French Children Don't Throw Food (28 page)

Fanny says she also tries to make the meal fun. Lucie is of course a seasoned chef, because she makes cakes most weekends. Fanny says she has Lucie play some role in making dinner too, by preparing some of the food or setting the table. ‘We help her, but we make it playful. And it’s every day,’ Fanny says.

When it’s time to eat, Fanny doesn’t austerely wave her finger at Lucie and order her to taste things. They talk about
the
food. Often they discuss the flavour of each cheese. And having participated in preparing the meal, Lucie is invested in how it turns out. There’s complicity. If a certain dish is a flop, ‘We all have a laugh about it,’ Fanny says.

Part of keeping the mood light is keeping the meal brief. Fanny says that once Lucie has tasted everything, she’s allowed to leave the table. The book
Votre Enfant
says a meal with young kids shouldn’t last more than thirty minutes. French kids learn to linger over longer meals as they get older. And as they start going to bed later, they eat more weeknight dinners with their parents. Eating together teaches the kids table manners, social skills, and how to make conversation.

Planning the dinner menu is a lesson in balance. I’m struck by how French mothers like Fanny seem to have the day’s culinary rhythm mapped out in their heads. They assume that their kids will have their one big protein-heavy meal at lunchtime. For dinner they mostly serve carbohydrates like pasta, along with vegetables.

Fanny may have just raced home from the office, but as they do at the crèche she calmly serves dinner in courses. She gives Lucie a cold vegetable starter, such as shredded carrots in vinaigrette. Then there’s a main course, usually pasta or rice with vegetables. Occasionally she’ll cook a bit of fish or meat, but usually she expects Lucie to have most of her protein at lunch. ‘I try to avoid proteins [at night] because I think I’ve been educated like that. They say once per day is enough. I try to focus on vegetables.’

Some parents tell me that, in winter, they often serve soup
for
dinner, along with a baguette or maybe a bit of pasta. It’s a filling meal, which also relies heavily on grains and vegetables. A lot of parents purée these soups. And that’s dinner. Kids might drink some juice at breakfast, or at the afternoon
goûter
. But at lunch and dinner they drink water, usually at room temperature or slightly chilled.

Weekends are for family meals. Almost all the French families I know have a large lunch
en famille
on both Saturday and Sunday. The kids are almost always involved in cooking and setting up these meals. On weekends ‘We bake, we cook, I have cookbooks for children, they have their own recipes,’ says Denise, the medical ethicist and mother of two girls.

After all these preparations, they sit down to eat. Sociologists Claude Fischler and Estelle Masson, authors of the book
Manger
, say that a French person who eats a sandwich at his desk for lunch doesn’t even count this as ‘having eaten’. For the French, ‘Eating means sitting at the table with others, taking one’s time and not doing other things at the same time.’ Whereas for Americans, ‘Health is seen as the main reason for eating.’
³

At Bean’s fifth birthday party, I announce that it’s time for the cake. Suddenly all the kids – who’ve been raucously playing – file into our dining room and sit down at the table. They’re all
sage
at once. Bean sits at the head of the table and hands out plates, spoons and napkins. Except for lighting the candles and carrying out the cake, I don’t have much of a role. By five years old, sitting calmly at the table for any kind of
eating
is an automatic reflex for French kids. There’s no question of eating on the couch, in front of the television, or while looking at the computer.

Of course, one of the benefits of having some
cadre
in your home is that you can go outside the
cadre
without worrying that it will collapse. Denise tells me that once a week she lets her two girls – who are seven and nine – have dinner in front of the television.

On weekends and during those ubiquitous school holidays, French parents are more relaxed about what time their kids eat and go to bed. They trust the
cadre
to be there when they need it again. Magazines run articles about easing kids back on to an earlier schedule, once school starts again. When we’re on holiday with my friend Hélène and her husband William, I panic a bit when it’s 1:30 and William still hasn’t got home with some of the ingredients for our lunch.

But Hélène figures that the kids can adapt. They are people, after all, who like us are capable of coping with a bit of frustration. She breaks open a bag of potato crisps, and the six kids all gather at the kitchen table to eat them. Then they pile outside to play again, until lunch is ready. It’s no big deal. We all cope. A little while later we all have a long, lovely meal at the table that we’ve set up under a tree.

If over-parenting were an airline, Park Slope, Brooklyn, would be its hub. Every parenting trend and new product seems to originate or refuel there. Park Slope is home to ‘New York’s first baby-wearing and breastfeeding boutique’, and to a
$15,000-per-year
nursery where teachers ‘actively discourage and stop superhero play’. If you live in Park Slope, ‘Baby Bodyguards’ will kid-proof your duplex for $600. (The company’s founder explains that ‘Once I gave birth and my son became part of the external world, my fear and anxiety kicked in.’)

Despite Park Slope’s reputation for zealous parenting, I’m unprepared for what I witness in a playground there on a sunny Sunday morning. At first, the father and son I spot just seem to be doing a particularly energetic version of narrated play. The boy looks about six. The father – in expensive jeans and stylish weekend stubble – has followed him to the top of the jungle gym. In a bilingual twist, he’s giving the boy a running commentary in both English and what sounds like American-accented German.

The son seems used to his father heading down the slide behind him. When they move to the swings, the father continues his bilingual soliloquy, while pushing. This is all still within the bounds of what I’ve seen elsewhere. But then the mother arrives. She’s a rail-thin brunette in her own pair of expensive jeans, carrying a bag of produce from the farmers’ market next door.

‘Here’s your parsley snack! Do you want your parsley snack?’ she says to the boy, handing him a green sprig.

Parsley? A snack? I think I understand the intention: these parents don’t want their son to be fat. They want him to have a varied palate. They see themselves as original thinkers who can provide him with unusual experiences, German and
parsley
surely being just a small sample. And I grant them that parsley doesn’t run the risk of ruining their son’s – or frankly anyone’s – appetite.

But there’s a reason why parsley has never caught on as a snack. It’s a seasoning. It doesn’t taste good all by itself. I get the feeling that these parents are trying to remove their son from the collective wisdom of our species, and the basic chemistry of what tastes good. I can only imagine the effort this requires. What happens when he discovers cookies?

When I mention the ‘parsley snack’ incident to American parents, they’re not surprised. They concede that parsley isn’t a snack. But they admire the effort. At that impressionable age, why not try? In the hothouse environment of Park Slope, some parents have gone beyond the American Question: how do we speed up the stages of development? They’re now asking how they can override basic sensory experiences.

I realize I’m guilty of this too when I take Bean to her first Halloween party, when she’s about two. The French haven’t embraced this holiday yet, the way the British have. (I go to one adult Halloween party in Paris, where all the women are dressed as sexy witches, and most of the men are Draculas.) Each year a group of Anglophone mothers in Paris takes over the top floor of a Starbucks near the Bastille and sets up little trick-or-treat stations around the room.

As soon as Bean grasps the concept – all these people are
giving her sweets
– she begins to eat them. She doesn’t just eat a few sweets; she tries to eat all the sweets in her bag. She sits in a corner of the room stuffing pink, yellow and green gooey
masses
into her mouth. I have to intervene to slow her down.

It occurs to me then that I’ve taken the wrong approach to sweets. Before this Halloween, Bean had rarely eaten refined sugar. To my knowledge, she hadn’t had a single gummy bear. Like the parsley parents, I’d tried to pretend that sweets didn’t exist.

I’ve watched other Anglophone parents agonize about giving their kids any sugar at all. One afternoon a British mother I know tells me her little girl can’t have a cookie although all the other kids are having them, explaining, ‘She doesn’t need to know about that.’ Another mum I know – a psychologist – looked to be in agony over whether to let her eighteen-month-old have an iced lolly, even though it was at the end of a hot summer day and all our kids were playing outside. (She finally conceded.) I once saw an American couple with three advanced degrees between them convene a nervous meeting over whether their four-year-old can have a lollipop.

But refined sugar does exist. And French parents know it. They don’t try to eliminate all sweets from their children’s diets. Rather, they fit sweets inside the
cadre
. For a French kid, sweets have their place, and are a regular enough part of their lives that they don’t gorge like freed prisoners the moment they get their hands on any. Mostly, children seem to eat them at birthday parties, special times at school, and as a special treat. At these occasions, they’re usually free to eat all they want. When I try to limit the boys’ intake of candy and chocolate cake at the crèche’s Christmas party, one of their caregivers intervenes. She tells me I should just let them enjoy
the
party and be free. I think of my skinny friend Virginie, who pays strict attention to what she eats on weekdays, then eats whatever she wants on weekends. Kids, too, need moments when the regular rules don’t apply.

But parents decide when these moments are. When I drop Bean off at a birthday party for Abigail, a little girl in our building, she’s the first guest to arrive (we haven’t yet figured out that you’re not supposed to be punctual for kids’ birthdays). Abigail’s mum has just set out plates of cookies and sweets on a table. Abigail asks her mum if she can have some of the sweets. Her mum says
non
, and explains that it isn’t yet time to eat them. Abigail looks longingly at the candy, then runs off with Bean to play in another room.

Chocolate has a more regular place in the lives of French kids. French parents talk about chocolate as if it’s just another food group, albeit one to eat in moderation. When Fanny describes what Lucie eats in a typical day, the menu includes cookies or a piece of cake. ‘And obviously she’ll want chocolate in there somewhere,’ Fanny says.

Hélène gives her kids hot chocolate when it’s cold outside. She serves it for breakfast, along with a hunk of baguette, or makes it their afternoon
goûter
, along with some cookies. My kids love reading books about T’choupi, a French children’s book character modelled on a penguin. When he’s sick, his mum lets him stay home and drink hot chocolate. I take my kids to see a performance of
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
, at a theatre near our house. The bears don’t eat oatmeal, they eat
bouillie au chocolat
(hot chocolate thickened with flour).

‘It’s a compensation for going to school, and I guess it gives them some energy,’ explains Denise, the medical ethicist. She shuns McDonald’s, and makes her daughters’ dinner from scratch each night. But she gives each girl a bar of chocolate for breakfast, along with some bread and a bit of fruit.

French kids don’t get a huge amount of chocolate – it’s a small bar, or a drink’s worth, or a strip on a
pain au chocolat
. They eat it happily, but don’t expect a second helping. But chocolate is a nutritional fixture for them, rather than a forbidden treat. Bean once comes home from the summer camp at her school with a chocolate sandwich: a baguette with a bar of chocolate inside. I’m so surprised I take a picture of it. (I later learn that the chocolate sandwich – usually made with dark chocolate – is a classic French
goûter
.)

With sweets, too, the
cadre
is key. French parents aren’t afraid of sugary foods. Everything, even cake and chocolate, has its place. In general, French parents will serve cake or cookies at lunch, or at the
goûter
. But they don’t give kids chocolate or rich desserts with dinner. ‘What you eat in the evening just stays with you for years,’ Fanny explains.

For dessert with dinner, Fanny typically serves fresh fruit or a fruit compote – those ubiquitous little tubs of apple sauce with other puréed fruits mixed in (these come with or without added sugar). There’s a ‘compotes’ section in French supermarkets. Fanny says she also buys all different types of plain yogurt, and then gets jams for Lucie to mix in.

As in most realms, French parents aim at mealtimes to give kids both firm boundaries and freedom within those
boundaries
. ‘It’s things like sitting at the table and tasting everything,’ Fanny explains. ‘I’m not forcing her to finish, just to taste everything and sit with us.’

I’m not sure exactly when I started serving my kids meals in courses. But I now do it at every meal. It’s a stroke of French genius. This starts with breakfast. When the kids sit down, I put plates of cut-up fruit on the table. They nibble on this while I’m getting their toast or cereal ready. They can have juice at breakfast, but they know that for lunch and dinner we drink water. Even the union organizer doesn’t complain about that. We talk about how clean water makes us feel.

At lunch and dinner I serve vegetables first, when the kids are hungriest. We don’t move on to the main course until they at least make a dent in the starter. Usually they finish it. Except when I introduce an entirely new dish, I rarely have to resort to the tasting rule. If Leo won’t eat a food the first time I serve it, he’ll usually agree to at least smell it, and he’ll take a nibble soon after that.