Bringing Up Bébé

After a few more restaurant meals, I notice that the French families all around us don t look like they re in hell. Weirdly, they look like they re on vacation. French children the same age as Bean are sitting contentedly in their high chairs, waiting for their food, or eating fish and even vegetables. There s no shrieking or whining. Everyone is having one course at a time. And there s no debris around their tables.

Though I ve lived in France for a few years, I can t explain this. In Paris, kids don t eat in restaurants much. And anyway, I hadn t been watching them. Before I had a child, I never paid attention to anyone else s. And now I mostly just look at my own. In our current misery, however, I can t help but notice that there seems to be another way. But what exactly is it? Are French kids just genetically calmer than ours? Have they been bribed (or threatened) into submission? Are they on the receiving end of an old-fashioned seen-but-not-heard parenting philosophy?

It doesn t seem like it. The French children all around us don t look cowed. They re cheerful, chatty, and curious. Their parents are affectionate and attentive. There just seems to be an invisible, civilizing force at their tables and I m starting to suspect, in their lives that s absent from ours.

Once I start thinking about French parenting, I realize it s not just mealtime that s different. I suddenly have lots of questions. Why is it, for example, that in the hundreds of hours I ve clocked at French playgrounds, I ve never seen a child (except my own) throw a temper tantrum? Why don t my French friends ever need to rush off the phone because their kids are demanding something? Why haven t their living rooms been taken over by teepees and toy kitchens, the way ours has?

And there s more. Why is it that so many of the American kids I meet are on mono-diets of pasta or white rice, or eat only a narrow menu of kids foods, whereas most of my daughter s French friends eat fish, vegetables, and practically everything else? And how is it that, except for a specific time in the afternoon, French kids don t snack?

I hadn&r