International Nesties
dulcemariamar1
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
French parents are superior
A longer article that we talked about before about French parents being superior.
Re: French parents are superior
I was just going to say something about this article:
http://moms.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/03/10312701-the-french-are-better-parents-excuse-moi
I think the lady on the Today article went overboard.
I am fascinated by these concepts. I was raised the opposite of the French way AND the opposite of the Chinese "tiger mother" way. Basically I was raised by hippies. Doting, supportive, loving, well-meaning hippies. I love my parents and get along very well with them as an adult, and never really rebelled or anything as a kid either. I was also a very good (but not exceptional) student.
One thing I most certainly am not is patient. I want everything now, now, now! Is this my personality? I'm sure that's part of it. But I don't think my upbringing helped me with self-control or patience at all. I want Minibini to know that he is loved and that we will always be there for him, but I also want him to learn independence and patience.
My Ethiopian husband, by the way, is so patient it's revolting.
I saw this on the travel board and watched the Today show video. A) her hat is awful and she needs to stop wearing it and
has she ever parented in the US?
The whole sleeping through the night at 2 months thing is bull ***. I guarantee I can go into france and find a bunch of families who's kid is not sleeping through the night. She needed to title this book THIS IS HOW I RAISE KIDS YEA! Not french parenting rocks. What a bunch of stereotypical bullcrap. And no one let's their kid cry and walks away - even the father of cry it out has a method (which is exactly the method the woman in the video was describing).
That woman is a ding dong.
I mentioned this last time this was brought up, but the demon children who lived below us in Geneva and screamed for two hours straight every night and every morning at prime sleeping hours were French.
I found the article in the original link here more relaxed in tone than the first one we looked at a few weeks ago, so it didn't get my defenses up as much when I was reading it. I don't know. I guess if this is something that one really observes ubiquitously in France, then maybe there's something to it. It makes me feel better about not running to DD every time she cries, at least. ;-) I still refuse to believe that ALL French children sleep through the night when they're 2-3 months old, though.
Also, my brother and I were raised pretty similarly, I think. I'm the poster child of being able to handle delayed gratification to the point where nearly every day and even every meal is structured around it (I eat what I like best last, I save what I like to do best for the evenings when possible, etc). My brother isn't the opposite extreme, but he's not very good at it. He's one of those people who buys things for themselves even the week before Christmas while telling everyone, "I don't have any ideas for my list." I tend to think it's more of a personality difference, but then, I guess I am American. :-)
First - I agree that the hat looks ridiculous on her - once and awhile sure - but do you ALWAYS have to wear it??
and yea sure, if you let your baby cry then will eventually go to sleep - I'm sorry, but I just wasn't willing to do that at 2 months, I have ready studies about how that can be damaging to brain development
some of the other things I agree with - delayed gratification and letting your kids learn how to play on their own
but really? toddlers are toddlers IMO - they are looking for independence and its a tough time - I don't care where in the world you live. You can put down some rules and politeness in their vocab, but at the end of the day I don't believe that French toddlers are always well behaved!
So does this mean when I get my French citizenship, I will become a superior parent?
I'm sick of hearing about this book. Sure, some of the things mentioned in the article are true for some French parents I know and some are untrue.
One thing that really hit home with me is the play dates:
"When American families visited our home, the parents usually spent much of the visit refereeing their kids' spats, helping their toddlers do laps around the kitchen island, or getting down on the floor to build Lego villages. When French friends visited, by contrast, the grownups had coffee and the children played happily by themselves."
For me this rings true, with my French mom friends, we sit, drink wine and chat while our kids play on their own. The kids come to see us if they need a snack, toilet etc...
When I have play dates with American or British friends, they are always running after their kids, offering them a snack, making sure they aren't cold or whatever. That's fine too, but I prefer play dates with my French friends, which are focused on everyone having fun and not just the kids.
Did you guys read the comments after the msnbc article? They are nuts!
This sounds like an amazing play date.
I just did, and I'm sad that I'll never get those 2 minutes of my life back. Do people really think they're original with all the "All the French know how to do is surrender" comments? Sigh.
They are a lot of fun. Can't wait until the weather warms up so we can drink rose outside again!
My playdates are like this. I think it is more of an age thing. With ds almost 4 we can let them play on their own while we sit and chat, but with dd only 10 months I can't just let her be and sit and drink wine. But yes, once ds hit a certain age it was nice to go to playdates and actually socialize with other moms instead of worrying about him the whole time.
I am exactly this way.
IRT the article though I think it's an interesting concept that might have some truth to it. I was never picked up immediately when cried, I did play on my own and I am ridiculously patient. My parents aren't French. They're deaf. It would be interesting to see if a study of the children of deaf parents exhibit the same traits as the study of French kids.
Ditto being sick of hearing about this book.
As for the quote, I parented in the US for 3.5 years before coming here and this is how play dates went once the kids were actually old enough to play with each other (maybe 2ish?). When they were still babies and doing parallel play, yes, we sat on the floor with them. But thinking back over the last year or more, the moms definitely sat around having coffee in the living room while the kids ran amok. In fact, I just had a Skype play date last Friday and the kids actually talked to each other for about 5 or 6 minutes of screen time, then the 3 kids in the US ran off, while the moms kept chatting with me here in France. I didn't realize that wasn't "typical" in the U.S. or that doing this makes me "more French" when I had never lived in France before now.