as the greeting, "Hello."  Children are carefully taught to say hello to anyone with whom they come in contact.  This seems trivial, but when a child greets an adult, it sends a message that the child is a real person, not a short, underdeveloped work in progress that we can ignore.  It gives the child both a responsibility to act appropriately and a right to be recognized.  This notion is extremely important in French culture.

Just as children are expected to eat and act a certain way, they are expected to sleep a certain way.  Parents work diligently to gently train their babies to sleep all night, and they do.  Part of it has to do with the idea of "wait," letting a child cry for just a few moments.  When we're too over-vigilant, we interrupt the baby's sleep.  There is a pervasive, unspoken feeling among American parents that if parenting is not exhausting and grueling, you're just not giving enough.  It's one of my pet peeves.  Americans are well-acquainted with guilt.  In France, there is no sense of martyrdom among parents.  The goal is to arrange your life for maximum enjoyment of your kids as well as your life separate from your kids, i.e., adult time after they've gone to bed. 

I liked this book because it allowed me a glimpse not only into a different way of parenting, but also into the culture I am immersed in.  We don't see what's around us until someone points it out.  The main thing I took away is that, just because something is trendy or expected in my neighborhood doesn't mean it's the only way.  I can follow my heart and not feel guilty one bit if my methods differ from the norm.  I'll just give you two brief examples, and then I'm outta here.  One, breastfeeding.  Yes, I loved it.  But it didn't work out for Tziporah, so she bottle fed.  I didn't lose one bit of sleep over it, and I'm glad.  I wasn't breastfed and I turned out fine, and Tizzy will too.  Plus, there were definite benefits to the bottle, which the whole family enjoyed.  So just because the prevailing wisdom here, now, is that you're a criminal if you don't breastfeed for two years, doesn't mean that I should buy into the guilt.

When Scott was in law school, we lived in a very young ward where everyone had babies.  Sacrament meeting was like a giant picnic.  Cheerios, fruit snacks, Lucky Charms, apple slices.  It was ridiculous, and the bishop finally asked that no food be brought.  There was outrage initially, but guess what?  It turned out, everyone could go one hour without snacking, and the building stayed much cleaner.  It just takes a small paradigm shift to make you realize that although you might be perfectly comfortable doing what you're doing, you need not despair if you feel like making a change, or if you do things differently.

Last example:  I have never taught my kids to read super-early.  Some of them have been behind in first grade, but all of them have turned out to be excellent readers.  I just felt in my heart that four and sometimes five was too early to read.  I'm not saying I'm right, but in France, children in school don't learn to read until they are seven.  In fact, children here in the States when I was a kid didn't learn to read until first grade, either.  Why do you need your child to perform on a third grade level at age three?  Why not save that for third grade?  She still might end up at Harvard.  What I'm saying is that, what is normal here and now just may not be the only way there ever was or ever will be.  Lots of things have changed since Golda was a baby, even.  Things will always change.  So if you're a parent, go ahead.  Do it your way, and love it.