To really like the book "French Children Don't throw food"

[catgirl1976]

I am sure some of them do and the title is a bit (like French Women Don't Get Fat - I am sure lots do) - and I find the author annoying and think I would dislike her IRL, and I think the "French" attitude to BF is not righ......but these issues aside..........

I've just read this and I loved it. DS is 15 weeks now and I wish I had read it before he was born as I think I would have handled his sleep / waking differently.

He does sit nicely in restaurants though (smug).

It has got rid of my guilt about the fact I will be going back to work in 3 weeks and putting him in nursery and the fact that I combination feed. I love this book :)

It seems like relaxed, common sense, sensible parenting to me

I took my ten yr old to a michelin starred restaurant last year.
She exclaimed, loudly, that the cheese trolley smelled like old feet.

She's Scottish, it'd never have happened if she'd been French.
She's not been allowed out in public since.

Ps.. Common sense, sensible parenting quickly goes out of the window with a toddler who doesn't do as they are asked, doesn't listen and can't be reasoned with...

My (French) SIL clearly hasn't read it. Her baby is almost 2 and has never STTN, they resorted to drugging him with some sort of drops from a French doctor quite a while ago...

I want to know about the Pause too.

I also live in France, and although I haven't read the book I've heard a lot about it. Apparently it should be called Bourgeois Parisian Children Who Live in the 16th Don't Throw Food.

From what I've heard the main premise is that French children are given clear boundaries but within that framework more autonomy than UK/American children. I think it says that parents here are stricter and expect children to fit into their lives rather than changing their lives to accommodate their children (which fits with a culture that frowns on breast feeding, where mothers go back to work at 12 weeks and where children go into full-time education aged 2-3, monitored by two adults in classes of 30+).

I am very interested to read it - I've heard a lot of positive things about it.

I think I am going to have to read this book.I fail to see how waiting before picking up a baby leads to them sitting nicely in resturants. My 2 do btw. I thought that was because I love eating out and have taken them since they were tiny. Also that Dh and I talk to them while waiting for.the food to come. Wrong on every count it's because I paused when they were tiny

God the restaurant thing was a light hearted comment. Which is why I put smug in brackets to show that. I don't think he's socially advanced, about to start reading the menus in perfect French or likely to order a dry martini and a lobster thermidor. He is just unable to move and usually fairly good natured and too young to do much other than sit and be fascinated by a tablecloth.

I didn't like the attitude to BF either, but I did like the shunning of the mandarin lessons, flash cards etc that seem to be getting more important here

Don't think the book is worth the paper its written on, judging by the group of vile little shits we had the misfortune to experience at a holiday camp a couple of years ago. They were running wild, trying to break into arcade machines, queue jumping at every turn, while their teachers stood back without batting an eyelid.
The staff told us that lots of the parents were on the way to get them as they were being asked to leave the site. Didn't make me particularly in awe of French parenting skills.

It's bollox. People are well behaved or not, no matter where they come from. Perhaps french people don't get fat because they have small noses and thin lips too. Grrrrr! Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

I just feel any excuse to cuddle a baby is a good excuse. I don't think it will have a great bearing on if they will grow up to be yobbos if you don't pause before giving them a lovely cuddle.

Knowing a large number of French parents and their assorted children I thought the book was rubbish.

The ones I know who did anything like a pause didn't pause, they moved their children circa 6 weeks old into their own rooms and did CIO. The others did it pretty much the way it's done in England.

I would also say that their children have less autonomy than the British and American children I know. They don't have things explained to them, they're told what they can and can't do and that's the end of it. Reinforced by swift punishment (of varying types).

I know that sounds like a classic generalisation of French parenting, but amongst all mine and DH's friends and family in France (DH is French and has a huge family) that's how it is. We only know one French couple who do it differently, and they live in England.

Every single one of DH's relatives and friends were horrified that we let DS eat the same food as us when we weaned him - MIL kept insisting that she would lend us the money to buy baby food if we were struggling. DS's cousins were fed baby food from jars/packets until they were 2.5 - and after that if they were going out. That's different branches of his family - maternal in Paris and paternal in Marseille and Lyon.

I honestly don't know what she based it on, but it must be a tiny subsection for some of her claims.

For those who haven't read it and are off-put by the god-awful title, there is a lovely chapter called "The Perfect Mother Doesn't Exist".

Well worth a read by any mother feeling like she is not doing it right / well enough.

Just an aside, but a wonderful read for any mother who feels she is not doing a good enough job is What mothers do (especially when it looks like nothing) by Naomi Stadlen. Really helped me get over the whole maternal guilt thing.

Thanks for the reccomend - I will get that from Amazon gastro

Ta for explaining the pause

We always did this actually, and while unfortunately DS does still often wake up in the night, he's very good at self-settling. Of course, that may be why we were able to do it!

What I've also found interesting in France (from my limited experience) is that they don't seem to go for childproofing as much as in the UK or US. Our neighbours literally have none, they leave all kinds of stuff in easy reach as well.

Well, no-one expects to have a RELAXING time in a restaurant with very young, mobile children. But it is not unreasonable to expect the adults to manage those children so that other diners aren't wildly put out. so... you take in turns to walk children round the block before they blow their tops; you take little Lego kits, and drawing stuff, to keep them entertained, and each adult takes in turns to supervise. You praise for good behaviour and you, you know, keep it all in check. It's a bit more bloody work, in short. What you do not do is what the three families having lunch in Jamie Oliver's Italian resto. in Brighton did when we were there in January, which is: adults all sit back, drink up, natter, and let their four children run around like gibbons on heat while the noise levels rise to the point that other diners had to SCREAM at each other to be heard. I asked the manager to tell them to sort it out - which, to his credit, he did. And we were there with WELL-BEHAVED kids. I dunno - is that French, or just international good sense?

Imp that's interesting though, because what you describe is not at all what I've seen with our family and friends (Brittany/Bordeaux).

They call it 'The Pause', we called it 'Moving Rather Slowly' in our house, in other words, not rushing there if the baby is fretting but waiting to see if they sort themselves out and taking action if they do not. It's nothing to do with being French and everything to do with being exhausted.

Haven't read the book but the other day I was with my 2 French friends (we live in France) and their 2 month old babies. Both their babies "sleep through the night"

My DS is nearly 6 months and doesn't sleep well at night (understatement!) so I was saying how tired I was and that he wakes me many times in the night, although I actually only get up to him when he cries as opposed to just grumbling or babbling to himself. By doing this he's self-settling a lot better and I get up 1 - 3 times a night instead of the previous 6

When I explained this my friends just looked at me and said, well yes, my baby cries in the night, she doesn't sleep solidly, we just don't get up for her and she goes back to sleep eventually This was a total eye-opener for me as I'd previously been feeling very crap that all my French friends' babies slept through the night and DS didn't...

But it has to be said that my (French) friends' children all eat beautifully, sit calmly at the table, eat what we're eating (although if it's new they are allowed to just take a small bit, taste it, try to finish that bit and if they like it take more) etc. All have been weaned on home-made purees too. Although the Dr did tell me to buy jar-food instead of making my own purees because of pesticides .

obviously different friends' children eating at the table...not the 2 month olds!

I love it. I did The Pause, but I was treated by some acquaintances like I was a leper because I wasn't all over my baby as soon as he cried. Now I feel vindicated, I have 2 great sleepers! (bed wetting and illness notwithstanding) I wish I'd read it before I had my children.

dreaming interesting. I have no idea whether it's a regional difference or a type of person difference (iyswim). Most of our family and friends live in either Paris or Marseille; but equally it might just be the similarities within the families, and with friends that they have asked each other for advice and done it in a similar way.

I grew up in Normandy and I don't remember people being like that. Children were far freer and less strictly controlled, but I do think there is a country vs city difference.

They've all been pretty shocked at what DH and I do with DS (co-sleeping, BF, BLW etc), but mainly they think it's far too much work and effort - whereas we did all those things because it seemed easier.

But I do agree with the book that parents hot house their babies less in France, in terms of classes and flash cards etc, and are still fine. But then school starts much earlier, and even if it isn't formal learning it they still learn an awful lot.

dh is french, and this book definitely gave me an insight into how my ILs raised their kids. their kids are raised to eat everything. there is no stressing about the children. they definitely prioritised their own lives, and definitely did not follow their children around or were entranced by their every utterance. this also applies to my kids,

i did think the author over egged it a bit, as there are definite weaknesses in the french system (esp: the emphasis on criticism and rote learning at the schools; the fact that the behaviour tends to dissipate once it gets further from parents). it would have been a good magazine article really.

that being said, i thought the author looked like a bit of a tit doing an internet interview at her computer in her own home while wearing a beret for the wall street journal. must sell books huh?

I did the pause with all of my children, although I didn't realise that's what it was called. I just thought it was ignoring the crying baby for a minute so I could watch the end of Neighbours

Hi catgirl :) We had our dss around the same time I think (not stalking you, honestly!) so I can relate to the restaurant behaviour :)

I haven't read the book. I read Baby Whisperer in those dark first days and completely failed in putting Ds in a three hour easy routine.

So I haven't done anything since, and you know, it's alright. We have no routine I've planned but Ds has fallen into one all on his own. He wakes once per night now. We've combo fed since day 2. It's ok.

What I think with all my experience of one baby (!) is that we'd do better to listen to the child than to the books. I wish I'd listened to my instinct in the first few weeks and let Ds sleep as he wanted at night rather than spending hours waking him up so I could feed him. He might not even be waking up once a night now if I hadn't.

I'd be interested to see what it says to assuage combo feeding guilt. That took an awful lot of reading and soul searching for me to come to terms with!