crackers & carrots

I loved how I turned out. I think my parents did a beautiful job raising us 4 girls. Of course, there’s always things that I ‘think’ I could do better, but who am I kidding? I just want to do as good of a job as my parents.

The beauty of having a child is that there are usually two parents involved, who were each raised differently in some ways or another and both turned out okay (we think…haha!). From our upbringings, we can take what we liked about both of our parents’ rearing and attempt to apply it to our children.

However, there are some aspects of ‘traditional’ parenting that I don’t like. I was always the girl who told myself I wouldn’t let my kid throw temper-tantrums in public, try everything on their dinner plate, play nicely by themselves and have good manners. I still hope that will be the case with Liam, but I want to prepare myself as best I can to be a ‘successful’ parent. To do this, bring on the parenting books!

When Bringing Up Bébé first came out last year, while I was pregnant with Liam, I decided it was time to read it. After seeing how children behaved (with my many years of babysitting and watching children in the nursery at church), I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get another country’s point of view on how to raise a child. Okay, here are my take-aways from the book:

• “9 months of spa” – Pregnancy should be serene. During pregnancy, we tend to fill our heads with facts of negative ‘what-if‘s and ‘is it safe to eat‘ and worry from day one if we’re correctly preparing our child to be an ivy league graduate. Just take a chill pill and enjoy pregnancy. It “should be a time of great happiness!”
• “La Pause” – It’s a natural observation of your baby, meaning if he/she cries, don’t immediately jump up and go rescue them. Pausing for a minute, allows the baby  to self-sooth. Otherwise, as they get older, they will assume that from the moment the fuss, they’ll get attention. Also, babies need to learn to connect their sleep cycles. Us adults have already learned how to connect them, creating a full night of sleep. Making noise between cycles is normal and sometimes doesn’t mean they are awake, but pausing allows them to fall back asleep on their own.
• “When French parents talk about the ‘education’ of their children, they are talking, in large part, about teaching them how to not eat the marshmallow.” – Let me explain. There’s a psychological study in observing what four year olds do when a marshmallow is placed in front of them. The adult in the room tells the child that he’s going to leave the room for a few minutes and if the child doesn’t eat it until he gets back into the room, the child will be rewarded with two marshmallows. It’s a test to see how well children cope with frustration. French children are taught to distract themselves instead of focusing on the marshmallow to pass the time. In that same way, when children are ‘educated’ like this, they have the willpower to wait; waiting while mom is on the phone, waiting to eat dessert, waiting to get what they want, resulting in no melt downs or temper-tantrums. Also, “in defining limits to kids, French parents often invoke the language of rights. Rather than saying ‘Don’t hit Jules,’ they typically say, ‘You don’t have the right to hit Jules.’…”it makes it clear that the child does have the right to do other things.” I personally like that. Instead of always sounding so negative in a ‘don’t do that…’ stance, it makes it more positive and makes the child understand the exact thing they shouldn’t do. 
  
• Being strict - When defining themselves as ‘strict’, American and French parents see it differently. Here in America, I view being a strict parent as one who is just mean and gives too many boundaries. However, a French parent being strict, “means they’re very strict about a few things and pretty relaxed about everything else…a firm frame, surrounding a lot of freedom.” “Fundamentally, the parent’s job is to teach the child to ask before taking” something. When the children ask for permission “the parent’s response should almost always be yes.” And why not? Growing up being the oldest sister, I always hated it when my sisters took my things without asking. However, if they had just asked to use it before taking it, I would almost always say yes. Same thing applies here, unless it really is dangerous or something, then say no.
• “If kids have the experience that when they’re told to wait, that if they scream, mommy will come and the wait will be over” – Don’t acknowledge whining. In the US it seems to be completely normal for it to be okay to have a screaming child while doing your shopping at Target or while out to eat. We need to learn not to reward the non-waiting, screaming and whining. To do this “the mother should remain extremely calm and gently explain that buying the toy isn’t in the day’s plan” and distract and change the subject. “Coping with Frustration as a core life skill.”
• “Parents shouldn’t mistake angering a child for bad parenting” – You’re allowing them to learn coping skills for frustrations. If it makes them angry, they’ll get over it and be a lot happier in the end. Also, there’s a French saying, “It’s easier to loosen a screw than to tighten the screw”, meaning you have to maintain an authoritative parenting strategy because you can always ease up a bit, but you can’t be lenient at first and then be more strick.
• “Baking is a perfect lesson in patience.” - Probably my favorite since I’m a baker. Having children helping in the baking process shows them order, measuring and that you have to wait to reap the reward. Delayed gratification! The author even gives the recipe for how to make the simple yogurt cake that many French parents let their children make.
• “[French parents] They model waiting themselves.” - Basically, lead by example. If you can’t follow the rules, how can you expect your children to?
• “The better we are at parenting, we think, the faster our kids will develop” - French parents don’t push their kids to develop skills before they are ready. Whereas, in the US we’re teaching them to read as infants!
• “Pleasure is ‘the motivation for life’”, “If we didn’t have pleasure, we wouldn’t have any reason to live” - The French enjoy pleasure and they believe that “exposing children to a variety of tastes, colors, and sights, simply because doing so gives the children pleasure.” How beautiful is it that they want their children to experience life at such an early age? Toddlers shouldn’t be solely on a macaroni and cheese diet, they should be tasting all sorts of delicious ‘adult’ food! I love to how much emphasis day cares explained in this book put on nutritious and delicious menus for meals. Day cares have chefs! Also, “French parents advance slowly”, meaning that when introducing a new food to a child and they refuse it, simply ask them to take one bite, then move on. “Parents should never offer a different food to replace the rejected one. And they should react neutrally if the child won’t eat something.” It’s also suggested that you make a game with food, for example, a “flavor game like offering different types of apples and having the child decide which is sweetest.”
• “In France, the dominant social message is that while being a parent is very important, it shouldn’t subsume one’s other roles.” – More or less, parenting shouldn’t be your only identity. You should continue to have other interests and continue to pursue your own interests and do things for yourself, making you happy, hence making you a better parent.

I’m looking forward to reading Pamela Druckerman’s next book, Bébé Day by Day! Have you read it yet?

Did you read Bringing up Bébé? If so, did you like it? What did you get out of it?