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???

Three pages of comments and only one PP has mentioned that the French have a completely different cultural view on disability and neurodiversity. There have been a couple of threads recently, one about a disabled child being openly stared at in France which reflected this. As the PP said, disabled children are much more hidden away and those families very probably won't be dining out as their children won't be able to meet the cultural standard of sitting through a two hour meal.

And there lies the problem, you would rather chat with friends then involve your children.

I'm a single mum - I chat with my children all the time they come with me everywhere - they've had to endure all sorts of events with good grace because there's been no-one else to look after them - be that each others doctors appointments, waiting in the car at each other's hobbies, travelling or work events. They can talk to other children and adults, behave appropriately in a vast range of circumstances.

They are fantastic kids, but we don't want to talk to each other all the time - sometimes I want to talk to adults, sometimes they want to talk to other kids, and that's reasonable and fine. They're human beings with their own interests, not pets.

Honestly, read one pop book and you think you’re an expert on how children are raised in another country. It’s so daft.

My children could sit through a meal and so can my grandchildren. No screens. It's usually parenting and as someone else said, expectations.

When I was 17 I did wrk experience in a French primary school in a semi rural area outside of Paris.

The children started at about 3 years. The whole school including the 3 year olds had a 3 course lunch every day. It was completely alien to me to see such young children behave in such a way…fast forward and my 3 year old went to a Montessori nursery and every day he would help lay the table, eat a snack off a proper plate (came home before lunch), pour a drink into a tea cup and then line up to wash up.

Our children can do it but it costs - it takes intention and repetition and patience.

It's not the kids that are the problem in Britain. It's the parents.

I'm afraid I agree. I was brought up by a single mother on a Northern council estate. We sat throughout a meal until we were given permission to "get down from the table" (haven't heard that phrase in decades!). The expectation was that we'd behave, make conversation and wait patiently until everyone was finished.

Dining with friends who have children is a nightmare (actually, apart from my Polish friends). What's changed? I blame Thatcher (only half kidding).

In chapel in th 80s some parents had colouring books for their smaller children so even then children weren't expected to concentrate the whole time. Going to restaurants as a family wasn't even a thing in those days so I have no idea how we would have behaved.

We holiday in France, if you observe how they punish (and this is in public) you'd understand. I've seen several really small children openly hit, like it isn't wrong. I was very upset by one, they were so small, it was awful in the middle of the beach, wouldnt mind it was the dad's fault he wasn't watching that they's wondered off. So they are probably all beaten on the sly. Don't they look well behaved though 👍.

The French as rude as owt when faced with disability, neurodivergence, or even a French-as-second-language speakers making a grammatical mistake. Source: personal experience. Next time, they can find their own way there, I'm not giving them directions only to be laughed at again.

^Exactly this.

These posts are largely rubbish. I was recently at an upmarket family hotel, the families with young chidldren were from all different nationalities; French, Spanish, American, Dutch etc. All the young children acted the same.
Some toddlers whinged when they got bored in their highchair, they threw food on the floor, some were zombied on iPhones, parents having to walk young ones around and mostly are separately.

There actually aren’t these huge behavioural differences between 3 year olds from different countries.

I do think there is a different culture around eating etc but also those books always conveniently leave out the fact that smacking is still really common, accepted etc in France. And they have quite a straightforward/strict attitude towards discipline compared to the UK.

There was an article a few years ago called French children don't have ADHD. It was so widely debunked and criticised that the title was changed and it was edited. But you can still find the original. Anyway the gist of the criticism was that French rates of ADHD are no lower than anywhere else, but it's really hard to get a diagnosis and there's such a stigma attached to anything like that, that many people wouldn't want to try anyway.

(The original article supposed that French parenting is better, children get more fresh air and ADHD is an excuse for lazy parents, all the usual bullshit).

I also think that you notice things like this more when it's your kids who are acting up. I live in Germany and I remember the first time I brought DS1 here aged 4, and I felt like I was constantly shrieking at him and grabbing him barely out of the way of trams etc, while every German parent around me was talking calmly to their child who was being perfectly compliant and helpful, not touching everything or running off.

Ten years on, German kids are no different. I just noticed the well behaved ones that day because mine wasn't being.

Not entirely sure about that. DH and I have just been out for a walk along the seafront and encountered quite a big group of mid to late teens, maybe 15 or 20 of them. We both commented once we'd passed them that we knew they'd be visiting French students before we were close enough to hear them, because they were playing a group ball game on the grass instead of sitting on the sea wall drinking like the local kids were 

(We're in Jersey so French visitors are common)

Sounds like you have never hung around with a load of French teenagers in their home town for any length of time

They are at dinner. You sit at the table and eat dinner at that time.

@LaMaG rose tinted view. Irish catholic growing up in the early 90. Most chapels had some sort of glassed off area where families could sit so it disturbed other parishioners less, children played on the floor and on the pews with little toys and there was a little side room where children went to colour in and play.

There you go OP.
It’s your parenting apparently. 🙄

Yeah yeah yeah we get it. All British kids are vile little feral monsters and yet kids all over the rest of the world are utterly perfect. YAWWWWN. Heard it all before. And it's nonsense.

I think a toddler is different from a child aged 4-5.

By 4-5, my two could sit at a table eating non beige food like chips and nuggets, order their own meals, no screens or crayons or entertainment. Just conversation.

I'm probably stricter with high expectations but the kids are happy, well adjusted and laugh.

They do have screens. Just not at mealtimes. And they also ask to get down from the table.

France has a rate of 69.30 children per 10,000 compared to 78.10 for the UK. Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/autism-rates-by-country

However, I would strongly suspect that the lower rate of diagnosis is at least partly due to the fact that autism and neurodivergence is still such a stigma in France.

My inlaws moved to France and we could have gone with them, but life would have been spectacularly shit for my DC (both officially diagnosed). Autism and associated spectrum disorders really are considered to be "less than" in French society. In 2018 - which I know was a few years ago now - United Nations said that France was 50 years behind with its treatment of autism, and also said that autistic children were being subjected to "widespread violations of their rights".

Autistic people are far more likely to be institutionalised, and be separated from the community. Autistic children are not widely welcomed in mainstream schools. The barbaric process of "le packing" was outlawed in France in 2012 but they've continued to do "studies" on the effectiveness of this "treatment". (Packing is basically stripping a child to their underwear, wrapping them in freezing cold, wet blankets and then talking at them while they're cold and shivering for 45 minutes).

I can't imagine that any country which has such shambolic practices towards their autistic community would be taking their autistic and neurodivergent children out to public spaces very readily. You're only seeing the ones deemed to be acceptable.

Of course, there are multiple factors also at play - and I think it's a combination of lots of the answers given by PP. Socialisation of children, attitude to meals, fewer screens, stricter parenting, etc. But please don't underestimate the impact that your child's ND brain will have on their behaviour - it really is very hard when you have ADHD. It's not a made-up condition as many strict parents often assume and you can't discipline the neurodivergence out of your child.

While no one wants to see children screaming at the table and running around, I'm not especially keen on seeing rows of quiet, obedient children who are overly subservient to adults either. Going off to play between courses seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Also, I'm autistic and ADHD too. So according to France I'm worth less as a person. France can get to fuck.

I’m not from England, but I have to say I agree. I travel a lot, and you can tell straight away if there is an English family with kids behaving like nothing you see anywhere else. Airports, restaurants, hotels, shops. Parents are either not bothered or shouting back. Even seen smacking. All in public, it’s like they’ve given up. It’s actually horrible and really sad to watch sometimes.

I’ve been listening to some French conversation podcasts for language learning and one of the topics was the many cultural differences around food. This included the ‘French women don’t get fat’ concept - women aren’t allowed to be fat but also (maybe less so recently) you shouldn’t be openly on a diet because it’s all about enjoying food. And how boring it is for kids having to sit through long family meals!
I think we can learn a lot from understanding how different cultures do things differently, but that doesn’t mean there’s one ‘right way’ of doing things. Personally I think kids doing colouring books while they anre eating is 100% fine. In fact as long as they aren’t annoying other diners they can do whatever. It’s not a competition.

@Tinybrother Not since I was also a teenager, admittedly.

First glimpse at the post title I thought this is going to be about the British teen problem; about them riding no plate scooters on the pavement in balaclavas and stealing food from McDonald's...That's where things get really wrong and I don't really know of another country that has such a prominent youth problem. (But no one ever talks about that?)

Exactly. We would take a colouring book, uno, etc and we would engage with the children whilst in a restaurant.