Following Frenchmumfanny on different parenting skills.....

[scottswede]

French mum Fanny brought up a issue we were discussing at the weekend. The difference in the Swedish approach to disciplining kids and the non-Swedish approach is huge.
I notice now when I visit the UK how unruly the kids are. Even my dear girlfriends kids are a bit of a nightmare to be honest. We were at a restaurant and her kids were playing up, she was yelling, they were ignoring her, she was physically restraining them, talking through clenched teeth the whole time. It all ended in tears and tantrums. I watched my two just staring mouths agape.

Here, Swedish kids all have school lunches and it is a very strict setting, no talking for the first 15 minutes, take care of their own plates and clean their own eating area (this is from 4-5 yr olds) Taught and encouraged to hold cutlery, not speak with food in their mouths etc.

Kids here are usually all in day care for a good 5-8 hrs a day from the age of 2, so their environment is quite strict and disciplined from the get go.
Scandi people don't like making a scene or drawing attention to themselves so they will rarely yell and scream at their kids in public.
I certainly don't agree with a lot of Swedish child rearing but I do see a huge difference in my scandi kids behaviour and UK kids.

Finding it difficult to respond to this workout saying 'Oh fuck off'.

Glad not to be your girl'friend' with your silent judgy ways.

Workout =without

I wasn't judging. I was comparing and gave an example.

I don't know what this Frenchmumfanny business is (another thread perhaps?) and the previous poster is right that you sound like you've got your judgey-pants hooked up to your armpits, however, moving on from that, I'll throw something in.

Isn't it in the more socialist countries where children seem to be in a form of collective day care from an early age (because its generally cheaper), where we see "well-behaved" children? It could be argued that they're less "well-behaved" and more "conditioned"? I say this with a young child in nursery, not in the UK.

I'd also be interested in knowing what the parenting techniques are that you don't like so much in Sweden. In France, Paris to be precise, where a certain journalist had a kid and decided to write a book passing herself off as a social psychologist, in which upper middle class, urbane French parents' methods of dealing with their kids was examined and deemed to be more successful than us Anglo-Saxons' methods, she left out one very big issue: hitting kids. What is socially acceptable amongst that group (slapping your kid, hard, on the face) is not in the UK (good!).

I think, however, you'd better zip up the flame retardant suit and don a hard hat, because smugness over parenting styles is never welcomed. Everybody, apart from some abusers, everywhere in the world, is doing the best they can for their kids. There are plenty who would have something to say about you and yours too.

I'm just curious-when a Scandi child acts up in public, what exactly do the parents do that would be different to that of non-Scandinavian parents?

I ask this as a mother so tired of my DD throwing food on the floor.

I read the Bringing Up Bebe book...interesting read but that puzzled me too.

I'm treading very carefully now as I seem to have pissed a few people off, not my intention at all by the way.
If their kids are not playing nice they go to the child and have quiet word in their ear or just remove the child altogether.
Opposed to just shouting at the child but not actually doing anything to stop the behaviour.

We'll scottswede the only one of my children where having a quiet word in her ear would have worked is actually Autistic. Fortunately she was my youngest so I knew I didn't have magical parenting skills. I did find the "1, 2 ,3 magic" type approach worked.

But if I was seeing you having not seen you for a long time, I might be reluctant to leave/abandon you over low level annoyance. Would you have rather she had just left with her kids after less than 5 minutes and maybe leaving half her coffee behind?

Also different people and cultures have different tolerance for noise/liveliness.

plantsitter My girl'friend' is the first to admit her kids are a handful, I have not said anything here that would make me a silent judgyfriend.
cantreachmytoes again no judgy-pants here. Totally agree that Sweden is a slightlysocialist country and the children are more conditionedthan well-behaved. I wasn't being smug about my parenting skills, I was expressing my opinion on the cultural differences in parenting skills.
I sincerely did not mean to piss anyone off.

Nothing to add to the original debate but I did want to say that you've not pissed me off. I think your Qs were valid.

Thanks for that pupsiecola

I think it's interesting actually. I'm just starting an OU module on Childhood and one of the themes is the different perceptions of childhood across cultures. I would expect that different perceptions of what childhood entails would be reflected in differing styles of parenting. Interesting....(goes off to find thread referred to in OP....)

I'm not pissed off either... it's an interesting point about cultural differences, not about being smug about your own children who happen to have grown up in an environment with different expectations.

I can feel my French DH wincing when we are in an 'Anglo-Saxon' environment where parents tend to complain about their child's behaviour (or, my personal favourite, throw up their arms as if there is nothing they can do) but not actually do anything effective to stop it.

On the other hand, I feel myself wincing when I see French parents being what I regard as very harsh with their children...

Mostly I hope that it is positive for our own children to be having both influences, though maybe it's just confusing - and it certainly makes for some heated parenting discussions!

Although there may well be cultural influences in parenting the biggest deciding factor is going to be the personality of the parents.

It doesn't matter if you are French, Swedish, English etc if you are a parent who takes a more firmer approach or conversely someone who takes a more laid back stance that will ultimately be more telling in how your children behave.

Just because I know a couple of people of a particular culture, I wouldn't assign their parenting skills to the other x million people of that population. Parents of a particular country are not a homogenous entity, between my friends we have a myriad of different parenting styles even though in the UK we are subject to similar cultural influences

I take DS out to eat fairly often and haven't personally witnessed tantrumming kids being yelled at. I think most British parents would either know that their children can behave well at a restaurant or not take them/go home.

But hettienne, wouldn't that be the difference in that some parents would say that, knowing their child, they won't go out to eat, whereas other parents would take their children out and expect good behaviour from them?

Isn't that, in effect, a cultural difference?

I agree that the personality of the parents is probably the biggest influence on children, but if parents are from different cultures and backgrounds then that influences the personality of the parent.....
I'm not saying any of the Swedish parents I know have any better or worse parenting styles than any British parents I know. Just different......
The expectation here is you can take your children into public places and expect them to behave.

I concur OP. I myself (Canadian) know many parents who either won't take out their kids to restaurants because they'd rather not deal with bad behaviour. Their choice, but I think it avoids the inevitable.

Bad behaviour can happen with any child, but it shouldn't mean the parents never take them out again. Note to self

Surely the expectation here (for many/most people) is that you can take your children out in public and expect them to behave? As I say, I take my DS out to pubs and restaurants and see many other children, and haven't noticed much in the way of tantrums and yelling. I doubt every other family in Pizza Express just happens to be Swedish.

Yes I would assume we all expect our children to behave when in company or in public. I'm not hyping up Swedish parents by any means. I'm not dissing UK parents either.
The restaurant example was one time, in one restaurant, with one friend, I have witnessed British families frequenting eating establishments without incident.............
My original thought process with this post was general cultural differences in parenting styles.
Sometimes I think I have to set the bar a little higher because I'm a foreigner. When I first arrived I got the look a lot, my kids were definitely more rambunctious back then, they have been swedified a little now. I remember being patted on the arm and given the look with a "It's ok they are not Swedish, they'll learn" comment.
Swedes don't like to make a scene, so they will tend to be more stop it before it starts, than wait till things escalate. I on the other hand think you should give kids a chance to sort it out between themselves (sometimes).
They believe in teaching kids to be responsible at an early age, a bit too early in my opinion. Kids as young as 5 will walk to school or the 'public' bus stop for the bus to school.
The school system is geared towards letting the child make a lot of decisions about what they want to learn. When I asked at my sons first parent meeting how he was doing I was told he gets upset when asked to do things so she didn't want to push it..................
Again just some of the cultural differences I have found in Sweden.

Would be interested how things are where you are.

bakingaddict but when you live in a foreign country you're not just assigning a parenting style based on a couple of people. You meet loads and loads of people from that country and can see an overall pattern of expectations or behaviour which is different to what you find in your own country, even allowing for a range of individual differences within that. And you're probably extra alert to it because you are the outsider being judged for not conforming to the pattern.

I understand there will be different ethos attached to parenting dependent were in the world but you are but if it doesn't fit with your parenting personality why the need to blindly follow every other parent like a sheep.

Just because some of my friends don't allow their kids fizzy drinks and sweets doesn't mean I do the same. My DH is from a culture were education is extremely important, I've known kids not to be allowed to go on holiday due to not getting the expected grades but maybe in England there is more of an allowance for different parenting styles. The point is bad behaviour is bad behaviour and not dependent on any particular nationality, a lot of it is down to the child and how the parent deals with that child

What is socially acceptable amongst that group (slapping your kid, hard, on the face)

Huh? that's not socially acceptable in France!

I can feel my French DH wincing when we are in an 'Anglo-Saxon' environment where parents tend to complain about their child's behaviour

Yes, me too.

Imp, I lived in the centre of Paris and I certainly saw it. Not everyday, but often enough and it was definitely parents (only mothers now I think about it) and not nannies. I also know French families from Paris and elsewhere who are surprised that we don't use the claque as a parenting technique. These are generally well educated and well travelled middle and upper middle class (in case that makes a difference).

OP sorry if I came across as overly aggressive!

I lived in Paris and didn't see slapping faces, but lots of slapping hands and smacking, even very young children.

I've never seen anyone smack a child's face in 16 years here. Slapped hands, yes.