French Twist (14 page)

It is even harder to play critic and certainly disciplinarian if you are always in buddy mode with your kids. Last summer, over lunch with a group of French parents just outside Paris, I found myself talking about the American inclination to be pals with one’s child, and, fatefully, I used the word “buddy.” You’d have thought I let out an enormous fart or disparaged the work of Serge Gainsbourg, based on the combination of eye rolls and giggles that rippled around the table. (For the record, I am not especially flatulent and
j’adore
Serge.) I then learned that in certain French circles the “B word” is a point of ridicule.

“Oh, we hear it all the time,” one of my lunch companions lamented, laughing. “I work with this American and he can’t seem to stop with it. Things like, ‘Come on now, buddy, don’t be mad at me because it’s time to go. Please, buddy.’ Buddy! Buddy! Buddy! Or ‘Way to go, buddy! You ate your cookie!’ and things like that. I want to say to him, ‘You should try being the father and let the child’s friends be the buddies.’ The poor child cannot do anything without his father buddy, buddy, buddy all over him.”

Another cringe moment for me. I could hear my own voice from the past echo, usually after a scolding, “We’re buddies, right?” When you think about it, it does sound kind of desperate—not a sentiment that I would necessarily associate with a chief. The French make a real distinction
between the parent and the child, with parents on an elevated level. I can see why we have trouble getting our children to obey. Even worse, we find ourselves constantly bowing to the demands of our kids. Why would they think it shouldn’t be that way, seeing as we are all just buddies?

Always referring to a child as a buddy must take its toll on the parent’s mind as well, and I’m sure this is related to why we feel so wretched leaving our buddies behind when we attempt to go out on a date. Who would leave a good friend screaming, clawing, and begging at the door? If we avoid this dynamic from the kid’s first day, we will dodge, or at least diminish, the torturous scenes at the door.

By being truly in charge and not a buddy, I have accomplished a change in the house that has me dizzy with delight. One day, I stopped and took a good look at my home, a large three-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn with spacious dining and living rooms. Not one of the eight rooms was free of kid chaos and clutter. There was an enormous play kitchen in our living room, a wagon full of toys in the dining room, and piles and piles of art supplies in the kitchen, where the walls looked like they belonged to a small art gallery featuring only the scribbles of children. Mini Mondrians they ain’t. Not even the hallways were safe from kiddie trinkets. And I’m not talking things that were left about but toys that “belonged” when they were put away. I also thought back to the dwellings of my French friends, and I realized that it didn’t have to be this way. Sure, my children are a huge part of my life, but just
as I had learned that they didn’t have to completely take over my mental space, I discovered the same applied to my physical turf. In the French model, children keep their things in their rooms. The rest of the house is mostly free of kiddie litter. This is somewhat flexible, of course, but the big exception is the living room. There are no toys in the living room. The living room is sacred. Children aren’t banned, but they certainly are not encouraged to use it as a play or storage room. Adults like to sit on living room couches and—
ouai!
—enjoy a bottle of wine with their adult friends. Thrilling, no? It helps that French kids don’t usually accumulate the same volume of toys as their American counterparts, but they also are raised knowing that there is an aspect to their parents’ lives that does not revolve around them, and that part of adult life requires its own terrain.

Since my modus operandi in this project is to go rather French with my child-rearing, I took the leap not long ago and removed all toys, scooters, coloring books, adorable fake appliances, sporting goods, mediocre and inspired art projects, board games, and stuffed animals from the living room. While I was at it, I rearranged the furniture—in fact, I had to, because I had so much rediscovered space in there. It felt like Christmas. I beam with mammoth pleasure just thinking about it. Remember, I am not at all a hard-ass, so a few contraband toys and books do creep back to the coffee table, but these things can be whisked away in less than a minute when I want to feel like a grown-up—and not a Toys“R”Us manager. Not long ago,
a friend commented that “the living room feels much less stressful,” before she had put her finger on the changes. I had to hug her. Victory was mine!

One French mother, whose five sons are now grown, confessed to me that she wasn’t always such a hard-ass either: “I am not so strict with this. I used to let them bring their toys in the living room on Sundays. But there was the condition that they had to clean them all out before the weekend was over.”

What a softy.

Last spring I spoke with Noémi, a twenty-three-year-old from Bordeaux. She described the controlled kitchen environment in her home when she was growing up: “There were only two drawers that I was allowed to open in the kitchen. Well, one was not really a drawer, it was our little bread box. And the other was a drawer that had crackers and things like that. I was not permitted to go and open the refrigerator and search around. This was the territory of my mother, and my brother and I had to go to her if we wanted some food. Of course, if my parents were away on vacation, we should search through everything! It was very exciting for us.”

I say “well done” to any mother whose kids get a thrill from opening the refrigerator door. It makes sense that small children not be allowed free rein in the fridge. They are, after all, not the most rational beings when it comes to nutrition. As soon as my kids could manage, they waddled right over to the big white box and went for it. And, for some reason, we did not stop them—until now. I’ve deemed
age seven the turning point for fridge freedom. (In France this is considered
l’âge de raison
—the age of reason—when kids are typically awarded more freedom in many aspects of their lives.) I’ve also been reminding my kids that never, never—never!—should they feel at liberty to examine the contents of their host’s refrigerator when they are guests in another home. It drives me insane when my kids’ friends are so comfortable, or maybe misguided, that they help themselves to ours.

There is a lot to be gained from an inquest into the mind of a typical French parent. Their intense focus on society made me realize that my own intense focus on Oona and Daphne’s individuality had served as an excuse for some really crap behavior. Still, I am not about squelching them—just dimming the spotlight a tad. Having carefully scrutinized the French, I have come to view their relationships with their children in a whole new light. They have a way of adoring their kids and making them feel completely loved but still maintaining an enormously high degree of control. On top of that, French parents do an admirable job of preserving their own identities, and their sanity. I’m even sleeping better these days, not waking up in the middle of the night nearly as often thinking about whether or not Daphne has clean leggings for school or if I remembered to sign a permission slip. In a strange way, the strictness the French practice with their children early on allows everyone involved to relax a little. That is reason enough for me to get as French as I possibly can.

Chapter Five
 

Now that I have a better idea how the French make the magic happen, I like to think back on the very beginnings of my obsession with French parenting. It’s no surprise that food was at the center of it all.

So let me take you back to my dinner with my French pal Lucie and her family—the fateful night that kicked this whole thing off. Initially I had suggested lunch to my friend, mother of two and a bona fide Parisian. It didn’t seem possible for them to come to Brooklyn from Harlem for dinner—unless we wanted to eat at 5:00
P.M.
Surely she would need to have her kids home by 7:00 for baths and their bedtime routine. Lucie, however, did not even
flinch at the dinner idea. They would come at 5:00 and we would eat at 6:30. I felt a bit guilty imagining her exhausted, strung-out kids arriving back home close to 10:00 (the subway commute can be more than an hour), but I kept quiet. Although my husband and I had been friends with Lucie and her husband, John, for years, somehow we’d never managed to bring our children together in any meaningful way. By the night of the “fateful dinner,” it was high time to hang out, as Lucie’s oldest daughter was already six, we both had four-year-olds, and my youngest was closing in on two. At first, the kids were a little shy with one another, but they soon disappeared into Oona and Daphne’s room and traveled deep into that wonderful land kids go to when they are having fun (and leaving their parents in peace). I recall my delight on many levels: 1) Lucie’s children are bilingual, and they often slip into French without a thought. The possibility that my own kids might pick up a phrase or two made me swoon; 2) in a similar spirit of healthy exposure, Lucie’s kids had immediately impressed me with their manners, which perhaps could rub off on my kiddies as well; 3) almost forty-five minutes had elapsed when I realized I hadn’t heard any screaming (except for shrieks of laughter), tattling, or entreaties for snacks or TV. Something special was in the air.

Ever since Oona was born, I’d grown accustomed to socializing under siege—usually with at least one child on my lap. Dinner parties were typically a free-for-all where we tried to eat, see our friends, and survive, not necessarily in that order. I had learned to relate to adults between
“performances” by my children and/or a friend’s kids, while also fulfilling my role as an entertainer/chef/handy-woman on call. With John and Lucie, it was wonderful to sit in the living room and enjoy uninterrupted grown-up conversation with wine in hand. I kept mentioning the unbelievable luck we were having with the kids, but John and Lucie did not find it as thrilling. To them, it seemed about as noteworthy as a three-year-old who can walk. When things continued to go smoothly in the kids’ room, I got up to put dinner together. I remember hearing Lucie call out something in French, and then her two kids were at my side. Apparently Lucie had told them it was time to come and help. The weirdest part? They had listened.