French Kids Eat Everything by Karen Billon (classic english novels txt) 📕

of encouragement arises from the adults and older children. Vas-y! (Go ahead!) But the child is not forced to do anything. Adult conversation continues, and no great fuss is made.

Usually, our children cautiously test the food, most often when there are no eyes on them. Their reactions (whether pleasurable or not) are met with calm acceptance. A child might politely respond, “Non, merci.” “Didn’t like it? That’s okay. You’ll try again later.” Or, “Great, you liked that olive? Try this one.” And a new bowl holding a different type of olives slides across the table. This happens over and over again, at regular intervals, over a period of a month or two. Eventually, the child usually starts eating the new food.

Papi’s technique displays a key element of the French approach to children’s eating habits. They don’t fuss. They don’t hover. No one is anxious. Parents are cheerful but matter-of-fact. Above all, if the child refuses to eat, the parents simply take the food away without too much comment, without providing substitutes. And because of the “no snacking” rule, they know that their child will be hungrier at the next meal, which will work to their advantage.

As a result, food never becomes a power struggle. Rather, food is part of a routine. It’s a fun routine with lots of novelty and socializing, but it is still a routine. Children unquestioningly come to the table, accept that their parents choose what they’ll eat, expect to be pleasantly surprised, and, for the most part, enjoy every mouthful. There is a kind of innocence about this that always amazes me. It simply doesn’t occur to most French kids to resist.

How do French parents do this? Part of the answer is the fact that they assert authority over the scheduling of feeding when their children are still very young. I saw this for myself when Sophie was a baby. Like most babies we knew, Sophie was breast-fed on demand, which meant three hours (or often less) between feedings. At eight months of age, Sophie’s eating schedule looked something like this (although it changed every day):

1:00 A.M. ~ breast-feeding

4:00 A.M. ~ breast-feeding

7:00 A.M. ~ breast-feeding

8:30 A.M. ~ baby cereal

(20-minute nap)

11:30 A.M. ~ breast-feeding

12:30 P.M. ~ vegetable puree, baby crackers

(20-minute nap)

2:30 P.M. ~ breast-feeding

(20-minute nap)

5:00 P.M. ~ breast-feeding

6:00 P.M. ~ fruit compote, or yogurt

(20-minute nap)

9:00 P.M. ~ breast-feeding

(in bed for the night)

If this sounds exhausting, it’s because it was. My husband and I would exchange grim looks as we headed to bed, hoping against hope that Sophie would sleep through the night (she was fourteen months old the first time she did so, and I still quietly celebrate that anniversary every year). She was getting thirteen hours of sleep, and we were averaging less than six, broken up by the 1:00 A.M. and 4:00 A.M. feedings. I was a zombie.

This drove me into a bout of the “baby blues” (although not full-blown postpartum depression): between sessions of sleep-deprivation–induced crying, I frantically read any book on children’s sleep that I could get my hands on. I tried the No-Cry Sleep Solution. I tried attachment parenting–style rocking to sleep. Finally, in desperation, I tried Ferber-ization (otherwise known as “crying it out”), but I broke down after about a minute and a half. Nothing worked. Sophie woke up like clockwork at 1:00 A.M. and 4:00 A.M., and went back to sleep only with a contented belly full of milk. My milk.

One of the things that made this somewhat bearable was my assumption that this was the fate of all mothers. But then we went to visit some of my husband’s old friends—French friends. The couple had an eight-month-old baby, and I figured I could commiserate with a similarly frazzled new mom. Except that she wasn’t frazzled at all.

At eight months, baby Clément’s eating schedule looked like this:

8:00 A.M. ~ wake up, 240 ml milk

(2- to 3-hour nap)

12:30 P.M. ~ Vegetable soup, fruit puree, or yogurt

(2- to 3-hour nap)

4:30 P.M. ~ 240 ml milk

(1-hour nap)

7:00 P.M. ~ 250 ml milk with dissolved baby cereal

(in bed for the night)

The first day of our visit, I watched in amazement as little Clément—who was understandably hungry at mealtimes—guzzled his milk, devoured his purees, and contentedly napped for hours after every meal. He slept soundly through the night, every night of our visit.

Clément’s four meals were served at precisely the same time every day. Meals were never served early, not by even five minutes. In between meals, he was given only water. Clément quickly learned that adults decided what he ate, where he ate (only in his highchair), and when he ate. His patience was astounding: he never, or very rarely, cried out of hunger. In fact, given the quantities of food he ate at his meals, I wondered whether he ever felt very hungry.

Most French children are raised like Clément (who, by the way, has grown into a happy, healthy eater-of-everything). By the time they are toddlers, French children have learned that their parents are in charge of their eating routines. This means that they are fairly willing to accept that they have to taste new things. And, once they have gotten used to this idea, French parents take the next step:

French Food Rule #6b:

For fussy eaters: You don’t have to like it, but you do have to eat it.

French parents apply this rule with familiar foods that their children are usually happy to eat. This rule had a magical effect on my kids (and on me). Before, when my children would say, “I don’t like it,” when I served things they usually liked, I would immediately get worried. I’d try to change the taste of whatever they were refusing (More butter? More salt? What about a bit of soy sauce? Ketchup?). Unwittingly, I ceded the decision-making power over eating to my kids. Looking back, I realized that I was caught between my desire to support my kids’ individual choice and autonomy (refusing this food is okay), and my desire to get