I would be a bad mum... if I still lived in Germany! Or: differences in traditions and guidelines

Children should never ever no not never be shouted at.

Junior can jump the queue for the slide in the park, tearing the clothes of other Juniors in front of him. This does NOT matter. Even the parent of JuniorVictim will smile and agree that "ma sono bambini"

This then translates into later life queue jumping where, should you ever tell anyone off (in my case about 10 times a day) you are the one who gets tutted at while they all go "fancy that, telling someone off for robbing your place in the queue".

A controversial one, which I haven't experienced myself, but have on authority from expat Mums in Italy I used to hang out with......(though this one has been denied vigorously by Italian MNers in the north) paediatricians encourage mammies to erm, help their boy children to, erm, pleasure themselves, until such time as they learn to do it themselves. and then they wonder why the umbilical is never cut between Italian man and his mammy

The German's are very rules-crazed, the endless threads about what the right order of puree is and how many grams of quark are allowed...

It's like their obsession with taking temperatures rectally, as allegedly it's more precise, because, y'know, that 0.1 C really makes the difference in the decision wheter to shove up a paracetamol suppository up their kid's bum (Seriously, what is it with the anal obsession? Seemed completely normal to me when I grew up in Germany, but after 9 years away, I find it really weird).

had two kids in italy and one in uk but I am from another europeancountry.

agree about different weaning foods so just made up my personal weaning schedule and became very relaxed about 'forbidden' foods.

italians in general are very afraid of getting ill so they have woollen hats on babies in may and are extremely wary about wet hair or sweating. Fever sends them to a&e in a panic. (yes I am also married to one but i did manage to man him up a bit although I still sigh when he needs to blowdry the kids hair until it almost catches fire)

now in the uk I think having dinner at 5/6 and have sleeping kids at 7 is unimaginable! Mine go to sleep at 9 to the utter disbelief of my very english neighbours

in general though I had more 'problems' with a difference in generation and approach to children then with a difference in cultural approach iyswim.

My Spanish friend also had her DC in really hard, rigid leather boots (like old fashioned walking boits) shortly after they started crawling as that gave them more support so they'd be walking sooner. Totally different to the cruisers sold in the UK.
The idea of a Gina style routine was just laughed at. Obviously your child doesn't go to bed at 7pm as you won't be heading out for dinner for at least a couple of hours after that.
One thing I'm always amazed at - and relieved by - is how much cheaper children's things, especially clothes, are in the UK.

This is fascinating. The only differences I have found between here and Australia (Aussie living in London 8 years now) is that a lot of Australians seem to be very open and pro natural/alternative/Eco options. Although it could just be my social circles. I also know of many other families who are probably less this way inclined and more into set routines, packaged food, modern medicine etc. but I definitely felt a slight 'competitive' level of how natural/alternative/hippy one should be.

Everything is organic, even if you can't afford to pay the rent you have to spend $500 a week on organic groceries and products
Your children MUST wear amber teething beads- until they are at least 10 and no longer teething
Bedtime? No! They lay where they fall...when they fall.
Children who bite other children should not be reprimanded. It's their way of crying out for love and besides- your were warned he bites!
If you breast feed your 6 year old you are officially the best mum in the world- extra points for tandem feeding to term with 2 children.
Home birth. Unassisted. Also wins a prize especially if you make your own birth smelling tinctures
Shoes? They ruin your children's feet.
SPF sun lotion has all sorts of nasty chemicals and preservatives. Best make your own out of coconut oil and crushed beetles (exaggeration)...
same goes with immunisation
Home schooling. Nay! 'Unschooling'
Co sleeping
Attachment parenting
The dangers of baby training!!
Peaceful parenting
Baby wearing
Baby lead weaning
Homeopathic remedies
The universe will teach your child natural consequences. No need for things like baby gates, electricity plugs, locks on chemical cupboards.

NB although this does sound cynical I see a lot of benefits in many of these practices

I live in the Netherlands and have no funny stories. :( The Dutch attitude to everything is 'pfft, whatever works for you'.

I have noticed though how different countries have different average size babies - not really that odd if you think about it. Everyone thinks that DS is slightly on the small side here, he's Mr Average in the UK, and considered enormous in southern Spain.

The one thing they all agree on is that no child should have quite that much energy......

I am Swedish and I found the UK quite rigid.

Some differences I noted:

In Sweden the weaning guidelines were 4-6 months, rather than absolutely no solids to pass lips of infant before 6 months.

You could take your child into bed with you if he has a nightmare without instantly outing yourself as the adherent of some special parenting school. (My British HV earnestly tried to convince me that I would be making a rod for my own back and never get them out of there- funnily enough, this doesn't seem to be a problem with my 13yo).

Water and cotton or cloth were more common than chemical wipes.

You could give the occasional bottle without compromising your status as a breastfeeder: those babies don't seem aware that this will make them unable to suckle forever after.

You could take them out in any weather, pouring rain or sub-zero temperatures, because apparently they don't melt.

For an older child (say a 6yo) you can leave them alone in the house for 5 minutes without immediate fear of imaginary SW's snatching them away.

Nobody expects you to cook two dinners, one for the children and one for the adults.

As a parent, you get to decide when they are mature enough to start school (at 6 or 7).

It is perfectly reasonable to expect a 10yo to go to the shops for you.

It is also reasonable to expect your child to eat school dinners without a fuss unless they have allergies and/or religious prohibitions.

Sangria Keep posting! Laughing my tits off here.

In the South of France my sister was considered strange for bf beyond a few days, and certainly for doing do for a year.

Oh yes, I forgot the clipping the dummy to clothes. Our health insurance company sent us a congratulations on your new baby pack, which included a set of wooden beads with a clip on to attach a dummy to clothing, and our paediatrician gave us another one.

Annoying - posted but it didn't save. My Spanish family think I'm weird because:

• I didn't pierce DDs ears in the hospital at birth.
• Didn't give her a dummy - they pin theirs to the baby's clothes!
• Have a bedtime (7.30) instead of taking her out to the bar til the early hours of the morning in a pushchair.
• Don't let her have chocolate and biscuits for breakfast. Or let them give her sweets and lollipops (she's 11 months old!)
• Make my own baby food instead of giving jars.
• Give her fresh milk instead of UHT. So difficult to get this in Spain!
• Put her outside for all her naps, rain or shine. They are horrified by this and told me: "you English won't put your dogs outside, but you'll leave your babies there!"

They are ace though - totally pro BFing and unfazed by doing it publically. They also love children, even airport security guards will ask for a cuddle!

keep them coming, this is fascinating stuff

This is fascinating.

Oh yes, napping... It's the same in Estonia. Here it seems most 3-year-olds no longer nap during the day and then go to bed at 7-8 o'clock and sleep for 12 hours. In Estonia 4-year-olds still have a 2-3 hour nap, stay up late and get up early. So the same number of hours of sleep, just differently arranged. Playgrounds are brilliantly empty during the daytime nap, though, so we try to time the playground visits to after lunch whenever we go to Estonia.

One of my favourite WTF moments was in the park with my group of Italian mammy friends after the clocks had changed and there was an hour long (felt like) discussion as to what time one should give the yoghurt now the time was different. At the old 11 o clock, or the new 11 o clock.

Oh- and most people do carry on breastfeeding for years, but they never ever tell anyone.

Naps are a must until child is about 13 and refuses to have one. Then parents shake their heads sadly and ask why Junior won't go to bed until 3am. Because he's slept for 5 hrs this afternoon you mup.

Because I was 37 when dd was born no-one actually believed there was any milk in me at all, sour or otherwise and kept saying "but you are giving her bottles as well, aren't you?"

Reader, I had that much milk, it could have been bottled and marketed for yoghurt factories.

Dd was born, in the south of Italy, when temperatures outside were approx. 30 degrees, and inside the hospital approx. the heat at the centre of the earth's core.

And how they told me off for not bringing woolly tights.

Breastfeeding is the absolute done thing but on the day the child reaches 6 mths, it goes bad. Like it's all stored there in one's baps, and immediately turns sour as the clock strikes midnight.

Colostrum- bit humphy about that, sends babies yellow you see.

When dd was about 10 mths old, a pharmacist friend gingerly stuck her nose out of my door, and said "I think you can start taking her out for 10 minutes every morning now".

Note: take her out in the morning only. Air goes bad in the afternoon. Fact.

Weaning/feeding children in general: Italy truly is the centre of Emperor's New Clothes. They bang on, (and love it when the rest of the world does too) about how wonderful their food is. Children are given pureed slop until they are about 5 generally. (might choke) Dp used to work in hotel kitchens and at lunchtime hoardes of Mamma's would come bursting in insisting they cook their own child's pureed slop.

Dd's first best friend, up to the age of 6, had baby pasta slop at lunchtime and baby pasta slop at dinnertime, with the extra addition at dinnertime of "baby cheese" (ie a cube of dairylea style stuff)

Angels protect babies in cars. I may have said this eleventy billion times on MN.

Everybody has a c section because their doctors tell them to. Their doctors tell them to, because it's easier for the doc to schedule a half hour op on a Monday morning than be present during a labour.

If you work for the state (ie have paid sick leave) then your pregnancy will absolutely be a "pregnancy at risk" and you will leave work the second the line goes blue. You will have no shame in telling everyone this "I'm going off on an at risk pregnancy". You get paid, a supply person who was previously unemployed gets a job for 9mths, what's not to like.

36.6 is a high high high fever and child must be a) rushed to the Emergency room b) have antibiotics administered.

Sweating is deadly. Kills you dead as a dead thing and necessitates the above antibiotics for weeeeeks. Wet hair is equally as deadly. People think I am liar when I say I don't have a hairdryer. Either that or am ghost as am clearly dead.

One new one I learned this week- children need their fingernails cutting every morning.

I had my second child in Germany.
I noticed I wrapped my children up far less - everyone seemed to put their baby in what I think is a jaw dropping number of layers - tights, trousers, and knitted woolen socks together, even inside the house.
And young children always wear hats, even in mild weather they have T-shirt material beany hats.
I was told off multiple times by complete strangers for my children's bare heads.
I was also at the idea of paracetomol for babies being in the form of suppositories, all the other mums were equally horrified at me spooning sugary calpol (obtained from the UK) into my baby's mouth.

Around the same time I had DC1, a Polish friend & a Spanish friend had their first DC. I found the contrasts in the official guidelines really interesting and it made me more relaxed as I realiaed that there wasn't a "right" way of doing something.
Things I remember:

• Polish friend's son wearing tights designed for boys, something which embarrassed her husband but seemed hugely practical and I've noticed you can now get them in the UK;
• very different weaning rules in Poland. Some things we are supposed to give are on their banned list & vice versa;
• Spanish friend shaving her DC's head so the hair would grow properly;
• Spanish friend coming under huge pressure to get her daughter's ears pierced;
• Spanish friend's daughter wearing a lot of clothes which buttoned down the back & looked really uncomfortable;
• both of them being bundled up in layers & layers of clothes & wearing a knitted bonnet at sll times, including inside centrally heated houses.

I'm Estonian but had my child here in the UK. The most noticeable differences were:

• using baby wipes. Use of water and cotton wool is a lot more common in Estonia
• breast feeding in public. It's a lot less common there although most mothers breast feed
• not putting my baby to sleep outside. This seems to be a rule in Estonia that daytime naps are outside, whether you live in a flat or house.
• BLW. I was a freak for doing that although some of my friends seem to have adopted it for their second babies.
• not dressing a baby in a vest, sleep suit and a hat when it's 25 degrees inside the house (not exaggerating)
• going back to work after nine months. Ok, they get 18 months fully paid maternity leave and I just got UK's SMP but the passive-aggressive comments I noticed on the topic were quite interesting.

Oh i forgot the crazy notion of restraining a baby in the car. How cruel we are.
And how silly i was not to take the 'free' c section.

I have had lots of lovely compliments on the 'quality of my milk' from various (random) family members and our birth story is often discussed at family gatherings.

My relatively young but jaw droppingly old fashioned French ex MIL considered me maybe not a bad mother but certainly a weird one for:

• breastfeeding, and keeping it up for years

• not giving my children bottles ever (nothing against them, but DD1 refused them and I didn't bother after that)

• not strong-arm potty training at 12 months

• not smacking

• not wrestling my newborns into a tight acrylic knit wrap cardi, between vest and sleepsuit. Or overdressing them to the point of red-faced, sweaty suffocation at all.

She represents the old French working class norm, which is changing now, but ours were her first grandchildren and I must have been a big shock and disappointment to her for doing things my (baffling, foreign) way.

But I did adopt the general French approach to meals/food and bedtimes, because they made sense to me.