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???

Different parenting and lack of community involvement.

My DD grew up in England, but spent all of her holidays abroad, with family. Eating is a bit part of my culture. Leaving crumbs, having food around your mouth, eating with your mouth open, leaving the table, screens at the table, being loud, that’s just not something you do. I never smacked my kid, but saw it as my duty as a parent to teach her how to behave in a restaurant, I never compared, I just expected her to behave like I do. Because what you do at home it’s up to you, in public, there are social norms.

A couple of things are probably at play here. Meal time etiquette is different in France. Snacking between meals is not so common - so they are probably ready to eat. We are just not as strict with boundaries as we used to be. Neurodiversity is frowned upon and those kids are probably not there sadly.

This thread is just weird. Like some cult of glorifying perfectly behaved children at perfect meal times only eating perfect food. At perfect set times. With no ND kids or screens. With 2 hour meal times and permission to leave the table. And only eat ‘real’ yoghurts. What’s an ‘unreal’ yoghurt?

Who’d want to live like that seriously?😬

don't be disingenuous. I have seen so many houses that don't even have a dining table, people eat in front of the tv.

No need to be rude. You’ve said twice now that you do. I am just comparing cultures.
My question was do you think most English families eat together around a table, with a knife and a fork, at least once every day?

Didn’t know pop tarts was a thing in England?

They have totally different expectations in France with regards behaviour and in my experience, not in a good way. Don’t fret OP x

Their better behaved because they most probably have engaged parents who implement boundaries. We are a bunch of wet farts in England who can’t reflect on our own parenting or lack thereof. Everything and I mean everything is put down to neurodiversity, in anyway shape or form. Oh, or mental health.

God forbid anyone take any responsibility.

by real yogurt, I mean a yogurt, not the "child" version rubbish which is just sugar we have here.

Compare the yogurt section of a French supermarket and the yogurt section of your local Tesco and it will be blindingly obvious what I mean.

they still need expectations and strategies to manage themselves.

Lack of support, caused in many cases but not all by late diagnosis, means that the support is not there to give us reachable expectations or strategies, especially when faced with situations that we shouldn't be put in. I still recall being sent from the table without being allowed to finish my dinner by my grandmother when she, whilst rudely bitching about a relative's new gf, said she couldn't see what he saw in her. I replied, in my early teens, "maybe she's good in bed". As an adult, I can see that she was being very rude by gossiping and criticising this woman but I can also see that a child making a comment like that wouldn't be well-received. But then she was a narc who terrorised her kids and gave my Dsis an eating disorder. I am autistic, undiagnosed at the time (she was the kind of ignorant dinosaur who denied the existence of things like dyslexia so it would have made no difference to her if I had been diagnosed), so I had no support whatsoever for navigating that kind of antisocial situation.

My point being that you can expect ND kids to behave according to NT standards and under adverse circumstances when and only when they get the support to do so.

Partly expectations and practice.

Partly imo because it's easier to get your kids to behave if you back up commands with the threat of physical violence. And acceptance of smacking children has in recent years been much more commonplace in France than in the UK.

I think it’s parental expectations that are influenced by culture

im half Asian there is no messing we knew this and somehow my ds knows this. Children are fussed over but the boundaries are known

I’m not like that with ds so how he knows I don’t know but he just does

There’s a time and a place though parents just don’t parent well anymore, kids need boundaries!

And only eat ‘real’ yoghurts. What’s an ‘unreal’ yoghurt?

Where to start..

I get a bit sick of all this British kid/parent bashing. The French have a culture of long meals we don’t. If we all had long meals then our kids would be used to sitting through long meals.

If we all think back to Sunday lunches in 90/80/70s or whatever we were all probably bored and desperate to play and got told off every now and then. Kid from down our road had ADHD and used to gargle jelly and spit it at our ceiling.

The way kids behave has not just been invented, they are learning impulse control etc The only major difference is that our tolerance for physical violence towards children has greatly reduced in the last two decades (rightly so) and scared children are more likely to sit still. No idea what views towards smacking are like in France.

The problem with emotions like this is that it risks silencing the debate around diagnosis, symptoms etc

Anecdotally, there is a growing awareness/willingness to name it, of the under recognition of trauma responses being misdiagnosed as ND in some children

That might not be the case for your child so no need to take this so personally, but within teaching, psychology, education and health and social care more and more professionals are voicing disquiet with some diagnoses when the pattern of parenting and childhood experience is not considered as significant.

What was that bucket of hot chocolate and pain au chocolat I was given for breakfast on a French exchange?

Yeah, but try getting non-UHT milk there.

Children ARE mini-adults. They're adults in training. We fetishize childhood too much in this country. Parents are obsessed with their kids being happy, and as a result, they end up being sad.

@FluorescentDucks We use cutlery every time we eat, and we have eaten almost every dinner together, from a table with plates at least 6 days a week for all our lives, as children, adolescents, students and as parents. And we talk too. About everything.

ASd is mainly genetic.

So all the posters who accuse the French to bully and physically abuse their children to make them behave, how do you think the rest of us raise our kids to get them to equally behave?

Do you think Brit parents with well behaved children beat them up too?

What do you think people do? Sit on the loo with a pop tart?



I'm trying to imagine FluorescentDucks' vision of England, where adults and children lollop around foraging on the floor and cupping their hands to eat casserole out of the bin.

Whereabouts in England did you live, FluorescentDucks?

Same.

There is something about the food though. In the U.K. I have to avoid diary and gluten. When I go to France I can eat the pastry’s, baguettes with no issue. Is it just the sun helping my gut? Less sugar? Better ingredients?

This thread is unbearable in its smugness.

Your kids sound fine, OP. I wouldn't have even cared if they'd had their iPads. You were on holiday not entrants in a parenting competition. So what if they got up and danced. They had a good time.