What things do you struggle with that are culturally acceptable?

[Amapoleon]

Yesterday I was in the dr's waiting room and watched a mother repeatedly smack her child. The child was very aggressive [I wonder why] and every time he was aggressive she whacked him.

Although illegal in Spain, smacking in some quarters is still acceptable. I am only speaking from my experience in my area and don't want to make sweeping generalisations that all Spanish people smack their kids. There were 4 or 5 other mothers and no one batted an eyelid.

We're in holland and I still wince when I see people cycling with very small babies (from a few weeks old) in their Baby bjorn - I know you can cycle carefully but you can't rule out someone else being a prat. Also to get to dd's nursery i cycle over a main road (you know 4 lanes, turcks, trams, cars, no bike lane) and frequently see a mum cycling down it with her ds (who looks 6/7) holding on to the back while wearing roller blades.

Also when she was first born I hated older dutch women who in this part of Amsterdam are pretty ubiquitiously surgically attached to their cigarettes, learning over the pram to tell me how pretty dd was while billowing smoke.

And the fact that it's apparently ok to ask me if I dropped dd virtually every time I go to the supermarket (she has a strawberry mark on her forehead). Once I was even asked if I hit her!

Well that turned into a bit of a rant then! N ot sure if we're just lucky on creche though but it's never seemed understaffed to me, and it's a lovely place!

After reading this thread I checked out the official adult:baby ratio in French creches and it is apparently one adult to five babies. Whereas, from reading MN, I understand it is one adult to three babies in the UK. Hence English feelings that French creches are understaffed and that babies don't get enough adult attention.

A friend's baby has just been chucked out of creche for poor attendance! The directrice only wants children who attend every day...

Smacking children.

Ridiculous amounts of homework in primary school.

Thin as a rail very brown women looking you up and down and asking if you have put on weight (or congratulating you on losing some).

Openly racist remarks about "les Arabes" who are probably second or third generation French born.

Male friends and neighbours thinking it is just fine and quite flattering for them to tell you that they'd like to give you one when they have had too much to drink.

People going to the doctor at the slightest sign of illness so that the Dr can tell them to stay in bed and take paracetemal (duh).

I am in spain - lol at the other spain-dwellers noticing based on my 'dislikes'

beachcomber - your last 2 comments SO apply to spain too - or at least where I live.
The widespread 'casual' racism drives me crazy. Here it is 'moros' or 'gitanos' and a genuine wide eyed innocence that there could be anything wrong in what they are saying.

I thought the overbearing families meant you must be in Greece! Must be a Mediteranean thing. (I can't spell).

where do people eat breakfast off the table and not off a plate?

I don't think I could ever do that. You mean they just plonk some bread on the table and butter it there or something like that?

In France, ZZZen .

If you order a café and croissant/tartine in a café, you don't get a plate...

You dunk your breakfast in your coffee or hot chocolate

[severe emoticon]

I remember my mum going mad when we had the French exchange pupils at home and they would eat straight off the table - toast crumbs everywhere! Suppose they save on washing up.

One thing that surprises me is the difference in how babies are wrapped up in layers of clothes and hats and blankets here in Germany even if it's warm.

in dubai most older ladies are covered head to toe in black, however the newer indian population let there 4/5 year old girls go around with crop tops on and very heavy dark eye liner. I know its the culture but its so diverse over here it still amazes me

oh and its acceptable for the indian population to stare and me, and grab my breast while local emirates would get into a huge amount of trouble if any of them did it....oh and i was in the wrong because im british

oh I see Anna. How do the French stay so slim though when they start the day by dunking a buttery croissant into a cup of hot chocolate? Another of life's little mysteries. Actually I quite like a croissant dunked in hot chocolate myself come to think of it. Wonder why they don't give you a little plate in cafes though, just in case you want to "rest" your croissant inbetween bites.

at the breast seizing barbie! Eek. I met a student from India in Germany who told me when she goes back home, she carries an umbrella everywhere with her and slashes about with it as she walks so she doesn't get her bum grabbed in the street. I thought she was joking actually but maybe not...

China was a real eye-opener for this sort of thing.

Babies don't wear nappies. Their parents hold them over the gutter or bin to wee or poo. Likewise the constant hail of dollops of phlegm. Public expectoration is really not my thing.

Everyone appears to believe they are bullet-proof, the favourite of the gods, or otherwise immortal. I have seen someone using an oxyaceteline welding torch while holding a cardboard box with a slit cut in it in front of his face for protection. It is not unusual to see someone driving his chums home after a hard day at the construction site ... in the bucket of his bulldozer.

God, I could go on all night.

"Male friends and neighbours thinking it is just fine and quite flattering for them to tell you that they'd like to give you one when they have had too much to drink."

Oh dear, I have never been propositioned in such a way. I didn't think I was that unattractive!

Oh and the French people who stay slim are not likely to have croissants regularly for breakfast.

With you there, beachcomber! My OH is signed off work for the rest of the week with manflu and has a bunch of medicines, mostly paracetemol, and bed rest prescribed by the doctor. And this is the Marine Nationale with this attitude. I think I must just be much tougher.

French birthday parties where the kids are just expected to eat bonbons solidly for two hours!

Oh I agree with that Brioche Dorée - shocking.

I must say that I say yes more readily to birthday invitations from families with a bit of Anglo-Saxon concern for dental hygiene influence...

Everything most of you have said!
Car seats (even though it's the law here, MIL says I use one because I'm a cold English woman who doesn't want to hold my child and anyway the angels protect children), smacking, bits of ceiling falling on children's heads in schools (as a matter of course) drink driving......4 yr old birthday parties that start at 10pm.

But......we have no scary hoodies. Yet.

I'm Italian and I lived 8 yrs in the UK. Now I'm back to Italy. So I struggled with some aspects of the British life and now I struggle with lots more aspects of the Italian life.

Italians - on average - don't strap their children in the buggy, which really irritates me, as they do it only to avoid toddlers tantrums.

I was shocked by the amount of crisps eaten by the average English child, but I now find that it's become a habit in Italy too.

Italian creches, however, are much better than the English ones. On average.

and yes, only a tiny minority use car seats here.

We're in France too and I've had to get used to the no plates for breakfast thing, and in fact the children now do it too. I also decided I had to let DH teach them to dunk bread in the hot chocolate or else they wouldn't really be French!! though now DS1 has decided he doesn't like hot chocolate and prefers muesli and bread with marmite, so I'm winning there

The smacking thing REALLY bothers me though - I've seen a woman slap her two daughters on the face in the supermarket for a bit of mild bad behaviour, and this morning in the speech therapist's waiting room a woman smacked her 18mo every time he grabbed the toys and chucked them on the floor or tried to open the door.

Actually I quite like the birthday parties because all you have to provide is the cake and a few sweets (and I always do some fruit too but my son is the only one who ever eats it!), whereas at home (NZ) people seem to have to provide mountains of sausage rolls and other stuff. But my son has a dairy allergy so I send him along with his own box of food, meaning I get to control how many sweets there are

Wow, even up there Franca? I thought it was probably just us down in the boondocks!

Agree with the eating breakfast off the table thing. DH agrees with me, fortunately, probably after the 10 yrs we spent in the tropics, where huge ants are very quick to make a direct line attack on drops of jam/honey on your tablecloth.

Agree with the smacking thing, too, though often those doing it don't realise how shocked others are: it's just that no one dares intervene, but if you talk to other mothers they'll often say they're upset by someone's smacking habit.

Spitting in the streets.

Dumping rubbish.

Speaking incredibly loudly and obscenely (because we are Mediterranean, dontcha know,); the other day there was a guy on his mobile under my window shouting at his mate, "I'm opening the bids on your mother's pussy".

Thinking homophobic insults (PD, enculé, etc.) are acceptable to use at every possible opportunity.

Re sweets: DS's teacher gives them sweets at school, and the neighbour routinely buys her DD sweets while getting the lunchtime baguette, so her DD scoffs them on the way home for lunch. Yesterday, the DD offered DS one, and the mother said, "ooh, maybe that's not a very good idea, it might spoil his appetite." And not her DD's??

Yes, even up here Bucharest.

Auld, the spitting. I'm really bothered by it. I started to notice young people spitting (as if it's a macho thing ) in Exeter , but it seems to be popular in Northern Italy too (among young people). My mother tells me that after ww2 there was a huge campaign in Italy against spitting and for ages it was really rare to see anyone doing it.
Now it's become fashionable again

Sweets: never seen so many sweets as in the UK (and people eating them), tbh.