How do different cultures/countries view British kids?

[clairemcnam]

Just interested to know your experience of how different cultures/countries view British kids. I know my mum (complicated heritage) can't get over the amount of kids diagnosed here as disabled. I keep telling her that they still exist, but would not get diagnosed in other countries she lived, but I don't think she believes me. She was also shocked at first about the casual way kids here speak to parents.

I have American family and friends who are surprised thst British children/teenagers are ill mannered and disrespectful when they have come to the UK to visit.

I have a Dutch friend who lives in London. She says that the Dutch are amazed at how polite English kids are - please & thank you's all the time etc

I have a friend from France who is utterly baffled by the idea of 'kids food' and is tbh a bit judgy over the odd fish fingers and waffles tea. He reckons that if you wean them on what the adults eat then they will never become fussy eaters (I think there might be a grain of truth in this as we pretty much did this with ds but he still likes his flavours a bit milder than us, but it 100% does not work all of the time)

I think a lot of people think we baby children not letting them walk to school, go to shops until 10-11
also what many would see as very early bedtimes and eating really early in evening
from Southern USA yes children would seem disrespectful how they address parents and other adults

Having taught in schools in three different countries I find British teenagers to be the most rude, entitled and disrespectful. I found children in the USA and Brazil, while they are cheeky to teachers and can sometimes be problematic, they in general and during other times are more respectful in general. They also seem a little more real or a little more down to earth. That's not to say that they are all like that, but I just found that experience on the whole. As for being disabled, where is your mother from that there's no disabled people? There are far more provisions in the USA and UK. Brazil is an uphill struggle, in my experience teachers are less likely to know diagnosis of children because there's no provision anyway. That's not a good thing!

From the asian (indian subcontinent) people i know, english kids are thought of as the poster above: lazy, entitled, rude, no manners, no respect for the value of education and family and they live off benefits.

Tbh everywhere else in the world I've travelled I've been amazed at how much better behaved their children are compared to in England.

linoleum She means that things that are classed as disabilities here, would not be in the countries she has lived in. So things like autistic spectrum, ADHD, dyspraxia. Because only the very rich could afford to pay for diagnosis in the first place. There are more obvious physical disabilities though amongst the very poor due to lack of decent healthcare.

I work in a college and staff have actively been told that we shouldn’t question post-Millennials about the way they conduct themselves as we are too old to understand their generation. They can and will, do as they please!
They can’t fail- they are simply transferred to an easier course. We are setting them up to believe they can coast through life.
They can be rude and disrespectful and get what they want because people are too scared to question someone else’s children.
I find t interesting how we appear to other countries as I think the behaviour of children and their parents is awful!

French kids I see in France can be very badly behaved - almost feral like - e.g. on school trips.

The American kids I know of have generally been very well behaved, well mannered etc - apart from the one girl I know who has ADHD and when she was taken off her medication in holidays could become a little brat but I guess, excusable due to her ADHD.

I know some well behaved and polite British kids but equally know some not well behaved British kids.

The half German/half Canadian born in UK little boys I know are really well behaved.

What I do find more with certain generations that British people or people living here are way more rude day to day. And funnily enough I find British teenagers far more polite!

Babied. Friends react in horror that ferrying kids from a to b is the norm.

An American friend of mine used to live in France and brought up her kids there, now lives in UK. She told me the French constantly remarked on how rude and entitled British kids were; also how they didn't know how to behave in public, restaurants etc; and how they were picky about what food they would and would not eat. Several times when abroad I've been eating in a restaurant where families have been dining, then one family's kids kick off and start behaving like demons, everyone in restaurant stares at them in disbelief, and the nightmare kids turn out to be British.

I used to do occasional teaching in several different countries, including the UK, and have found UK kids to be consistently the most disrespectful and lazy. And the culture in many schools encourages teachers not to challenge rude behaviour from kids. If I were to choose a country to be a teacher in, I'd probably choose India or Japan. Kids in those countries seem more respectful of teachers and elders and just to have better manners all round.

I understand that in France they make a big deal out of kids trying food, and being exposed to different types of food? And their culture has a big emphasis on food. So not surprising then that if French adults see food differently to adults here, that the kids will as well.

I know when I came over here as a kid I was so shocked that kids ate separate dinners and went to bed at 6/7pm!

I always ate the same dinner at the same time as my parents (8pm) and went to bed at 9pm from the age of 4. However, where I come from kids are in nursery until 6/7 and nurseries have a 2 hour nap time, so it's a bit different.

*Until age 6/7

I found that while raising my US born kids in the US and visiting UK for holidays, that the teens in UK were rude and foul mothed.
No matter where I took my teens in US I never heard language as bad. I knew they swore with friends in school, they were quite normal. But they and their friends would never dream of using that language in front of adults.

The American kids I know (lived between the US/UK) are all v v boisterous and far more ‘childish’ than their British counterparts. This is for the under 10 category. When we lived in France I did notice how well behaved French kids were.
We also go to India a lot. Indian middle class kids/upper middle class kids are rude, entitled, beyond spoiled etc (again under 10s- the academic pressure then builds on Indian kids after this point and knocks them back a bit).

PotolBabu - French kids with their parents are polite I think.

But I've been in France lots (parents have a holiday home) and seen French kids out on school trips - one occasion to an aquarium - running around, bashing and hitting and shouting on tanks to scare the fish. I also noticed when I had French exchange students over as a teen that some of them were quite rude and sarcastic (in French) when out in public.

American kids I've noticed surprisingly as children and teens are well behaved and polite.

Oh I do recall a few years ago on a London bus. Grandparent with American kids - one well behaved, the other not, boy was about 10/11. Was crying/sulking and behaving really badly and rudely. No noticeable signs of SN. His grandmother was really hacked off with him. Couldn't escape them as on bus in traffic jam.

Also heard the odd comment - in Summer Palace in Copenhagen - American kids asking 'where's the elevator?!'

I work in a college and staff have actively been told that we shouldn’t question post-Millennials about the way they conduct themselves as we are too old to understand their generation. They can and will, do as they please!

clairemcnam - yes French kids do experiment with food and are taken out to eat a lot, not even in restaurants though - lots of food markets in summer, Saints Days etc with sit down meals, fireworks, music etc. Fussiness not really tolerated.

However, on the whole, especially in smaller towns, countryside - they won't have heard of ethnic foods e.g. Chinese, Thai, Indian etc and sadly can often be quite racist towards these other cultures. Paris etc tend to be more metropolitan and embrace different ethnic foods.

You can't generalise, really.

I do remember as a teenager being on a family holiday in Rome and there was an American family at the other table and the teenage girl was being an absolute brat, and loudly to boot.

We were agog at her behaviour

I am most interested in how other cultures/countries view British kids. We may think they are wrong, or they may simply be based on the type of British families that holiday at that countries holiday resorts. But it is interesting, and often different from how we view ourselves.