French Children Don't Throw Food (15 page)

A paediatrician and a psychologist each visit the crèche regularly. The caregivers chart Bean’s daily naps and poos, and report to me about how she’s eaten. They feed the kids Bean’s age one at a time, with the child either on someone’s lap or in a bouncy seat. They put the kids down to sleep at roughly the same time each day, and claim not to wake them up. For this initial adaptation period, Anne-Marie asks me to bring in a shirt that I’ve worn, so that Bean can sleep with it. This feels a bit canine, but I do it.

I’m struck by the confidence of Anne-Marie and the other caregivers. They’re quite certain about what children of each age need, and they’re equally confident in their abilities to provide it. They convey this without being smug or impatient. My one gripe is that Anne-Marie insists on calling me ‘mother of Bean’ rather than ‘Pamela’; she says it’s too difficult to learn the names of all the parents.

Given our doubts about sending Bean to a crèche, we’ve compromised by enrolling her just four days a week, from about 9:30 to 3:30. Plenty of her classmates will be there five days a week, for much longer each day (the crèche is open from 7:30 to 6 pm).

As in Marbeau’s day, Bean is supposed to arrive with a clean nappy. This becomes an almost Talmudic point of discussion between Simon and me. What constitutes ‘arrival’? If Bean poos on her way in the door, or while we’re saying goodbye, who changes the offending nappy? Is it us, or the
auxiliaires
?

The first two weeks are an adaptation period, in which she
stays
for increasingly long periods at the crèche, with and without us. She cries a bit each time I leave, but Anne-Marie assures me that she quiets down soon after I go. Often one of the caregivers holds her up at the window facing the street, so I can wave when I get outside.

If the crèche is damaging Bean, we can’t tell. Pretty soon she’s cheerful when we drop her off, and happy when we pick her up. Once Bean has been at the crèche for a while, I begin to notice that the place is a microcosm of French parenting. That includes the bad stuff. Anne-Marie and the other caregivers are mystified that I’m still breastfeeding Bean when she’s nine months old and especially when I feed her on the premises. They’re not thrilled with my short-lived plan to drop off pumped breast milk before lunch each day, but they don’t try to stop me.

All the big, positive French parenting ideas are in evidence too. Since there’s so much agreement anyway on the best way to do things, the caregivers reinforce the things that French parents do – or at least would like to be doing – at home. They talk to even very young children all the time at the crèche, with what seems like perfect conviction that the children understand.
¹

There’s a lot of talk about the
cadre
, or framework. At a parents’ meeting, one of the teachers speaks almost poetically about it: ‘Everything is very
encadré
– built into a framework – the hour that they arrive and leave, for example. But inside this framework we try to introduce flexibility, fluidity and spontaneity, for the children and also for the [teaching] team.’

Bean spends a lot of the day just ambling around the room, playing with whatever she wants. I’m concerned about this. Where are the music circles? What about organized activities? But I soon realize that all this freedom is by design. It’s the French
cadre
model yet again: kids get firm boundaries, but lots of freedom within those boundaries. And they’re supposed to learn to cope with boredom and to play by themselves. ‘When the child plays, he constructs himself,’ explains Sylvie, one of Bean’s caregivers when she moves up to
grande section
.

A mayor’s report on Parisian crèches calls for a spirit of ‘energetic discovery’ in which the children are ‘left to exercise their appetite for experimentation of their five senses, of using their muscles, of sensations, and of physical space.’ As kids get older they do have some organized activities, but no one is obliged to participate.

‘We propose, we don’t force,’ another of Bean’s teachers explains. There’s soothing background music to launch the kids into their naps, and a pile of books that they can read in bed. The kids gradually wake up to their
goûter
, the afternoon snack. The crèche isn’t the post office. It’s more like a spa holiday, but with better food.

In the playground there are no rules or structure, also by design. The idea is to give kids as much freedom as possible. ‘When they’re outside, we intervene very little,’ says Mehrie, another of Bean’s caregivers. ‘If we intervene all the time, they go a little nuts.’

The crèche also teaches kids patience. I watch as a two-year-old demands that Mehrie pick her up. But Mehrie is
cleaning
the table where the children have just had lunch. ‘For the moment I’m not free. You wait two seconds,’ Mehrie says gently to the little girl. Then she turns to me and explains: ‘We try to teach them to wait, it’s very important. They can’t have everything right away.’

The caregivers speak calmly and respectfully to the kids, using the language of rights: you have the right to do this, you don’t have the right to do that. They say it with the same utter conviction that I’ve heard in the voices of French parents. Everyone believes that for the
cadre
to seem immutable, the rules have to be consistent. ‘The prohibitions are always the same, and we always give a reason for them,’ Sylvie tells me.

I know the crèche is strict about certain things because, after a while, Bean repeats phrases she’s learned. We know they’re crèche phrases because the teachers there are her only source of French. It’s like she’s been wearing a wire all day, and we get to listen to the tape. Most of what Bean repeats is in the command form, like ‘
On va pas crier!
’ – we’re not going to shout. My rhyming favourites, which I immediately begin using at home, are ‘
Couche-toi!
’ (go to sleep) and ‘
Mouche-toi!
’ (blow your nose), said when you’re holding a tissue up to a child’s face.

For a while Bean speaks French
only
in the command form, or in these declarations of what’s permissible and what isn’t. When she plays ‘teacher’ at home, she stands on a chair, wags her finger and shouts instructions to imaginary children, or occasionally to our surprised lunch guests.

Soon, in addition to commands, Bean is coming home with songs. She often sings one that we know only as ‘
Tomola tomola, vatovi!
’ in which she sings more and more loudly with each line, while making a spinning motion with her arms. It’s only later that I learn this is one of the most popular French children’s songs, which actually goes ‘
Ton moulin, ton moulin va trop vite
’ – about a windmill that’s going too quickly.

What really wins us over about the crèche is the food or, more specifically, the dining experience. Each Monday, the crèche posts its menu for the week on a giant white board near the entrance.

I sometimes photograph these menus and email them to my mother. They read like the chalkboard menus at Parisian brasseries. Every day, lunch is served in four courses: a cold vegetable starter; a main dish with a side dish of grains or cooked vegetables; a different cheese each day and a dessert of fresh fruit or fruit purée. There’s a slightly modified version for each age group. The youngest kids have the same foods, but puréed.

A typical menu starts with hearts of palm and tomato salad. This is followed by sliced turkey
au basilic
accompanied by rice in a
provençal
cream sauce. The third course is a portion of St Nectaire cheese with a slice of fresh baguette. Dessert is fresh kiwi.

A van arrives several times a week with seasonal, fresh, sometimes even organic ingredients. Aside from the occasional tin of tomato purée, nothing is processed or
pre-cooked
. A few vegetables are frozen, but never pre-cooked. Using these ingredients, an in-house cook prepares lunch from scratch each day.

I have trouble imagining two-year-olds sitting through a meal like this, so the crèche lets me sit in on lunch one Wednesday, when Bean is at home with a babysitter. I’m stunned when I realize how my daughter eats lunch most days. I sit quietly with my reporter’s notebook while her classmates assemble, in groups of four, at a series of square toddler-sized tables. One of her caregivers wheels up a cart filled with covered serving plates, and bread wrapped in plastic to keep it fresh. There’s an adult at each table.

First, the teacher uncovers and displays each dish. There’s a bright-red tomato salad in vinaigrette, and a side dish of peas, carrots and onions in a tomato sauce. ‘This is followed by
le poisson
,’ she says, to approving glances, as she reveals a flaky white fish in a light butter sauce. Next she previews the cheese course: ‘Today it’s
le bleu
,’ she says, showing the kids a crumbly blue cheese. Then she displays dessert: whole apples, which she’ll slice at the table.

The food looks simple, fresh and appetizing. The children eat with gusto. Except for the melamine plates, the bite-size pieces and the fact that some of the diners have to be prodded to say ‘
merci
’, I might be in a high-end restaurant.

Just who are the people taking care of Bean? To find out, one windy autumn morning I turn up for the annual entrance examination for ABC Puériculture, one of the schools that
trains
crèche workers. There are hundreds of nervous women (and a few men) in their twenties, who are looking shyly at each other or doing last-minute practice questions in thick workbooks.

They’re understandably anxious. Of the more than 500 people who sit the annual entrance test, just thirty are admitted to the training school. Applicants are grilled on reasoning, reading comprehension, maths and human biology. Those who advance to the second round face a psychological exam, an oral presentation and interrogation by a panel of experts.

The thirty winners then do a year of coursework and internships, following a curriculum set by the government. They learn the basics of child nutrition, sleep and hygiene. They practise mixing baby formula and changing nappies. They’ll have additional week-long training sessions throughout their careers.

In France, working in a crèche is a career. There are schools all over the country with similarly rigorous entrance standards, creating an army of skilled workers. Just half of the carers at a crèche must be
auxiliaires
or have a similar degree. A quarter must have degrees related to health, leisure or social work. Another quarter are exempt from any qualifications, but must be trained in-house.
²
At Bean’s crèche, thirteen of the sixteen carers are
auxiliaires
or similar.

I start to see Anne-Marie and other caregivers at Bean’s crèche as the Rhodes Scholars of babycare. And I understand their confidence. They’ve mastered their subject and earned
the
respect of parents. And I’m indebted to them. During nearly three years that Bean is at the crèche, they potty-train her, teach her table manners, and give her a French immersion course.

By Bean’s third year at the crèche, I suspect that the days are starting to feel long, and that perhaps she’s not being stimulated enough. I’m ready for her to move on to nursery. But Bean still seems perfectly content. She chatters all the time about Maky and Lila (pronounced ‘Lee-lah’), her two best friends. (Interestingly, she’s gravitated to other children of foreigners: Lila’s parents are Moroccan and Japanese. Maky’s dad is from Senegal.) She has definitely been socialized. When Simon and I take Bean to Barcelona for a long weekend, she keeps asking where the other children are.

The kids in Bean’s section spend a lot of time running around and shouting in the Astroturf courtyard, which is stocked with little scooters and carts. Bean is usually out there when I pick her up. As soon as she spots me, she bolts over and throws herself happily into my arms, shouting the news of the day.

On Bean’s last day at the crèche, after the goodbye party and the clearing out of her locker, Bean gives a big hug and kiss goodbye to Sylvie, who’s recently been her main caregiver. Sylvie has been the model of professionalism all year. But when Bean embraces her, Sylvie begins to cry. I cry too.

By the end of crèche, Simon and I feel that she’s had a good experience. But we did often feel guilty dropping her off each
day
. And we can’t help but notice all the alarming headlines in the American press, on how nurseries affect kids.

Continental Europeans aren’t really asking about that any more. Sheila Kamerman at Columbia University says they generally believe that high-quality nurseries, with small groups and warm, well-trained caregivers who have made the job a career, are good for kids. And conversely, they assume that bad nurseries are bad for kids.

Americans have too many misgivings about nurseries to take this for granted. So the US government has funded the largest-ever study of how early childcare arrangements correlate with the way kids develop and behave later in life.
³

Many of the headlines on nurseries in America come out of data from this giant study. These headlines often ignore one of the study’s principal findings: that early childcare arrangements just aren’t very significant. ‘Parenting quality is a much more important predictor of child development than type, quantity or quality of childcare,’ explains a press release. Children fared better when their parents were more educated and wealthier, when they had books and play materials at home, and when they had ‘enhancing experiences’ like going to the library. This was the same whether the child went to a nursery for thirty or more hours a week, or had a stay-at-home mother. And as I mentioned earlier, the study found that what’s especially crucial is the mother’s ‘sensitivity’ – how attuned she is to her child’s experience of the world.

This is also true at a nursery. One of the study’s researchers
⁴
writes that kids get ‘high-quality’ care when the caregiver is
‘attentive
to [the child’s] needs, responsive to her verbal and non-verbal signals and cues, stimulating of her curiosity and desire to learn about the world, and emotionally warm, supportive and caring’.