What is going on with British kids?

[FrenchAreDoingSomethingRight]

On holiday in France. An upmarket holiday camp and we are the only British family here. It was recommended by a French friend and I didn't realise it only has French families on holiday

Dinner is set 3 course dinner. My kids are 5 and 3. My older boy has ADHD we think (referred by school), our younger one doesn't as far as we know. Both kids are trying their hardest at dinner. There is v loud music playing and the pool party bit is still open. They run off after every course for a dance. Older one tries to stand up sometimes. We have colouring in books etc. Really they're fine. At restaurants and pubs they are totally average in terms of being able to sit at the table. No screens.

Not a single French kid has done anything wrong. No screens or even colouring. They might not all be talking to their parents but every single one is sitting through the whole 90 min dinner and waiting to dance at the end. So patient.

Do no French kids have ADHD or ND? Or even just kid like and cheeky? I have always tried my best with dinner times but these kids aren't even considering running off.

What is going on???

Fucks sakes, stop trying to tell people with disabilities they don’t have them. The ignorance is astounding.

I think it is a cultural difference. In many countries, like France, meal times are more than eating, they are about spending time together as a group interacting to each other when at home , while in the UK it is more common to be a checkmark exercise when at home. Many families eat in front of the TV, everyone leaves the table as soon as the food is eaten, there are plenty of families that do not even have a table and, most importantly, a lot of kids eat earlier than their parents and are expected to be in bed soon afterwards, they are not used to long conversations or enjoying the time after dinner.

It is not that French children don’t have fun, they are just used to spend time with their families in a different way. It is true that there are less disable children in restaurants but in general, it is more about behaviour expectations: there they are expected to share dinner and after dinner with the family, here they are expected to eat and clear off for a bath or to leave the adults talk as soon as the meal is over.

So is it true that a very high (and apparently growing) proportion of Britons have these disabilities, but they're less common in other countries?

If not, how do you account for differences in behaviour as described by the OP, or do you just reject that account and believe kids everywhere behave like British kids?

Genuinely curious.

It is. Frustrating to see those posts on mn

...this post was in response to NotAllPets.

I'd have committed murder for that!

At 3 & 5 some of my dc would sit perfectly in a restaurant through a whole meal & some needed to play/explore between courses. All brought up by me with the same expectations.
Don't beat yourself up about it, in my experience it’s quite normal for children to need to let off a bit of steam & 90 minutes is a long time to just sit at their ages ❤️

My dc are all grown up now, all successful & 2 of the live wires are having great careers in the army, don’t be hard on yourself because your children are not book perfect, you’re doing a great job!

Some other countries have a lack of understanding of neurodiversity, we are only just learning about it ourselves.

I have lived in other countries, the kids either are exactly the same in behaviour or they’re beaten.

You’re unbelievably ignorant, in fact worse but I won’t say it here, to keep insisting that people like myself with ADHD or my sibling with Autism, who have had these conditions for nearly 40 years, are some how just making it up. It’s the same sort of argument that people once used that you could beat out homosexuality or electric shock out other mental health conditions. Drag yourself out of the Victorian era and stop telling people with disabilities they don’t have them.

Id be interested to hear what qualifications you have in the diagnosis of autism and adhd?

Since you're being needlessly abusive, I'll end the conversation at this point.

Agree with this. We have been going to France every year since the DCs were tiny so it was important to be that they learnt how to behave in restaurants. You see it in Spain/Italy too (but do also see kids being ignored and left with iPads whilst parents chat).

We never used screens when out for meals as was important for me after working and kids being at school/nursery/wrap around care that we spent time together so we'd chat together as a family. If I thought it would be a long one I'd go to the Works and get them a new activity book and set of pens each.

I'm not saying this to act saintly, more to show that it took a lot of effort on our parts to keep the kids engaged and 'behaving', and for many adults they'd rather use this time chatting to each other and thus Kurds either plugged in or left to get up and down from table. Ultimately different priorities.

There’s nothing wrong with a colouring book but none of us have grown up with screens. It’s scary how much having a phone even alters your mind as an adult and how easily it becomes an addiction so we have no idea of the damage phones/iPads are doing to kids growing up now. They have no patience and no ability to be bored like we used to

I worked as a babysitter in Paris. I think there’s a balance to be struck between being strict and letting children be children. Some can be ott and I think hitting children for example is more common there at least from what I experienced and heard from others working.

As part of my work I also did some classes on childcare. I remember one of the pieces of advice regarding food was never to cook another meal for the child. Instead if they don’t eat the meal take it away and cover it up. Later when they’re hungrier give it to them.

You could ask‘What is going on with French adults?’ though. A lot of people are wondering if it’s safe to go to France because of the rioting.
Maybe they’re all a bit repressed.

It’s not needless at all. You are continually making horrific assumptions about people with disabilities. How you can’t seem to see that is wrong I have no idea.

This 100%. I’ve spent 40 odd years with undiagnosed ADHD. Feeling like a failure, finding it difficult to fit in, wondering why I was so different to others, expending an enormous amount of energy masking who I was day after day, finding it difficult to make friends as their behaviour made little sense to me. Swimming upstream in everything I did. I was a model pupil, academically I (eventually) did great, most of my life was a lie, playing a part in a play very much aware I was an actor, but doing the job 24/7 never being able to go home and relax, be me. The despair and exhaustion of always being on, living a lie has led to eating disorders and a life time of suicidal thoughts. Of being a stranger in a strange land. Over time you learn the customs, the language, but they’re always alien, you never quite fit in.

Since diagnosis it’s been such a huge sigh of relief. Things that made me feel alienated, afraid, a failure are now viewed as the almost impossible challenges they are, but it’s allowed me to have the confidence to float along my own tide rather than be in a constant state of sheer panic trying to keep my head above water swimming against it. It’s enabled me to make friends who value me, the real me rather than trying to fit in all the time. I can follow my weirdness with a knowledge it’s not weird, because to me it’s home. I’ve connected with others, others in the sane position, I’m lonely, I’ve travelled on and found my promised land.

undoubtably the masking makes life more comfortable for others, I look like one of them, my behaviour is predictable and safe. But it’s nearly cost me my life (and has in a sense cost me my life) many times.

I’m not a big fan of medication- ADHD has so many positive things, it’s creative, it thinks outside the box, it’s not great at going along with societal lies, it stops you sleep walking through life. The succession of hyper focuses makes you great at pub quizzes😀, but extremely poor and a house that becomes a grave guard of hobbies. All those talents, discoveries, the books written,the music created the art - hour much of that would have been lost? How may of these other thinking creators would now be drugged? Who is benefitting from this compliance? Society needs to learn to embrace other behaviour not drug it away.

The more people understand about ADHD and embrace it, I think the richer society would be, but there’s too many people who just want a compliant east to manage workforce and a population reliant on drugs for a lifetime.

IME the French aren’t good with diversity, any type of diversity., They value outward appearances far too much, looking through history, it’s a repeated pattern.

I agree with the priorities thing. I would rather sit through a few difficult meals or be interrupted than have a cheeky child that relies on a iPad with no manners or ability to be bored. It has a knock on effect for everything in their life so I can suffer a few tricky meals if need be. We were taken out for dinner as kids and don’t seem to have ruined my parents dinner

I partly grew up there. They're more into hierarchy over there, which I feel works well in the example you described ( family structure, parenting) but not as well when it comes to learning and working.
Going to school often revolved around fear rather than appreciation of learning. Work wise, I personally find top down approaches aren't conducive to empowering staff, and overall I have witnessed more creativity and innovation in the British workplace than the French one.
Of course it's all anecdotal!

The point about autism was interesting and saddening in equal measure but does confirm that rules are expected to be followed and rule breaking is not tolerated there. People seem more lenient here and I feel this is down to views on hierarchy.

Why is the French way inherently better than the British way though? Children are children. Maybe it's because im Audhd and so are my children but i can't understand why forcing them to sit at a table listening to adults talking is an essential thing to do. It's trying to force ND people to act as if they're NT and reinforcing to your ND child that they have to mask and ignore their own needs so as to not bother other people with their disability. What's actually wrong with the British approach if the child needs something to assist them in sitting still and waiting for adults to finish?

It's like people don't have the imagination to understand that all children are different and that a child with ADHD who doesn't have any stimulation will find their own, which could be any number of "annoying" or "disruptive behaviours. So lots of people here would judge these children for a) using a tablet or colouring book and also b) being hyperactive.

My children do behave in public, by the way. But they definitely unmask when they get home.

Yes, yes, yes.

Er no. We eat around a table together and try to make conversation with them. You've misread my earlier post. I was asking op if her family ate at a table, not saying mine don't.

All of my kids can sit through a 3 course meal in restaurants without screens, because they're used to it.

And nowadays, if your child is in therapy for being a selective eater, this is not what they advise (though making a separate meal isn't recommended unless your child is at real risk of not eating at all).

what I've found with this specific example is the number of modern parents who don't make their kids eat what they're served because they had such trouble as children with that approach. It's always useful to examine why parenting techniques change. Sometimes, it's a conscious decision by the next generation to do things differently.

I 100% agree with you. The problem is, as this thread demonstrates, we’ve decided that the right way to be, to behave, what is ‘normal’ is a tiny section of society and everyone else has to fit in with this. Anyone outside of this is wrong and must be medicated to fit in. I do take medication, but I think it’s society that needs to change really rather than the people who fit perfectly into it. I’m so glad there is more awareness of things, I think we will discover even more as time goes on and realise that instead of saying people are weird and trying to change them we will change how we treat them. But there are still so many ignorant idiots out there, I don’t imagine it will be in my lifetime.

I agree with your last para in particular. Pp who look up to that might find they too are on the receiving end of that lower tolerance if they moved there.

Here's a suggestion - go back and read my posts, and find that you're talking rubbish.

I've made no "horrific assumptions" at all, I'm simply trying to account for the kind of differences in behaviour described in the OP.

I also remarked that Mumsnet families seem to report a very high incidence of autism and ADHD, and said I had no explanation. It may well be that this is just the nature of Mumsnet and doesn't reflect the average UK incidence.

Looking up the stats, I see that my impression that there's a very high incidence of autism and ADHD in the UK is apparently mistaken.

Your suggestion that kids are always badly behaved "unless they're beaten" is pretty unhelpful.

Finally, as a gay person, I should correct your implication that homosexuality is a "mental health condition". Homosexuality is not in any way a disability.