French Children Don't Throw Food (31 page)

Bean and I are invited to a schoolmate’s home for
goûter
one afternoon, during the Christmas holidays. Once we’re all sitting around the table (I’m served tea), Bean decides that it’s a good moment to do some
bêtises
. She takes a swig of her hot chocolate, then spits it back into her mug.

I’m embarrassed. I’d kick her under the table if I could be sure which set of legs was hers. I do tell her to stop, but I don’t want to ruin the moment by making too much of a fuss. Meanwhile, our hostess’s three daughters are sitting
sage
ly around the table, nibbling on their cookies. They’re apparently not even tempted to imitate Bean.

I see how French parents construct
cadres
. What I don’t understand is how they calmly keep their kids in the
cadre
. I can’t help but think of an adage I once heard: if you want to keep a man in a ditch, you have to get in the ditch with him. It’s a bit like that at our house. If I send Bean to her room, I have to stay in the room with her, otherwise she’ll come out again.

Empowered by that episode in the park with Leo, I’m trying to be strict all the time. But this doesn’t always work. I’m not sure when to tighten the screw, and when to loosen it.

For some guidance, I make a lunch date with Madeleine, a French nanny who worked for Robynne and Marc. She lives in a small city in Brittany, in western France, but is currently
working
the overnight shift with a new baby in Paris. (The child is ‘searching for his nights’, Madeleine says.)

Madeleine, sixty-three, is herself the mother of three boys. She has short, greying brown hair and a warm smile, and radiates that total certainty I see in Frédérique and other French parents I meet. Like them, she has a calm conviction that her methods really do work.

‘The more spoiled a child is, the more unhappy he is,’ she tells me, almost as soon as we sit down.

So how does she keep her charges in line?

‘
Les gros yeux
’ – the big eyes – she says. Madeleine demonstrates these for me at the table. As she does so, she suddenly morphs from a grandmotherly lady in a matching pink scarf and sweater, into a scary-looking owl. Even just for show, she has a lot of conviction.

I want to learn the big eyes too. When our salads arrive, we practise. At first, I have trouble doing the owl without cracking up. But as with Frédérique in the park, when I finally hit the point of real conviction, I can feel the difference. Then, I don’t feel like laughing.

Madeleine says that she’s not trying to frighten children into submission. She’s asserting her authority. But she says the big eyes work best when she has a strong connection with the child, and when there’s mutual respect. Madeleine says the most satisfying part of her job is developing ‘complicity’ with a child, as if they’re seeing the world the same way, and she can almost tell what the child is about to do. Getting to this point requires carefully observing him, talking with him, and
trusting
him with certain freedoms. And it means understanding that he’s a person too.

Indeed, to build a relationship with a child in which the big eyes work, she says strictness must come with flexibility, including giving kids autonomy and choices. ‘I think you need to leave [kids] a bit of liberty, let their personalities show,’ she says.

Madeleine doesn’t see any contradiction between having this strong reciprocal relationship and also being very firm. Her authority seems to come from inside the relationship with children, not from above it. She’s able to balance complicity and authority. ‘You must listen to the child, but it’s up to you to fix the limits,’ she says.

The big eyes are famous in France. Bean mentioned getting them at the crèche. Many French adults still remember being on the receiving end of the big eyes and other, similar expressions.

‘She had this look,’ Clotilde Dusoulier, the Parisian food writer, says of her mother. With both her parents, ‘There was this tone of voice they used when all of a sudden they felt you had stepped over a line. They had a facial expression that was stern and annoyed and not happy. They would say, “No, you don’t say that.” You would feel chastised and a bit humiliated. It would pass.’

What’s interesting to me is that Clotilde remembers
les gros yeux
– and the
cadre
the look enforced – very fondly. ‘She’s always been very clear on what was OK and what wasn’t,’ she says of her mother. ‘She managed to be both affectionate and have authority without ever raising her voice.’

* * *

Speaking of voice-raising, I seem to do it quite a lot. Shouting does sometimes succeed in getting the kids to brush their teeth, or wash their hands before dinner. But it takes a lot out of me, and creates an awful ambience. The louder I yell, the worse I feel about it afterwards.

French parents do speak sharply to their kids. But they prefer surgical strikes to constant carpet-bombing. Shouting is saved for important moments, when they really want to make a point. When I shout at my kids in the park or at home when we have French friends over, my friends suddenly look alarmed, as if they think that there’s been a serious offence.

Anglophone parents like me often view imposing authority in terms of discipline and punishment. French parents don’t talk much about these things. Instead, they talk about the
éducation
of kids. As the name suggests, this is about gradually teaching children what’s acceptable and what’s not.

This difference makes the whole tone in France a lot more gentle. When Leo refuses to use his cutlery at dinner, I try to imagine that I’m teaching him to use a fork much like I’d teach him a letter of the alphabet. This makes it easier for me to be patient and calm. I no longer feel disrespected and angry when he doesn’t immediately comply. And with some of the stress off the situation, he’s more amiable about trying. I don’t yell, and dinner is more pleasant for everyone.

It takes me a while to realize that French and Anglophone parents also use the word ‘strict’ quite differently. When British or American parents describe someone as ‘strict’, they
typically
mean that the person has an all-encompassing authority. The image of a stern, joyless schoolteacher comes to mind. I don’t know many American parents who use this word to describe themselves.

When French parents describe themselves as ‘strict’ they mean something different. They mean that they’re very strict about a few things, and pretty relaxed about everything else. That’s the
cadre
model: a firm framework surrounding a lot of freedom.

‘We should leave the child as free as possible, without imposing useless rules on him,’ Françoise Dolto says in
Les Étapes majeures de l’enfance
(
The Major Stages of Childhood
). ‘We should leave him only the
cadre
of rules that are essential for his security. And he’ll understand from experience, when he tries to transgress, that they are essential, and that we don’t do anything just to bother him.’ In other words, being strict about a few key things makes parents seem more reasonable and companionable, and thus makes it more likely that children will obey.

True to Dolto’s spirit, Parisian parents tell me that they don’t usually get worked up about minor
bêtises
– those small acts of naughtiness. They assume that these are just part of being a kid. ‘I think if every misbehaviour is treated on the same level, how will they know what’s important?’ my friend Esther tells me.

But these same parents say that they immediately jump on certain types of infractions. Their zero-tolerance areas vary. But almost all the parents I know say that their main
non-negotiable
realm is ‘respect for others’. They’re referring to all those
bonjours, au revoirs
, and
mercis
, and also about speaking respectfully to parents or other adults.

Physical aggression is another common no-go area. American kids often seem to get away with hitting their parents, even though they know they’re not supposed to. The French adults I know simply don’t tolerate this. Bean hits me once in front of our neighbour Pascal, a bohemian fiftyish bachelor. Pascal is normally an easy-going guy. But he immediately launches into a stern lecture about how ‘one does not do that’. I’m awed by his sudden conviction. I can see that Bean is awed too.

At bedtime you can really see the French balance between being very strict about a few things and very relaxed about most others. A few parents tell me that at bedtime, kids must stay in their rooms. But within their rooms, the kids can do what they want.

I introduce this concept to Bean, and she really likes it. She doesn’t focus on the fact that she’s confined to her room. Instead she keeps saying, proudly, ‘I can do whatever I want.’ She usually plays or reads for a while, then puts herself to bed.

When the boys are about two, and they’re sleeping in beds rather than cots, I introduce this same principle. Since they’re sharing a room, things tend to get a bit more boisterous. I hear a lot of crashing Lego. Unless it sounds dangerous, however, I avoid going back in after I’ve said good night. Sometimes, if it’s getting late and they’re still going strong, I come in and tell them that it’s bedtime, and that I’m turning off the lights.
They
don’t seem to view this as a violation of the do-what-you-want principle. By that point they’re usually exhausted, and they climb into bed.

To pry myself further out of my black-and-white way of looking at authority, I visit Daniel Marcelli. Marcelli is head of child psychiatry at a large hospital in Poitiers and the author of more than a dozen books, including a recent one called
Il est permis d’obéir
(
It Is Permissible to Obey
). The book is meant for parents. But typically, it’s also a meditation on the nature of authority. Marcelli develops his arguments in long expositions, quoting Hannah Arendt, and delighting in paradoxes.

His favourite paradox is that in order for parents to have authority, they should say yes most of the time. ‘If you always forbid, you’re authoritarian,’ Marcelli tells me, over coffee and chocolates. He says the main point of parental authority is to authorize children to do things, not to block them.

Marcelli gives the example of a child who wants an orange, or a glass of water, or to touch a computer. He says the current French ‘liberal education’ dictates that the child should ask before touching or taking these things. Marcelli approves of this asking, but he says the parents’ response should almost always be ‘yes’.

Parents ‘should only forbid him every once in a while … because [something is] fragile or dangerous. But fundamentally, [the parent’s job] is to teach the child to ask before taking.’

Marcelli says that embedded in this dynamic is a longer-term goal, with its own paradox: if all is done right, the child
will
eventually reach a point where he can choose to disobey too.

‘The sign of a successful education is to teach a child to obey until he can freely authorize himself to disobey from time to time. Because how can one learn to disobey certain orders if one has not learned to obey?’

‘Submission demeans,’ Marcelli explains, ‘whereas obedience allows a child to grow up.’ (He also says that children should watch a bit of television, so they have a shared culture with other kids.)

To follow Marcelli’s whole argument about authority, it would help to have been raised in France, where philosophy is taught in high school. What I do understand is that part of the delight of building such a firm
cadre
for kids is that they can sometimes leave the
cadre
, and it will remain intact.

Marcelli is also echoing another point I’ve heard a lot in France: without limits, kids will be consumed by their own desires. (‘By nature, a human being knows no limits,’ Marcelli tells me.) French parents stress the
cadre
because they know that, without boundaries, children will be overpowered by their own impulses. The cadre helps to contain all this inner turmoil, and calm it down.

That could explain why my children are practically the only ones having tantrums in the park in Paris. A tantrum happens when a child is overwhelmed by his own desires, and doesn’t know how to stop himself. The other kids are used to hearing
non
, and having to accept it. Mine aren’t. My ‘no’ feels
contingent
and weak to them. It doesn’t stop the chain of wanting.

Marcelli says that kids with a
cadre
can absolutely be creative and ‘awakened’ – a state that French parents also describe as ‘blossoming’. The French ideal is to promote the child’s blossoming within the
cadre
. He says a small minority of French parents think that blossoming is the only important thing, and don’t build any
cadre
for them. It’s pretty clear how Marcelli feels about this latter group. Their children, he says, ‘don’t do well at all, and despair in every sense’.

I’m quite taken with this new view. From now on I’m determined to be authoritative but not authoritarian. When I’m putting Bean to bed one evening, I actually mention to her that I know she needs to do
bêtises
sometimes. She looks relieved. It’s a moment of complicity.

‘Can you tell that to Daddy?’ she asks.

Bean, who after all spends her days in a French school, has a better grasp of discipline than I do. One morning I’m in the lobby of our apartment building, and I’m late. I need the boys to get into the pram, so I can rush Bean to school and then take the boys to crèche. Simon is away.

But the boys refuse to get into their double pram. They want to walk, which will take even longer. What’s more, we’re in the courtyard of our building, so the neighbours can hear and even watch this whole exchange. I summon whatever pre-coffee authority I can muster, and insist that they get in. This has no effect.

Bean has been watching too. She believes that I should be able to galvanize two little boys.

‘Just say “One, two, three,”’ she says, with considerable irritation. Apparently, this is what her teachers say when they want an uncooperative child to comply.