Bringing Up Bebe (27 page)

Speaking of voice raising,
I seem to do it quite a lot. Shouting does sometimes succeed in getting the kids to brush their teeth, or wash their hands before dinner. But it takes a lot out of me and creates an awful ambience. The louder I yell, the worse I feel about it afterward, and the more tired I am.

French parents do speak sharply to their kids. But they prefer surgical strikes to constant carpet-bombing. Shouting is saved for important moments, when they really want to make a point. When I shout at my kids in the park or at home when we have French friends over, the parents look alarmed, as if they think that there’s been a serious offense.

American parents like me often view imposing authority in terms of discipline and punishment. French parents don’t talk much about these things. Instead, they talk about the
éducation
of kids. As the word suggests, this is about gradually teaching children what’s acceptable and what’s not.

This idea that you’re teaching, not policing, makes the tone a lot gentler in France. When Leo refuses to use his silverware at dinner, I try to imagine that I’m teaching him to use a fork, much like I’d teach him a letter of the alphabet. This makes it easier for me to be patient and calm. I no longer feel disrespected and angry when he doesn’t immediately comply. And with some of the stress off the situation, he’s more amiable about trying. I don’t yell, and dinner is more pleasant for everyone.

It takes me a while to realize that French and American parents also use the word “strict” quite differently. When Americans describe someone as strict, they typically mean that the person has an all-encompassing authority. The image of a stern, joyless schoolteacher comes to mind. I don’t know many American parents who use this word to describe themselves. But almost all the French parents I know do.

French parents, however, mean something different than American parents do when they call themselves “strict.” They mean that they’re very strict about a few things and pretty relaxed about everything else. That’s the
cadre
model: a firm frame, surrounding a lot of freedom.

“We should leave the child as free as possible, without imposing useless rules on him,” Françoise Dolto says in
The Major Stages of Childhood
. “We should leave him only the
cadre
of rules that are essential for his security. And he’ll understand from experience, when he tries to transgress, that they are essential, and that we don’t do anything just to bother him.” In other words, being strict about a few key things makes parents seem more reasonable and thus makes it more likely that children will obey.

True to Dolto’s spirit, middle-class Parisian parents tell me that they don’t usually get worked up about minor
bêtises
—those small acts of naughtiness. They assume that these are just part of being a kid. “I think if every misbehavior is treated on the same level, how will they know what’s important?” my friend Esther tells me.

But these same parents say that they immediately jump on certain types of infractions. Their zero-tolerance areas vary. But almost all the parents I know say that their main nonnegotiable realm is respect for others. They’re referring to all those
bonjours
,
au revoirs
, and
mercis
, and also about speaking respectfully to parents or other adults.

Physical aggression is another common no-go area. American kids often seem to get away with hitting their parents, even though they know they’re not supposed to. The French adults I know don’t tolerate this at all. Bean hits me once in front of our neighbor Pascal, a bohemian fiftyish bachelor. Pascal is normally an easygoing guy, but he immediately launches into a stern lecture about how “one does not do that.” I’m awed by his sudden conviction. I can see that Bean is awed, too.

At bedtime you can really see the French balance between being very strict about a few things and very relaxed about most others. A few parents tell me that at bedtime, their kids must stay in their rooms. But within their rooms, they can do what they want.

I introduce this concept to Bean and she really likes it. She doesn’t focus on the fact that she’s confined to her room. Instead she keeps saying, proudly, “I can do whatever I want.” She usually plays or reads for a while, then puts herself to bed.

When the boys are about two and they’re sleeping in beds rather than cribs, I introduce this same principle. Since they’re sharing a room, things tend to get a bit more boisterous. I hear a lot of crashing LEGOs. Unless it sounds dangerous, however, I avoid going back in after I’ve said good night. Sometimes, if it’s getting late and they’re still going strong, I come in and tell them that it’s bedtime, and that I’m turning off the lights. They don’t seem to view this as a violation of the do-what-you-want principle. By that point they’re usually exhausted and they climb into bed.

To pry myself
further out of my black-and-white way of looking at authority, I visit Daniel Marcelli. Marcelli is head of child psychiatry at a large hospital in Poitiers and the author of more than a dozen books, including a recent one called
Il est permis d’obéir
(
It Is Permissible to Obey
). The book is meant for parents, but typically, it’s also a meditation on the nature of authority. Marcelli develops his arguments in long expositions, quoting Hannah Arendt and delighting in paradoxes.

His favorite paradox is that in order for parents to have authority, they should say yes most of the time. “If you always forbid, you’re authoritarian,” Marcelli tells me, over coffee and chocolates. He says the main point of parental authority is to authorize children to do things, not to block them.

Marcelli gives the example of a child who wants an orange or a glass of water or to touch a computer. He says the current French “liberal education” dictates that the child should ask before touchingefoan or taking these things. Marcelli approves of this asking, but he says the parents’ response should almost always be yes.

Parents “should only forbid him every once in a while . . . because it’s fragile or dangerous. But fundamentally, [the parent’s job] is to teach the child to ask before taking.”

Marcelli says that embedded in this dynamic is a longer-term goal, with its own paradox: if all is done right, the child will eventually reach a point where he can choose to disobey, too.

“The sign of a successful education is to teach a child to obey until he can freely authorize himself to disobey from time to time. Because can one learn to disobey certain orders if one has not learned to obey?

“Submission demeans,” Marcelli explains. “Whereas obedience allows a child to grow up.” (He also says that children should watch a bit of television, so they have a shared culture with other kids.)

To follow Marcelli’s whole argument about authority, it would help to have been raised in France, where philosophy is taught in high school. What I do understand is that part of the point of building such a firm
cadre
for kids is that they can sometimes leave the
cadre
and it will be there when they get back.

Marcelli is echoing another point I’ve heard a lot in France: without limits, kids will be consumed by their own desires. (“By nature, a human being knows no limits,” Marcelli tells me.) French parents stress the
cadre
because they know that without boundaries, children will be overpowered by these desires. The
cadre
helps to contain all this inner turmoil and calm it down.

That could explain why my children are practically the only ones having tantrums in the park in Paris. A tantrum happens when a child is overwhelmed by his own desires and doesn’t know how to stop himself. The other kids are used to hearing
non
, and having to accept it. Mine aren’t. My “no” feels contingent and weak to them. It doesn’t stop the chain of wanting.

Marcelli says that kids with a
cadre
can absolutely be creative and “awakened”—a state that French parents also describe as “blossoming.” The French ideal is to promote the child’s blossoming within the
cadre
. He says a small minority of French parents think that blossoming is the only important thing and don’t build any
cadre
for their kids. It’s pretty clear how Marcelli feels about this latter group. Their children, he says, “don’t do well at all, and despair in every sense.”

I’m quite
taken with this new view. From now on I’m determined to be authoritative but not authoritarian. When I’m putting Bean to bed one evening, I tell her that I know she needs to do
bêtises
sometimes. She looks relieved. It’s a moment of complicity.

“Can you tell that to Daddy?” she asks.

Bean, who, after all, spends her l, adddays in a French school, has a better grasp of discipline than I do. One morning I’m in the lobby of our apartment building. Simon i
s traveling, I’m alone with the kids, and we’re running late. I need the boys to get into the stroller so I can rush Bean to school and then take them to the crèche. But the boys refuse to get into their double stroller. They want to walk, which will take even longer. What’s more, we’re in the courtyard of our building, so the neighbors can hear and even watch this whole exchange. I summon whatever precoffee authority I can muster and insist that they get in. This has no effect.

Bean has been watching me, too. She clearly believes that I should be able to galvanize two little boys.

“Just say ‘one, two, three,’” she says, with considerable irritation. Apparently, this is what her teachers say when they want an uncooperative child to comply.

Saying one, two, three isn’t rocket science. Some American parents certainly say it, too. But the logic behind it is very French. “This gives him some time, and it’s respectful to the child,” Daniel Marcelli says.
¹
The child should be allowed to play an active role in obeying, which requires giving him time to respond.

In
It Is Permissible to Obey
, Marcelli gives the example of a child who seizes a sharp knife. “His mother looks at him and says to him, her face ‘cold,’ her tone firm and neutral, her eyebrows lightly furrowed: ‘Put that down!’” In this example, the child looks at his mother but doesn’t move. Fifteen seconds later, his mother adds, in a firmer tone, “You put it down right away” and then ten seconds later, “Do you understand?”

In Marcelli’s telling, the little boy then puts the knife on the table. “The mother’s face relaxes, her voice becomes sweeter, and she says to him, ‘That’s good.’ Then she explains to him that it’s dangerous and that you can cut yourself with a knife.”

Marcelli notes that although the child was obedient in the end, he was also an active participant. There was reciprocal respect. “The child has obeyed, his mother thanks him but not excessively, her child recognizes her authority . . . For this to happen, there must be words, time, patience, and reciprocal recognition. If his mother had rushed over to him and snatched the knife from his hands, he wouldn’t have understood much of anything.”

It’s hard to strike this balance between being the boss but also listening to a child and respecting him. One afternoon, as I’m getting Joey dressed to leave the crèche, he suddenly collapses in tears. I’m all charged up in my new “It’s me who decides” mode. I have the fervor of a convert. I decide that this is like the incident with Adrien on the doctor’s scale: I’m going to force him to get dressed.

But Fatima, his favorite caregiver at the crèche, hears the ruckus and comes into the changing room. She takes the opposite tack from me. Joey may throw fits all the time at home, but at the crèche
it’s quite unusual. Fatima leans into Joey and starts stroking his forehead.

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“What is it?” she keeps asking him gently. She views this tantrum not as some abstract, inevitable expression of the terrible twos but as communication from a very small, blond, rational being.

After a minute or two, Joey calms down enough to explain—through words and gestures—that he wants his hat from his locker. That’s what this whole scene had been about. (I think he’d tried to grab it earlier.) Fatima takes Joey down from the changing table, then watches as he goes to the locker, opens it, and takes out the hat. After that, he’s
sage
and ready to go.

Fatima isn’t a pushover. She has a lot of authority with the kids. She didn’t think that just because she patiently listened to Joey, she was giving in to him. She just calmed him down, then gave him a chance to express what he wanted.

Unfortunately, there are endless scenarios and no one rule about what to do in every case. The French have a whole bunch of contradictory principles and few hard-and-fast rules. Sometimes you listen carefully to your kid. And sometimes you just put him on the scale. It’s about setting limits, but also about observing your child, building complicity, and then adapting to what the situation requires.

For some parents, all this probably becomes automatic.
But for now, I wonder if this balance will ever come naturally to me. It feels like the difference between trying to learn salsa dancing as a thirty-year-old and growing up dancing salsa as a child with your dad. I’m still counting steps and stepping on toes.

In some American
homes I’ve visited, it’s not uncommon for a child to be sent to his room during practically every meal. In France, there are lots of small reminders about how to behave, but being
puni
(punished) is a big deal.

Often, parents send the punished child to his room or to a corner. Sometimes, they spank him. I’ve seen French kids spanked in public only a few times, though friends of mine in Paris say they see it more frequently. At a staging of
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
, the actress playing mommy bear asks the audience what should happen to the baby bear, who’s been acting up.