French Twist (19 page)

I’ve seen it work with the toys, and I’m determined to practice the same kind of regulation in my closet. Gone are the days of carefree amassing. Eat it, two-for-one skirt sale at Old Navy! It’s time for some serious weeding and tough decisions. My French lady friends tell me it is all about concentrating on a few quality pivotal pieces that look great and will last. Maybe that explains the “classic” French look.

It’s time to talk about damn prizes. Like most of the kids in our neighborhood, my daughters had somehow begun to expect a prize for everything, from getting a haircut to accompanying me to fill the car up with gas. My bad.

I know there are certain situations that I cannot and, to be honest, don’t really want to get out of without giving my kids something special. For example, Daphne is petrified of the doctor. We’ve had enough conversations about her well-being and the necessity of checkups that she’s accepted the fact that she has to go—but she still doesn’t like it. At. All. She and I struck a deal that whenever she gets a shot I will buy her a prize. It’s always a harrowing experience; a couple of times, because of some very impressive writhing and theatrics, we’ve even had to abort the mission and reschedule. But when she does get through it, I’m usually so relieved that it’s over and heartbroken for poor,
tortured, hoarse-from-screaming Daphne that we head straight to the nearest toy store, and there I am relieved once again—this time of at least thirty-five dollars for a pity prize.

I know a French five-year-old, Christian, with the same kind of doctor-phobia, and I asked his father how they deal with the situation: “We are like you, and we always allow Christian a little
cadeau
after the doctor ordeal. He had his flu shot last time, so after it was over I took him to the stationery store and I bought him two rolls of tape.” Tape! How brilliant. And I’m sure Daphne would have much more fun with a few spoils from Office Depot (she has a real thing for Post-its) than the hundred-fiftieth stuffed animal that she inevitably picks out. And even the jumbo stack of multicolored Post-it notes is probably less than ten dollars. Voilà—another problem solved.

The truth is, my children are far more enjoyable now that I’ve put a stop to the bribes and exchange of perks for good conduct. Ever since the font went mostly dry (read: French), they don’t expect it. Occasionally, the spirit will move me and I will get them something unexpected. They are
sooo
happy—much happier than they used to be when the goods rained down. Our new favorite thing to do with the girls is to go out for dinner. They’re suddenly capable of remaining seated at a table in public, waiting for their food, eating with utensils and decorum, and hanging around with my husband and me until everyone is ready to go. My heart sank a bit when I read about a new restaurant nearby that features video screens in the tabletops so
parents can enjoy a dinner out in a restaurant while their kids watch movies. To me, this is beyond depressing. I’ve seen so many French children, as young as two years old, sit through long, luxurious meals without the need of a screen to keep them from exploding, crawling under the table, or throwing silverware. I’m no flower child, and my kids have all of their Disney characters down pat, but I think there’s something sad about having to plug them in for a family meal—especially at a restaurant.

I’ve been truly inspired by French children and their lack of dependence on
la télévision
. It is difficult to provide exact statistics comparing the television consumption of French and American kids, as there are countless studies and the numbers appear to change daily (not for the better, I’m afraid). But virtually all agree about the detrimental effect of television time on young, developing brains, and it’s safe to say that French children spend less time staring slack-jawed at the boob tube. One probable reason for the difference in older French kids is that network French television is reputedly ghastly, so the temptation isn’t the same; another is the fact that it’s not as easy in France to get six hundred channels beamed into your home. In 2008, the French television authority banned channels from programming any shows directed at children under three years old—while this is a booming market here in the United States.

Regardless of the grounds for the disparity, I’m convinced that those French kids receive a boost in their powers of self-amusement because they have more time in the day
to practice. In France, little kids don’t count on coming home from school and cuddling up with Dora or Phineas and Ferb, and the big ones have too much homework to do. I had always thought of television as having a calming effect, but a lightbulb went off during one auspicious multicultural, multigenerational party. Three families had gathered for lunch at the loft apartment of a mutual good friend. Oona, Daphne, and two young Frenchies represented the kids’ contingent. I had brought along the portable DVD player, figuring that at some point we could throw on a disc to ensure a little adult peace. After playing blissfully with the French kids for more than an hour, Daphne, while looking for some fairy gear in my bag (I usually travel with at least one wand and a tiara), realized that I was holding and begged me to put on a show. The other kids joined in. We parents had been thrilled that the kids were playing well, so we specified one episode only, and soon they were all deep into an
Angelina Ballerina
DVD. After thirty minutes of watching Angelina’s antics in a tutu, the four children returned to their game. Unfortunately, they had a hard time finding their groove again, and they clashed more than anything else. I usually like to blame these mood swings on fatigue or hunger, but they’d all eaten well and it was only 2:00
P.M.
Then the French mother dropped a giant revelation on me: “It is the television. They always fight when they watch TV. It takes a while for them to use their own brains again after watching.”

While I’d always told my children that television rots the brain, and other savory axioms that come gratis with
the parenting handbook, I’d never really seen it in practice. Or at least I hadn’t put it together. Ever since we’ve cut back on the TV time at home, sibling battles have most definitely waned.

To determine exactly how to cut back, I turned to the French. No doubt, there isn’t just one way to do things in France, so the answers I got on how much television is enough were all over the map. A few separate sources said that they allow their kids to watch only videos that “have a beginning and an end. A real story, and not mindless cartoons or sitcoms.” This seems like good advice but a little too stringent for me. I happen to love mindless cartoons. My new
French-inspired
approach is to allow screen time (including computer and iPad) only on the weekends. Although counterintuitive, this rule has made our lives much easier. Oona and Daphne don’t even bother begging for it on weekday mornings or when they get home from school anymore. Before the rule was in place, I spent valuable energy negotiating TV time. My kids were either livid or insufferable whine-bags if I dared to reject a morning show. It was often easier to let them have their way and feed and dress them in front of the box. These days, our mornings are often downright lovely, with a shared breakfast and more time for dressing and playing (and maybe some leftover homework).

There was also the happy realization that we are sending the message that dinner together is more important than television in the evenings. Very French indeed. I had a good laugh on a recent Tuesday night when, while we
were sitting around the table, my husband mistakenly announced, “After you clear the table, I’m going to show you guys a really funny YouTube video.” As the new heavy in the house, it was my duty to point out that the kids aren’t allowed to watch videos on weeknights. The sadness in the dining room at that moment was palpable, so I gave in. “Okay, you can watch Daddy’s YouTube clip but only tonight. This is highly irregular, so don’t get used to it.” The video itself, starring a kitten on a trampoline, was less than three minutes long, but before it was queued up, Oona and Daphne spent close to fifteen minutes dancing and hugging and laughing. They were
beyond
giddy that I was going to let them watch something. Anything. For a moment, after I stopped giggling at the spectacle, I wondered if I was being cruel in regular life by not allowing TV when it made them this happy. But that’s the thing: It had never made them this happy. Now that screen time is truly special and my kids don’t consider it a right, it has taken on a whole new meaning for them.

I know that cutting out television completely during the week is not feasible for many families (here and in France), yet I think we can take a cue from French parents and create a few (almost) unbendable rules to decrease TV’s dominion in the home. Or, if you’ve got the über-cable situation, you could try allowing programming only in French—I’m sure that would crush some of the appeal.

What does all this mean for vacation? I was tempted to consider most of summertime and any vacation day in the same boat as “weekend.” I’d made such a big deal about
television interfering with focus on school that I didn’t really have a leg to stand on in, say, late August, with no camp or school in sight. Once again, I suffered that now very familiar feeling that I was half-assing it in my Frenchification efforts when I was setting up interviews with French families, and a large number of them apologetically informed me that they would be unavailable for the month of August because they would not have phone or Internet reception. Paris in late summer is taken over by tourists, as the city’s natives flee to their centuries-old, rustic, and perfectly romantic farmhouses (gross generalization here, but much of the population does hoof it somewhere else). Eventually it dawned on me that a place without phone or Internet reception probably also didn’t have mini golf, multiplex movie theaters, video-game arcades, the dreaded Build-A-Bear franchise, or any of the other “amusements” that we’ve been accustomed to dishing out to the kids when vacationing. What do the French do all day with their kids in such a place? Not much, as it turns out. But the twist? Apparently they love it. Marguerite, a French mother of twins, said to me, “The children like to relax, and it’s very nice for them to play outside. And they like to garden with me.” It all sounded so quaint and, I must say, healthy, yet I could not—and did not—want to imagine my own kids after two days on vacation without their beloved Netflix or Nick Jr. computer games, not to mention no hope of diversions tailored specifically to their kind (the even more dreaded Chuck E. Cheese’s). But what kind of French-parenting wannabe was I if I didn’t at least try?

So I created my own faux French countryside.

Experimenting on children sounds so sinister, and I don’t want to get some kind of reputation as a Mommy Mengele or anything, but I’m positively elated by the results of this one.

For a number of reasons, I couldn’t quite get my entire family to the real French countryside anytime soon, so I did the best I could to recreate that experience much closer to home. Happily, it is not as hard to do as I thought, and we found our little getaway
française
in a remarkably close yet still sufficiently secluded hamlet on Fire Island, located off the south shore of Long Island. Just a two-hour train ride to a ferry, and in another half hour we felt very far away from Brooklyn. On our part of the island, which is 330 yards at its widest and 190 yards at its most narrow, there is only one small market and one restaurant. Not a lot of opportunity to placate kids with consumer crap.

Still, I hadn’t fully realized when we made the Fire Island arrangements how perfect it was for our purposes. With no cars allowed on the island, I was barred from chickening out and stockpiling backup toys and other diversions for the girls. It was time to sink or swim. Oona and Daphne were each allowed to bring whatever they wanted, provided it fit into their small backpacks, which they would be carrying (Lucie had once chastised me for always schlepping their things: “You are a mom, not a mule”). Of course, it would not have taken much effort at all to stock the iPad with games and movies and slip it into our (one!) suitcase, but I was hell-bent on getting this right, so we left all screens
at home. I was more than a little nervous, to be sure. I summoned thoughts of books like
Heidi
and
Little House on the Prairie
for inspiration. When I stopped and realized that I was worrying about how my children would respond when given only a wonderful beach house, gorgeous seashore, and a nearby bay filled with clams and crabs to entertain them, I felt like a sad and privileged city asshole.

On the downside, Fire Island, rather unfortunately, rivals New York City when it comes to things like the cost of food. To make my ersatz French getaway possible, we rented one big, beautifully ramshackle six-bedroom house with a revolving cast of good friends, including Paul, a fashion industry exec from Bordeaux who has been living in the United States for the past four years. The conditions were practically perfect for my summer experiment.

Despite our near translucence, my husband and I both love the beach and the sea, so this was hardly the first sandy vacation that the girls had been on. Previously, however, we had stayed primarily in beach motels, all with pools and usually located in towns that twinkled in the night—not because of the stars overhead but because of gaudily packed boardwalks blinking crazily with flashing rides, games, and neon signs saluting junk food aplenty. On these other vacations, the beach turned out to be among the lowlights for the girls (down there with teeth-brushing), just a backdrop to the glitz of the Ferris wheel and the curiously timeless thrill of a pink wad of cotton candy the size of a well-fed bunny. Generally the kids would consent to an hour—tops—of playing in the surf, to appease us so we would let
them go back in the pool or to the ice cream parlor. Oona often griped that the beach was “way too sandy.”

And so I set off for Fire Island lugging only a single suitcase—but also plenty of trepidation. I could easily envision ten days of isolation with minimal toys, no electronic entertainment, and copious amounts of sand ending in disaster.