Fleeting images of potato chips and hot dogs—standard fare at our day care back home—crossed my mind. By now, I was starting to feel hungry, as North American dinnertime approached (despite the disapproval of my in-laws, we still persisted in eating at the barbarically early hour of 5:30 P.M.). So I eagerly began sampling, congratulating our hostesses in garbled French. A frown crossed the face of the woman holding the tray. Assuming she hadn’t understood me, I repeated myself more slowly. But her frown only deepened. Puzzled, I looked around, only to observe that the other parents were dutifully feeding the treats not to themselves but … to their children.
As elaborate as they were, these weren’t adult treats. “Those are for the kids,” my husband whispered, explaining that the vegetable purees—beets, broccoli, and cauliflower—were intended to introduce the children to the day care’s menu. They were being served at the traditional time for the French goûter, which roughly translates as “snack,” but is a word usually reserved for children eating at this hour. Adults are expected to display restraint and wait until the traditional French dinner hour of 7:30 or 8:00 P.M. For the French, it was obvious: it was the children’s snack time, not time for adults to eat.
Guiltily wiping the crumbs from my fingers, I watched the grinning toddlers—some of them almost toothless—munch their way through snacks that looked fit for a sophisticated cocktail party back home. Their obvious pleasure was met with murmuring approval from the adults.
Meanwhile, food—what kids liked, and what they were learning to like—was the focus of many of the conversations going on around us. As I later found out, this is not at all unusual. French parents spend a lot of time discussing food, and their children’s eating habits are no exception. But these discussions are not anxiety ridden, as they so often are back home. Rather, French parents talk about their love of food: swapping recipes, sharing rituals. A small crowd had gathered around one dad, for example, who was explaining how he’d figured out a new way to serve artichoke hearts (a local delicacy) to his kids.
But I couldn’t concentrate on the conversations around me. I was anxiously focused on Claire, who had just been invited to try one of the pastries. Aware that she usually greeted vegetables with clenched teeth, I offered her what I thought would be the most appealing color—pink.
I breathed a sigh of relief as she sampled the pastry and grinned, then cringed as she bit into the beet puree and immediately spat it out. Calmly, the tray swiveled away. As it retreated, I heard: “Don’t worry, she’ll learn to like it.” And, within a couple of weeks, she did.
At the time, I realized that this was the start of my daughter’s French education. Only later did I realize it was also the start of mine.
Another surprise at Claire’s day care was the tidiness with which the children ate. This was, in fact, one of the first French children’s eating habits I discovered. Seeing sixteen toddlers eating tidily with their cutlery and emerging spotless after their midday meal was a revelation. The children were simply not allowed to play with their food. Little fingers that dipped into bowls were kindly but firmly removed. Failure to cooperate (which was rare) was met with a gentle but firm response: plates would be removed. The message was clear: if you can’t eat properly (which means eating tidily, even for toddlers), you won’t eat at all. This was a stark contrast with how our older daughter had eaten: when she was a baby, Sophie smeared food on the highchair, the floor, the walls, even her hair. At the time, I was resigned to it; I had assumed that my mother-in-law was simply being unreasonable when she kept insisting that even very young children could eat tidily. After all, my parenting books said that children needed to play with their food; it was my job to get out of their way and to clean up after them. But now that I’d seen a French day care in action, I suddenly realized that my mother-in-law might be right: the ten-minute cleaning job I’d had after my first daughter’s every meal might not be necessary.
Intrigued, I decided to follow their lead. At home, we resolved never to let Claire use her fingers (except for obvious finger food) and made sure to teach her to position her utensils and her body in such a way that crumbs or drops fell into, rather than beside, her plate. She always had a napkin (and we always had wipes) at the ready to wipe up spills. We made a point of praising her for eating tidily. It worked. Despite the three-year age difference, Claire still eats more tidily than her older sister.
This made Claire’s transition into French life easier, because playing with your food is truly, deeply foreign to the French. “On ne joue pas avec la nourriture!” sums it up: “WE (the French) don’t play with food.” This phrase is much stronger than its English counterpart. “Don’t play with your food” sounds feeble to French ears. Indeed, French parents equate their national identity with respectful food behaviors, and assert this to their children in a way that leaves no room for second thoughts. Children grow up assuming that no one who is bien éduqué plays with their food, under any circumstances. And because they never see anyone doing so, they don’t think to question it.
Above all else, French children are never taught to view food as a reward. I learned this rule the hard way. Shortly after we arrived in France, I was standing in the checkout line at our local grocery store. I had just given my daughter a cookie, complimenting her on how well behaved she had been in
