had a chuckle over zoe williams on french woman in the grauniad yesterday...

[BoysOnToast]

article here

am going to take up saying 'bof' to stuff.

I flicked through the Claude Halmos one at FNAC the other day and thought about buying it (but I know it will make me cross) and I read a silly interview with Aldo Naouri and Caroline Thompson in last weekend's Figaro that made both me and my partner cross.

Despite the crossness, I still find exploring the French approach to child rearing absolutely fascinating. French children behave better than English children but the adults are so much less agreeable. All that repression...

Absolutely. The well-heeled society mums at school are rude beyond belief, with a couple of exceptions. But although I agree their children are well behaved in adult company, in the playground they can be savages.

That interview would cause an uprising in the UK!

Zoe Williams also has an article in this month's Eve magazine about "organic-obsessed mums" (well, it's May 08 but in the shops now IYSWIM) ....."I have stood behind a woman in Starbucks trying to order a babyccino with low fat, organic, soya milk and sugar free chocolate"

Bof is good. I like bof.

What is the gist of this interview?

That children have become the lords and masters of households, that parents need to take control by establishing their authority right from birth. This quote from Aldo Naouri is provocative (though he admits as much):

"as soon as they are home from hospital [with their new baby], parents should think of themselves, only of themselves and their relationship..."

castille, oh my. I thought that view went out with the Victorians. Is that provocative by French parenting standards? BTW, don't know who this Aldo guy is from my arse.

Aldo Naouri is a (now retired) media-savvy French paedatrician who has written masses of books on child rearing that have sold very well.

He is a North African Jew who was the tenth child in his family and lost his own father in early childhood. I have more than lingering doubts (based on the admittedly little I have read of his) about his ability to actually understand modern family dynamics...

thanks, Anna. I call that 'parenting by grumpy old men' - the idea that the world has gone to pot and fault laid firmly at the door of what they see as liberal parenting.

Agree that that method understands so little about how families interact and the development, particularly emotional, of babies.

How DO you establish parental authority from birth - I shudder. Sounds like a recipe for a power struggle (at least with my headstrong lot). And if I succeed an extinction of spirit, love of learning, creativity and even trust.

More worrying is how well those books are selling. Are his ideas mainstream in France? Could that account for (going by earlier posts) stroppy adults?

Yes. I think it's worse than that even - the Aldo Naouri type school thinks the world has gone to pot because men's traditional role has been undermined...

Repressive parenting is pretty damn common in France . As Castille rightly points out, children are often charmingly well-behaved in adult company but savages in the playground when beyone adult control.

And yes, I know plenty of adults (socially) whose behaviour can be explained by that type of parenting. They have little or no self-control - all their "manners" have been inculcated by repression. So they let go in quite extraordinary ways when they can escape the controlling structure of their daily lives.

Anna, he sounds 'charming'. Men's traditional role - guffaw!

Very interesting to see the effect of repressive top-down parenting on almost a whole nation. This takes into account gross generalisation of course, not that is it even remotely possible to generalise that British children or adults are well-behaved as a whole.

At the very least, it gives me hope for my savage dcs. That there is a benefit to a gentler approach of teaching them (over Years) to internalise values rather than my imposing it on them harshly before they can appreciate the intrinsic value.

blueshoes - absolutely.

I am adamant that my daughter should take life at her own pace and learn to do things (including behaving appropriately in a wide variety of social situations) because she fully understands the value of doing so for herself and others.

Fortunately she goes to a school where a lot of the parenting is pretty evolved. Some - not all - of the teaching is quite evolved, too.

Anna, glad you found the right school for your dd