Are French kids brought up differently to kids in England or were these just some super kids we met on holiday?

[XelaM]

Just returned from a boat day trip in Greece with my teen. There were a few other families there including a French family with two little kids aged five and six. Those kids were honestly some of the "toughest" (and most well-behaved) kids I have ever come across.

To start with, I have never seen kids that age swim so well. Those tiny kids were like fish - jumping from the side of the boat and swimming with zero aids in really really deep waters. We also visited some cliffs and some jumped from the cliffs into the sea (which was SO SCARY 😱) and those little kids did that as well! Even my adventurous teen said the jump from the cliffs was scary and she couldn't believe the two little kids did it.

We were also fed freshly caught sea urchin and sea potatoes (which were an acquired taste to say the least 🤣) and I was certain the kids wouldn't try them only to see those two taking one sea urchin after another with zero complaints.

They were up for anything and you never heard a single moan or complaint out of them (unlike my 14-year-old 😏). And it's not like their parents appeared strict or disinterested - they were having fun and engaged with the kids. The kids were super friendly and chatty (when spoken to by others) but otherwise completely did their own thing not bothering anyone at all.

At the end even my teen who usually has no time for little kids was impressed and commented that "those were some hard core kids" 😅 (her words).

So clearly I went wrong in my parenting somewhere 🤪 but it made me wonder - are French kids brought up differently - maybe more independent and resilient or were those some super-human robot kids? 😁

I was going to mention these...

I read both before I had DD and was obviously determined to produce a well behaved, resilient child that eats anything 🙄

To be fair DD is pretty resilient but everything else is questionable!

Interesting re academics. I so often read that we in Britain send our children to school far too early, but the fact is that in many primary schools they learn hardly anything ( this is my experience) and actually are turned off learning.
In Britain we loathe learning by rote and yet often this is the method used in these extra curricular schools. They do pages and pages of maths until it sinks in and those children are then streets ahead of their peers and find maths “easy”. In terms of literature, I can still remember and derive huge pleasure from poems learnt by heart
I read somewhere that over 50% of the adult population has a reading age of 9 😢.
Maybe we should take a leaf out of their book?

Also France like Italy has the coast & mountains. As a family we have skiied in both counteries. Both French & Italian preschoolers are really good little skiers & totally fearless. Both many of those young kids probably go to mountains every weekend to ski & lakes/rivers /sea in summer. Continental parents put much more emphasis on the outdoors & outdoor activities than us Brits.

I don’t think so..we went to Greece a lot as a child and my mum said I was exactly how you describe these children. Were not French but I was an only child so my parents included me in everything so I learnt how to behave etc from adults around me.

I would add from my previous post that it’s quite a conformist society. That has positives and negatives.

In terms of getting your kids eating everything and sitting nicely at the dinner table - great. I think their emphasis on family mealtimes is brilliant and find the child-centric eat at 5pm English style of dining quite crap. Except they are behaving because they don’t want a smack.

If you’re a kid that’s big boned, gay, or autistic, not so great.

This!
French children really are different to English children -
Far more mature and not nearly as ‘babied’
( Speaking generally)
Even toddlers sit nicely at tables- no screeching or showy off behaviour.

I must have been around very different French families to those described here 😆

We don't have a coast in the UK then?

50 per cent of the adult population in the UK has a reading age of 9!
How is that possible?
Is this a study from years ago that included people born in the 30's 40's or something?

I lived in France and used to work in secondary schools.

I think you've simply found a French family with adventurous kids who swim well etc.

Generally speaking, French kids do tend to have fewer opportunities to only eat nuggets and chips and French parents generally expect their kids to eat what adults eat. But there are plenty of exceptions to that.

As for the rest of it, I can assure you that French kids aren't much different - in general - to British ones.

I wonder how the French parent ND children. Sometimes children who are loud or difficult in public have additional needs (not always- sometimes it’s poor parenting, I know).

My cousin has lived in France with his French wife and kids for around 30 years on the occasions I have met them I haven't noticed any discernible difference, s between them and their British cousins

.... I did say my experience comes from our family members and so isn't the whole of bloody France (as I knew someone would be along any minute to tell me I'm projecting a generalisation on a whole nation - which I specifically said I wasn't!)

But, I assure you its true of kids of our family living in France! Though assume you must be better acquainted with my family to suggest what I've said is untrue?

Sorry, don't let's pretend, OK? Smacking and strict rearing. And smacking. None of that 'what would you like for dinner darling?' But rather - here it is. They also force them to eat whatever is in front of them, from a very early age. They even have an expression for it - trois cuillères pour apprendre à aimer - they literally force these three spoons on them, all the time, with all the food and children learn the hard way, they basically surrender after a while.

But on a separate note, well done to your adventurous teen for not jumping off a cliff! Truly well done! I am impressed she is not like those Gadarene swine!

@Pocketfullofdogtreats totally agree

There are as many threads berating the French for their rudeness, criticising Paris in particular as there are about beautiful women. Like any country, it's a mixed bag.

The kids and teenagers in my area are astonishingly polite and there's an assumption even with adults that everyone eats everything.

Families seem to be closer and spend a lot of time together. My immediate neighbours are in their eighties but socialise regularly with their grandchildren.

I'm surprised about the swimming, I read about a lot of children drowning, maybe because pools are more common.

Perhaps these French kids were jumping off cliffs and eating sea urchins because they were drunk?

I’ve certainly jumped off things and eaten things when drunk that sober-me would have thought better of 😂

They lock them in the cave never to be seen

We do but we don't have the ski resorts!

Not sure about reading, but although many people born in the 30s/40s left school at 14, they are far better at arithmetic. I teach postgraduates and they use a calculator to work out 10% of something
That generation used to work stuff out in their heads and it wasn’t even metric!

We do but we don't have the ski resorts!

Scotland would like a word. Okay they're a bit crap but they do exist.

Someone needs to tell that to my half French kids 😂😂

"French children walk everywhere and never eat ultra processed foods."

https://frenchly.us/one-thing-french-people-agree-on-mcdonalds/

"France has become the second largest market in the world for McDonald’s, with over 1,500 restaurants throughout the country."

The food thing is annoying. When I was weaning my kids, we ate together, no screens on while we ate, and I was not offering them different choices.They ate what we ate. All right, we weren’t serving up sea urchins or Andouillette, but a reasonably wide range of stuff, including spicy food, plenty of veg etc. They ate it all happily until one day they didn’t. So like many British parents, we ended up ordering off the kids’ menu in cafes and restaurants. They grew out of it eventually. They’re in their teens now and one eats anything, the other doesn’t but is a lot less fussy than he used to be.

So I don’t know what I did differently to French parents that meant my children had to go through a chicken nuggets/plain pasta phase. I definitely never insisted they eat everything on their plates because I was scared of making issues around food and giving them an eating disorder- maybe that’s what’s different.

@Waitingfordoggo the culture supports kids eating everything. At school lunches, playdates and other relatives all reinforce it.