Posted on 02/04/2012 9:13:39 AM PST by jimbo123
While Americans fret over modern parenthood, the French are raising happy, well-behaved children without all the anxiety. Pamela Druckerman on the Gallic secrets for avoiding tantrums, teaching patience and saying 'non' with authority.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I’m not a parent, but I always tell kids who say they’re bored, that we should probably check their IQ.
Amen to that-if we had said we were bored we would have found ourselves put to work pulling weeds in the garden (easiest) or riding in the back or the truck over the pasture in the hot sun, shoving hay bales off the tailgate to the cattle following you...
France did get around to outlawing incest in 2010
They are so advanced. lol
What utter nonsense! The author does not understand that overindulgence has become the norm for some parents...nothing good ever comes from indulging children. I have 4 and they are polite and respectful. Not because I let them tear up napkins and sugar packets at restaurants but because I taught them the meaning of the word no very early on. I blame liberal child psychologists who after years of study still don’t understand human nature.
“Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he won’t depart from it.”
Because they teach their children how to go "oui oui" without getting any on the toilet seat?
Now, that is probably a good idea-lack of natural curiosity in a child is not a normal thing-they should not be bored unless they are locked in a bare room in silence.
So true....All of them are great issues...
I didn’t read the article but I’ve lived and patented in francophone Europe. The French do not like raising the kids from the heart. From the start they put them in uncomfortable clothes and they looked down on me,a stay at home mom, as being un esclave a mon bebe. (slave to my baby). Their kids either had nannies or were in creches (daycare). I prefer a messy, real, strong willed American child to perfect obedience and total neurosis.
I cannot stand that pussyfooting crapola. Either you are a parent or not. There is absolutely no negotiating while in a store. There is no whining, complaining or eye rolling. If you don't like the way things are done, get your own house hold and run it as you please. Until then I am the CEO, the five star General, Empress of the Universe and you are the apprentice. End of discussion.
My mother has pictures of us from the late 1960s playing with pot lids. We couldn’t even afford toys!!! We lived in Florida and she would give us paint brushes and a bucket of water and tell us to go paint the building. We would stay outside for hours painting and LOVED it. During the school year, we attended a university nursery school and always had fresh milk straight from a local cow and ritz crackers every day for a snack. No juice boxes.
By today’s standards, we were poor. But we were happy. My sister and I are well adjusted adults with a strong sense of doing the right thing, worried about others and being charitable.
I have two brothers who were born almost 10 years later who are selfish and lazy. Come to think of it, they were always asked what they want to eat growing up, catered to and waited on hand and foot. Hmmm...
You would love my nephew. ; )
Brava! Brava!
As you sow, so shall you reap. Guess what. Liberal bedwetting schools begat liberal bedwetting parents that raise liberal bedwetting children.
Go to farm country and see those well-behaved children. They take on responsibility young. Check out the home-schooled offspring of devout Christian parents. They don’t suffer the problems the idiot author alludes to.
I was raised in the pre Dr. Spock 1960s when parents were still moderately strict, kids played on their own, and we didn’t generally talk back or act out.
As you sow, so shall you reap. We are reaping the whirlwind.
“They have no value or appreciation for knowledge or education. No basic instruction in manners. No respect for any authority... In CA you can see this in spades.”
Old farts grousing about kids has a long, long history. To me, painting kids with a broad brush says more about the grouser than the grousee. I’ll put my CA kids behavior, knowledge, and respect up against anyone’s kids any day.
But it seems you and Socrates agree:
“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect to their elders.... They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and are tyrants over their teachers.”
Some attitudes never change.
And my parents believed in spanking me and my sister. So we behaved. My brothers never got spanked. And my parents have had to continually bail their sorry butts out time and time again.
One brother has a daughter who puts her hand in his face- ‘talk to the hand’ type thing. She did it to me once in public.
Once.
The inmates are truly running the asylum. I live in farm country now. The children here are raised to be respectful and responsible. I love it.
How does that work with taxes, benefits, and voting?
I didn’t read the article but I’ve lived and patented in francophone Europe. The French do not like raising the kids from the heart. From the start they put them in uncomfortable clothes and they looked down on me,a stay at home mom, as being un esclave a mon bebe. (slave to my baby). Their kids either had nannies or were in creches (daycare). I prefer a messy, real, strong willed American child to perfect obedience and total neurosis.
The family ranches owned by both maternal and paternal families were small by south Texas ranch standards, and remote. In summer, we would dress up in discarded adult clothing-boys in old shirts and jeans with a hat and twine for rope being cowboy heroes, and girls in old skirts or nighties, pretending to be ladies in distress, and we’d run around and climb trees for hours at some fantasy scenario or other. In winter, we’d jump into piles of leaves from up in the trees, using old sheets for parachutes. Injuries were fairly common, of course, but no one thought to sue or put helmets on us...
I suppose we were poor, but we were not aware of it because all the other ranch kids we associated with were in the same boat. The only times my brother and I ever saw a difference was whenever our career-military dad was stationed someplace considered safe for mom and us kids for more than a year. We saw how the city people lived then, but the only real difference was the food they ate-candy and cakes, pizza, burgers from a drive-in, etc. And some of them had more and different toys than we did.
There was a panaderia/bakery in “town” near the ranch, but it sold mostly gingerbread pigs, pumpkin and apple turnovers, sweetbread rolls, and stuff like that-not hard-core white sugar sweets. I still love gingerbread pigs.
My grandmother had a small citrus orchard, so we did have fresh oranges, grapefruits, limes and juice. There were plenty of cattle, so we had fresh butter and buttermilk, too.
In the summertime especially, the family ranches were living quarters for a couple dozen grandkids, including me. With adults busy with chores and a small grocery they operated, we were expected to behave properly alone, with the older kids watching the younger ones. My brother and I always joke that it was like “Lord of the Flies”, but that is to shock credulous people-in reality, any serious wrongdoing was punished promptly by our grandparents.
My Grand Daughter and I had some serious problems, she a spoiled brat and me an old fashioned Grand Pa, She is smart as a whip but undisciplined and lazy, between her father and I she seems to be straighting out, be ready for Calculus by High School with manners.
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