British mums in France - tell me about parenting and raising children in France!

[SophieInTheSky]

Hello,

I am French and living in England, and I have been reading the threads about lockdown in France. I have really enjoyed reading accounts of French life seen from a British perspective, and now I want to hear more about what you think and feel, as far as raising children and parenting is concerned.

E.g. what do you miss the most about raising children in the U.K.? What you prefer in France and also in the U.K.? What do you love and hate about French parenting? What about schools?

For instance I still don’t get how early a lot of (most?) British children have their dinner and go to bed.

@ LeGrandBleu. It’s not the method - evidence shows phonics best for kids who will struggle with decoding. It’s that we start too bloody early. Most kids develop the reading area of their brain at 6 and we are trying to get 4 year olds to do it en masse. The y2 phonics test comes when some of them are 6!

Not sure about some of these. No stews? All my favourite stews are French in origin! Coq au vin, cassoulet. Also kids not growing up as fast. There was a funny thread going on my old school’s Facebook group about what the teenage French exchangers were getting up to in the early 1990s!

But agree seems true to have less snacking, more veg and fresh food

Hmm. Well, as a Brit who's not read the aforementioned book, the impression of childrearing in France given in this thread doesn't sound particularly impressive to me. And I think people are massively generalising for both cultures. I ate at the same time as my parents growing up, every day- so what? We ate at six generally and my parents still do that today, despite being in their fifties with no kids, because they believe eating later at night is bad for metabolism. My kid is almost two and eats earlier than DH and I most days, because DH does not return home until half eight at night and I refuse to keep her awake until then; she wakes at half past five, every day regardless of when she goes to bed. Largely, I imagine, because I get up at half past five to leave for work at half past six. She eats what we eat, which is usually a mixture of different foods so that there's at least something she'll like on the plate- again, so what? I tend to have a small portion with her so she's not eating alone and we eat at the table. And neither she, nor I growing up, ever threw food. What's special about that?

The French school system, as described here, sounds horribly unfair and demoralising for children who struggle, very much reminding me of what I've been told schooling here was like forty years ago or so.

@Gwynfluff My child learnt to read by learning high frequency words by sight, then syllables rather than individual sounds. It was around his 6th birthday when phonics actually clicked for him though.

LeGrandBleu

I'm Australian and much of what you referred to about parenting in Australia sounded like you were talking about a different country to me. I was born here ( 7th gen convict stock apparently;) )and have 4+2 kids between the ages of 1 -22.

Separate meal times only happen on takeaway night here and only because I don't feed crap food to the kids. The rest of the time kids eat with the Adults, even the babies. Same holds true for the vast majority of people I know. Why on earth would we do two meals every night? What a nightmare, so much extra work!

The kids get what we are having, if they don't like it too bad, pick out what you don't like. I'm not interested. Dinner time is for conversation about the day and what's been happening. Not for food negotiations or whining.

I'm a teacher so I see a lot of lunch boxes "crisps" or actually chips as they are called here are certainly not in the vast majority of lunch boxes. If you'd refered to muesli bars and yoghurt pouches I'd agree with you whole heartedly. It's stinking hot here for half the year so a hot lunch is just not something that has ever been contemplated outside of the depths of winter ( during which we still eat outside unless it's hailing and blowing in sideways). In that weather the kids tend to bring thermos containers or get a lunch order.
Most kids usually do have a cold packed lunch which consists of sandwiches/rolls/wraps/ assortment of nibbly bits along with fruit and vege for "crunch and sip" and usually some variety of muesli bar thing and a yogurt pouch/ tub. Some kids do also have the demon spawn of a sugar bar thing called an lcm. Usually the kid you know doesn't need any extra pep from sugar.

Dinners - traditionally most Australians eat meat and three vege / salad but over the years we've gotten slightly more adventurous with food and we definitely have embraced spag bog ( spaghetti Bolognese) , curries (we usually mean indian), thai ( anything remotely from that part of the world) , chinese ( getting better at not just trying black bean and sweet and sour). And hot chips in a bag from the freezer section cooked in the oven at home.

Id say one of the most noticeable things about Australian kids is their water bottles. They are seriously joined at the hip. If they are too young to carry their own then a parent always has it. They seriously go everywhere. We have drinking fountains at school but the kids all vastly prefer to drink from their bottles. And yes they do snack a lot. We have a program called "crunch and sip" in many schools where children have their water bottles and fresh fruit and vege on their desks to eat whenever they like throughout the day.

I'm thinking from your mention of same sex and religious schools that you must live in a more salubrious suburb of a large city. I live in W.A. in a lower Socio economic area.

There are no single sex schools in my suburb at all. Or in the surrounds either. The closest one would be a 40 minute drive away. There are certainly low cost Catholic primaries and a high school in the neighbouring areas but they are not considered the 'best' just a different option if you want to pay for the religious education.The hands down "best " school in my state is a govt public school. Public schools all the way here.

For anyone reading this Australia is huge and I'm not sure that many generalities can be drawn over the whole continent. I teach phonics and still teach sightwords but a school 5km away may not and things are very different from state to state. It takes several days to drive to the next closest state from mine. So as you can imagine parenting norms vary a lot. And if you are Australian and reading this you have probably just thought 'what the hell is she on about' 😀

@ QuixoticQuokka it’s not a reading thread. But brain scan shows we are decoding when we read. Even if we think we are reading the ‘whole word’

@swingingontheswing

Exactly, I didn’t know a thread where people say one system and way of life is better than another, as each country has its own strengths and weaknesses. I chose to have my children here and I love the U.K.

I just wanted to hear from British mums who live in France (and not from French mums criticising the British way of doing things) and what they think about raising children in France. That’s all!

• I didn’t want

But brain scan shows we are decoding when we read. Even if we think we are reading the ‘whole word’ My child couldn't decode until 6 though, no clue with phonic nonsense words until then, as he started school at 4 he had to compensate in other ways. I meant that with my child it was indeed the case that it was at 6 he was ready to read like you said and so would have been better off in the French system (or that of many other European countries), sorry for the tangent.

@SophieInTheSky
Apologies Sophie, the thread has moved into a wrong direction. And apologies to anyone, lurkers included , if I have offended you. I will leave now

Exactly, I didn’t know a thread where people say one system and way of life is better than another, as each country has its own strengths and weaknesses.

It's just balderdash from my point of view, OP. You really can't generalise across entire countries like that and when you ask people to provide stereotypes in a thread (by asking what they love/hate about the French/English way of raising kids), you tend to get stereotypes. You'll have your experience of it from the microcosm in which you live and the sphere of your own experiences, but to try and generalise beyond that is pointless. What is the British way of raising kids? There isn't one, people find their way the best they can and do what suits them and their families, as they do the world over.

@Swingingontheswing Much of Britain doesn't have the 11+, it was abolished quite some time ago. There are some counties that do but I think they're a minority.

@Swingingontheswing

It still exists, just only in certain specific counties. In much of Britain, it was abolished decades ago.

My best friend in France and I both have 3dcs, now young adults. As babies i was irritated by her obsession with protecting them from draughts, she was irritated by the fact that mine didnt eat everything put in front of them. Mine would play in the paddling pool wearing only suncream, hers would wear bodysuits and hats. Mine would look horrified at being offered cheese after dinner, hers would differentiate between Brie or Emmenthal.
They all survived and made it to adulthood despite our differences. Bravo ( in age order) Rosie, Nicolas, Ellie, Fabien, Violaine and Joseph.

I love that dementedma!

@Swingingontheswing, the government abandoned the tripartite system in favour of comprehensive secondary education (everyone going to a comprehensive school rather than sitting the 11 plus and some people going to grammar school) in the 1960s. But they didn't set any time limit on when the schools had to change. So most converted to comprehensives (or became private schools) by the 1970s, but a few remained in England (none remain in Wales, and the system in Scotland and Northern Ireland is different). The local education authorities which still have grammar schools still have the 11 plus, effectively as an entrance exam. But it is not permitted to open any new grammar schools so the local authorities (the majority) which closed theirs in the 1960s now don't have any. Kent, Linconshire, and Buckinghamshire are the three counties that still have grammars throughout the county, and other areas have one or two. There are19 grammar schools in Greater London, for example, 8 each for boys and girls, and 3 mixed. So if you could travel over the whole of London for a catchment area (which obviously you can't!), you're looking at 11 schools out of 500 state schools which are grammars. So, in summary, the 11 plus is sort of abolished but sort of not!

I was an au pair many moons ago. My children were utterly lovely in every way but despite having spent their first years in London they were french and not at all english -

Ketchup was seen as the devil
Actually anything american was! No Disneyland or McDonald's
They ate what the adults ate, and later too
They found orange squash strange
The kids could roam free at home and were treated as adults often - I remember a little girl visiting and needing the toilet, just potty trained a week or so ago and the mum was perplexed when I told her about it...she literally could not have cared less, she could go on her own
Cheese, so much cheese
Wine and cigarettes too, with big dinners with friends over - village friends, work friends, family - all lovely!
Little ornate Easter eggs for Easter instead of a commercial creme egg one like we always had

I loved it. They were so warm and friendly, I was treated as their big sister in so many ways and I look back so fondly. I was so thankful for their hospitality and it enabled me to return years later and work as a doctor down south in Nice thanks to the language skills I gained. My favourite place in the world I think !

Oh yes and the lovely handwriting at school! That was completely alien to me

I have always wanted to move to France, particularly while dc are young enough to adapt easily. But I can't afford it currently. I worked in France as an English language assistant and I some parts of the education system seemed very weird to me. The CM1/CM2 kids claimed not to be able to read my handwriting if I wrote the way I would for English kids (basically very little joined up, almost printed). I had to get a handwriting book and teach myself French handwriting (practising for hours with the grided paper) so they could read what I wrote. I had very little exposure to the youngest year groups, but I really wanted to see how they were taught to write before they use the joined up system, I couldn't understand how they couldn't read basic printed letters.

It was funny how the younger primary kids would tutoie their teacher, and then at a certain point (around CE2) the teachers would start to remind them about vousvoiement. In my mind up until then, French people were born knowing the cultural differences around when to use each one, and they were just a minefield for foreigners that you had to gradually learn, it surprised me to see French kids struggling with it. But I was happy to know that I wasn't alone!

I couldn't get my head around the lack of extracurricular clubs in schools (run by teachers) and having to hide my faith.

I was used to the idea of people repeating a year (I have family from a country where this is also done), but I found it really odd to have kids who skip a year. I still don't really get this - I know some kids are academically ahead of others, but how do they learn all the stuff they would have done that year? Like, you can be as gifted as you like, but if you skipped 6ème when the class learns about the foundations of Roman and Greek empires, do you just never learn that?! And I know the redoublement is less common now (because people have realised that it doesn't work!), but it was very strange to me to see people who had repeated multiple years and were still at lycée at the age of 24! I was 20 when I started work there and some of my 'pupils' were older than me.

All the people I know who have skipped a year, skipped a year of maternelle or were CP in a mixed class of CP/CE1 and at the end of the year went up directly to CE2.

So they missed a year very early on when learning was much more about basic skills than content.

As a British Dad in France the one thing I can't get on board with is the absence of school uniforms. The kids look scruffier and it makes it a pain in the arse when they faff about what they want to wear, rather than just wearing what they have to (and looking much smarter doing so).

Otherwise, I like the fact that the teachers are direct in a way which British families seem to now deem brutal - on what I've seen, the kids in my children's classes (CE2 and CE1) get told firmly once how their behaviour is unacceptable, then if it continues they catch a bollocking and a punishment. Great.

Amen to the PP who pointed out handwriting. French handwriting is nice and uniform and very important, but I have real trouble reading it (R and S I find particularly troublesome) and I too have had to spend hours of my life as a 30-something learning to write like a French person so that my kids can read my writing, which was an unexpected frustration.

As for the rest, I think it depends what circles you move in. In Paris, I always found that the parents were desperate for their children to be mini-adults, in a pretty joyless way, so that everything could still be elegant etc... whereas out in the countryside there is a lot more room to "let kids be kids" and bugger around.

Ahhh, Jaysus, just read another comment and realised it drives me potty that my kids call their teachers by their first names. Even as an adult I cannot bring myself to call them anything other than Mr / Mrs .