How exactly do the French manage this, you’re thinking? What strategies do French parents use? What do they cook? And what do they say (and, just as important, not say)?
I couldn’t answer these questions until we moved to France. When we were visitors, the French politely ignored my (to them) odd eating habits, and an allowance was made for my status as a foreigner. But once we had chosen to settle there—in the village where Philippe grew up—everything changed. The French are not known for their tolerance: there is normally one right way to do things (which, unsurprisingly, is almost always the French way). They are never shy about letting their views be known, and they have little tolerance for culinary faux pas. So our family, friends, and neighbors took on the task of teaching my children—and me—how to eat properly (in other words, like the French). In restaurants and grocery stores, at school and at day care, on the playground and in people’s homes, my beliefs about food, kids, and parenting were challenged.
Slowly, I began to understand how the French think about children and eating. The first thing I had to do was redefine how I understood the word “éducation.” I kept being told that I had to “educate” my child, and so I would hasten to assure people that I had, in fact, already started saving for university. But that’s not what they were talking about. The word “éducation” covers a lot of ground in French: it includes the knowledge acquired through formal schooling, but also the manners and behaviors, habits and tastes developed through discipline in the home. The goal is to produce a child who is bien éduqué (or élevé): who is well spoken, well mannered, and well behaved. In other words, a major goal of French parenting is to produce a child who knows and follows the unwritten rules of French society—which are much more strict than those in North America. French parents are very respectful of these social rules: training children to be bien éduqué is just as important as giving them self-esteem (in fact, they believe that the latter depends, in part, on the former).
Now, healthy eating is one of the most important skills that parents help their children develop. Underlying this focus on food education for young children is a simple principle:
Chances are, my children are not going to grow up to go to Harvard, or to be major league sports stars, concert musicians, or NASA astronauts. But no matter who they grow up to be, how and what my children eat will be of great importance to their health, happiness, success, and longevity.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s great to encourage kids to be the very best they can be. But from the French perspective North American parents often cram schedules so full that little time is spent teaching kids some of the most basic, important things they need to know, like the proper way to prepare, cook, and eat healthy food. In order to explain to myself how important this really was, I finally settled on a simple comparison. French parents think about healthy eating habits the way North American parents think about toilet training, or reading. If your children consistently refused to read, or even learn the alphabet, would you give up trying to teach them? Would you be content to wait for your children to toilet train by themselves, assuming that they’d eventually “grow out of it” or “figure it out”? Probably not. You’d probably figure out strategies to help them develop this essential life skill. Philippe tried to sum this up by explaining a famous French dictum to me: tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are. In North America, many parents will simply shrug if their child refuses to eat well. The French, meanwhile, are thinking: show me how your kids eat, and I’ll know what kind of parent you are.
The idea that French parents place high value on their children eating well is obvious. What is less obvious is how French parents get their children to eat well. Before we moved to France, I had my suspicions. Maybe tyrannical French parents force their kids to eat everything, I thought. Maybe this is just another version of the Asian “tiger mother” syndrome: the fierce French parent who insists that her children mangent absolument de tout (must eat some of everything). In fact, what we saw in France was just the opposite; fights over food were rare, and I never saw a parent force any child to eat anything.
So maybe it was the recipes? The meals that I saw ordinary French families eating were simple and quick to prepare—while still being healthy and tasty. But when I dutifully copied down a few promising recipes and tried them at home, they certainly didn’t have a similar effect on my children.
What did French parents know that I didn’t? More important, what did they do and say that I didn’t? How, exactly, did they get their kids to eat everything and enjoy it? As I learned during our year in France, the secret lies not only in what, but also how, when, and (most important) why
