French Twist

by Catherine Crawford

  Even the littlest among us—Daphers—ultimately took to the new style with surprising dedication, if not great enthusiasm. One morning she woke up—at 7:00 on the dot—and, still bleary-eyed, said, “I wonder what French throw-up looks like.”

  Yes, it seems we’d all become fairly obsessed with how things are done over there. That’s not to say all French kids are perfectly behaved master oil painters and, conversely, all American kids are materialistic brats or can be represented by those holy terrors on the show Toddlers & Tiaras. I am only saying that we Yanks could stand to reconsider our parenting approach and the French moms I know sure provide an excellent example of how we might improve our lives—and, by extension, our kids’ lives.

  Curiously, it was not only Oona and Daphne’s responses that surprised me as I set out to Frenchify our lives, but I was also thrown a curve by the reactions of fellow parents in my same situation. In the “Raw Nerves Hall of Fame,” there should be a special wing for parents. Everywhere I turned, from within my own family to the benches on the playground, I encountered serious resistance to my ideas and undertaking—even when I counted myself among the most needy of a parenting tune-up. Moms don’t like to be wrong or second-guessed. Now that I think back on my own mother’s child-rearing style, I suppose that should not have been much of a surprise. When it comes to feelings about their children, people are very sensitive. Rightly so. We love those little maniacs to pieces. Believe me when I say that this is not an attack on American parents. I am after a bit of relief in my life, along with the reversal of a few bad habits we have fallen into—such as when Daphne says, “If you just give me a candy cane, then I’ll stop yelling,” and I seriously consider her offer.

  So, to cut down on hurt feelings and destroyed familial relationships, I’ve given everyone a new name and tweaked a few settings to protect the innocent. In fact, the only real names used in the book are those of Oona, Daphne, and Mac. I have a feeling this book may disfigure a few of my friendships—I sure hope I am wrong, as I love and admire and definitely empathize with all my friends with kids—and using real names would’ve done more damage still. I rely on enormous generalizations in this book as a sort of shorthand, but I know that every country has its range of personalities.

  Now, back to that giant landing pad for helicopter parenting: Park Slope, Brooklyn. As it turns out, this part of the borough, and really most of Brooklyn, New York, provides an excellent environment for my undertaking. For starters, the French population is robust. The French and their well-behaved offspring are everywhere for me to behold and study, interview and emulate. That’s lucky because time is precious—and when our kids are young, every second counts even more.

  So why pack their days with playdates and performances? When I was growing up, young children rarely took classes other than the Big Three: swimming, dance, and piano. The swimming, by the way, was about waterproofing and not winning medals, dance was generally only for girls, and piano was related to discipline as much as anything else. Specialties like violin or soccer were offered to school-age kids. Karate was truly exotic. Throw a rock in my neighborhood today—though for the record I am not suggesting you do—and it would likely hit an infant currently enrolled in yoga classes (baby yoga pants!), ricochet off him, tag a toddler who, thanks to rigorous instruction, can already communicate in sign language though maybe not yet talk, and finally wallop the head of a five-year-old psychoanalysis patient with a Mandarin language tutor. Poll the parents of these busy creatures about raising children in the twenty-first century, and the responses would likely refer to the confusing amount of choices, theories, and products out there. Like parents of every generation, we love our children intensely, but we also have an unprecedented quantity of resources and information at our fingertips, and we knock ourselves out trying to give our children everything.

  Wading through all of the studies and expert theories, it is difficult to know what is best for our kids. One well-respected book says that the way to ensure a sense of independence in children is to keep them attached, literally attached, to a parent (usually the mother) as much as their tiny hearts desire, until they feel completely ready and confident to face the world alone. Another leading contemporary theorist, meanwhile, insists that if children aren’t taught to play, soothe themselves, and go to sleep independently, they will never have enough backbone to make it in this world. Both camps are convincing enough to confound any new parent.

  As Americans, we are accustomed to endless choices. With so many new ideas and opinions bouncing around the country every day, it is no wonder that we race through parenting fads like diapers on a newborn. However, I’ve discovered that trying on a new parenting style when the first one fails can result in rather calamitous fallout; I am surrounded by parents practically groveling for approval from their children. It’s painful to watch and excruciating to be party to. It’s not happening only in my home or in the smug urban confines of my much-written-about Brooklyn neighborhood—parenting across the country is being dismantled. Evidence of an epidemic of confusion and misbehavior can be seen in the malls, airports, and gas stations of every state of our great nation. Never mind our restaurants!

  Ever since I had children, I’ve struggled with this double-edged enlightenment. I found myself just wishing that someone, besides my mother, thank you very much, would tell me what really worked. My parents are religious Catholics, and most of their parenting decisions (like the one to have thirteen kids) are inspired by their faith. Which means that much of Mom’s advice isn’t going to work on me, an acutely fallen disciple.

  For all of the reading and talking and Web surfing I’ve done to try to figure out the best, most effective, yet loving and self-esteem-building approach to child-rearing, you’d think that I would have cracked the case by now. Instead, the results have been pointedly mixed.

  One result of this is that, for the first four years of her existence, Daphne found her way to our bed every night. Another by-product: Although my kids eat relatively well (that is, compared to many of their pals, who tend to consume only things that are white—mainly noodles, cheese, and more noodles), dinnertime hardly resembled the organized, well-mannered family meals of my own youth; most of all, I was tired of negotiating over everything.

  I needed to get French.

  I’ve already introduced you to the three most important people in this story, but there are many others. Il faut tout un village, as Hillary Clinton might’ve said were she born in Paris.

  As mentioned earlier, there is no shortage of French families for me to investigate, as the French seem to be very fond of Brooklyn. In addition to the many French children who attend my daughters’ school, there are abundant restaurants, boutiques, and cafés teeming with willing subjects.

  Then there is also France. Que peut-on faire? I had to spend some time in the native land of the well behaved. I just had to. Not sure I had to do all of that shopping in Paris, but, again, what can one do? (In English that time.)

  Luckily for me, the French are a proud people, and I have yet to encounter a Frenchie unwilling to discuss their inborn ways at length, with the exception of a trio of moms at French-English story time at a library on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, but I blame that on the bilingual American mom who poisoned them against me with her skepticism. Of course, I also had my inner circle of French confidants, always available to guide me on my quest. However, although most French people are endowed with a healthy dose of pride, for the most part I found that they are also rather private, so I’ve christened all of the Frenchies in this book with new names as well.

  As you will see, I turned to a veritable French army to help me navigate this brave new parenting world. But that’s not to say I agree with and think we should emulate everything the French do. There is plenty we Americans get right—I am a big believer in the can-do part of our cultural DNA—and I certainly don’t suggest throwing the baby out with the bathwater, no matter how poorly behaved the baby might be.
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br />   For instance, although they discussed a spanking ban in French parliament a few years ago, la fessée, as it’s called, is very much alive in France. Spanking is still legal here as well, but I saw more spanking in one week in France than I’ve seen in the last ten years in Brooklyn.

  The paddle aside, it is not so surprising that I zeroed in on the French. My mother passed down to me a bit of Huguenot blood and, along with it, boasting rights to a rebel affiliation with the French. Perhaps it is from her own grandmother Rose Chabot (Wait! That’s her real name. New rule: The dead keep their given names in this book. The French love rules) that my mom acquired a respect of French customs. When I was a kid, both of my parents would often point to the “grace” and “poise” of the French as something to behold—and imitate. When one of my brothers was born with a physical disability, my parents chose to bring him to Lourdes in the French Pyrenees, out of all of the holy sites in the world, with hopes of landing a miracle. There was an attitude in the house I grew up in that the French knew how to do things right. I am sure that I internalized this bias, and my feelings toward the French also developed into something a little stronger—a bit of a fetish, I’ll admit. But let’s just call it a healthy case of Francophilia, shall we? Sounds much nicer and less suggestive of dungeon-dwelling spankers and thigh-high boots with too many buckles. I first visited Paris when I was sixteen, and that’s when the love truly took flight. It. Is. So. Beautiful. When I look around my home today, I count no less than eight replicas of the Eiffel Tower.

  I knew I was going to marry my husband on our first Halloween together, sixteen years ago, when he dressed up as Tintin, who, while technically the creation of a Belgian writer and illustrator, has been embraced most passionately by the French. (Oona recently discovered Tintin in our stacks and, of course, took to the stories like Captain Haddock takes to booze. I had to ask myself, How would a French parent respond when their six-year-old asked, “What’s an opium den?” Thanks a lot, Tintin.) At the baby shower for my first child, we received two copies of The Red Balloon in French, one in English, and then later came the Criterion Collection DVD of the movie as well. My “good” plates are the Pillivuyt Brasserie Collection, featuring the original menus—with prices in francs—of French restaurants and cafés from the 1920s.

  My Francophilia spiked even higher when I began looking to the French for parenting wisdom. Early on in my quest, it took on strange forms and I began to see even my most quotidian experiences through Franco-tinted lenses. Last summer, for instance, the girls, Mac, and I spent a week on the Jersey shore. This was before I’d waded all that deep into the French end of the parenting pool, so we acquiesced when the kids said they would rather swim in the overly chlorinated and packed hotel pool than the wide-open ocean, which beckoned only a couple hundred feet away. But the French approach was very much on my mind.

  So we sat on the side, dangling our ankles in the weirdly warm water, while Daphne called, “Look at me, Mommy! I’m a shark, Mommy!” And Oona hollered, “Watch me go down the slide, Daddy!”

  Over and over again. And then once more. Oh, okay, and then once more.

  It was while sitting there one afternoon that I eavesdropped on a handful of older kids—young teens—playing a pool game. From what I could gather, here’s how the game worked: One kid held the wall at one side of the pool, with all the others grouped at the far end. The lone swimmer—or catcher in the tide, if you will—gave the group a topic: favorite movie, say, or favorite food. The group then decided among themselves on a collective answer and told the catcher to guess what it was. When the catcher guessed correctly—Ace Ventura!—the group of swimmers took off for the opposite wall and the catcher tried to … catch as many of them as he could.

  I watched the game progress with mild curiosity between my poolside cheerleading duties, until one round sucked in my interest. The category was favorite food.

  Catcher: “Chicken!” No one in the group budged. Catcher: “Chicken parm!” No budging. Catcher: “Chicken parm with linguini!” The group practically emptied the pool of water, their paddling was so explosive.

  Chicken parm with linguini? That was their favorite food? And the catcher knew that? Perhaps this was a regional anomaly—but somehow I didn’t think so. It was more likely that, all across this great land of ours, small packs of teen swimmers were splashing about, incited by the mere mention of chicken parm with linguini.

  Before I knew it, sitting there at this New Jersey motel pool, my mind had wandered far beyond the Atlantic. Perhaps at that exact moment, a similar game was going down in a hotel pool on the western coast of France. Only, instead of chicken parm with noodles, it went something like this: “Duck! Duck Margaret! Duck Margaret avec sauce orange!” I remember thinking that it might not be too late to shape kids who’d turn into young teens with sophisticated tastes and interesting ideas about food. Of course, the French don’t say “duck.” I had a lot of work ahead of me.

  I never did find out what kind of swimming-pool games French kids play, but I unearthed much, much more.

  Incredibly, for an American mom used to fast-changing parenting trends, French child-rearing techniques didn’t seem to have changed all that much over the years. In some ways this was scary—that whole spanking business—but in most others I have to say it was a relief. What new mom or dad, after all, has not been utterly baffled by the teeming shelves of the local Barnes & Noble’s parenting section? Even what you think is the simplest question—how the hell do I get my kid to sleep through the night?—morphs into a bloody battleground of conflicting information. No pressure though: Choose the wrong approach and you are only setting your kid up for a life of misery, abject failure, and—mon Dieu!—a non–Ivy League education.

  The best part? We are expected to make these incredibly huge, life-altering decisions while experiencing terrorist-suspect levels of sleep deprivation. It’s a wonder any parents at all make it through alive—never mind the kids.

  So, as you might imagine, I quite literally cried tears of immense, body-shaking joy when, five years into parenthood, I began to think there might be another way. A French way.

  Was every idea suggested by my posse of French informants a resounding success? Of course not. Was I able to implement all the good advice I received? You’re a parent—or know one. You tell me.

  But this much is unequivocally true: After surprisingly little Frenchifying time, Daphne’s McEnroe moments were diminishing (not much to be done about those Belushi tendencies—the kid is spirited!). There was also a perceptible decrease in Oona’s supercilious eye-rolling. Now, as I write this, many months and months into the big experiment, the girls are even exhibiting an unmistakable fondness for the French. We’ve talked about spending a future summer in Paris—and both girls light up discussing how delicious the pastries will be. Not long ago, Oona discovered the French–English dictionary on our bookshelf and started thumbing through it with great interest. Soon after, my husband and I heard her giggling over the palm-sized book in the next room. What, we asked Oona, could be so funny in a dictionary? She demurred for a moment, uncertain if she should share her finding. She feared we would think it was inappropriate for a seven-year-old. That’s okay, we assured her, just tell us.

  “Okay,” she said, drawing a breath. “C’est une garce.” Translation: “He/she is a bitch.”

  Oona and Daphne cackled and did a little dance together, delighting in the tiny transgression. The French had done what not long ago seemed impossible: They’d brought Wharton and Belushi together.

  What other miracles were they capable of? I was determined to find out.

  Chapter Two

  Un Début Français or French from the Start

  My God. I love this place.

  I often feel that way when I’m in Paris, but my heart practically exploded when a pregnant French friend announced that she was passing on the salad course at our lunch out in Montmartre. With a glass of red wine in hand because “the iron is good for
the baby,” she explained, “In France, we try to limit the raw, especially green leafy vegetables.” If I am ever pregnant again (the longest of long shots), I am so going to be French about it. I like vegetables as much as the next girl—maybe even more, depending on who I am standing next to—but when I was pregnant I hated them with a zeal usually reserved for things like blisters or bad haircuts. I was nauseated all through both of my pregnancies and really would have been happy eating nothing but instant mashed potatoes and oatmeal. However, I obsessively choked down as much kale, chard, and romaine as I possibly could. For the baby! I would have dutifully done the same with goat eyeballs if someone told me I had to—for the baby.

  In retrospect, it is almost embarrassing that it took me so long to pay attention to the French. I should have known it the moment I began reading The New Basics by Dr. Michel Cohen (a Frenchman, of course). After a steady diet of the utterly alarmist What to Expect books and the all-too-tender sentiments of the Sears family of pediatric writers, I was ready for the direct, far more laissez-faire attitude of le bon docteur. I was eight months’ pregnant with my first child when a friend—a childless pal, now that I think about it—randomly sent me the book, which presents Cohen’s take on the early years of child-rearing. I read it eagerly and then, when I’d finished, I did what any other American mother would do: I read about eight more books on the topic. Because that is how we do it—we approach pregnancy like a job, gobbling up everything we can on the subject so that we are experts on every theory. And, as with most jobs, a certain amount of drudgery accrues. I have discovered that, in addition to ensuring mastery of these theories, this strategy to parenting also, unfortunately, results in utter confusion and frustration.