13
" In the United States, a four-year-old American kid isn’t obliged to greet me when he walks into my house. He gets to skulk in under the umbrella of his parents’ greeting. And in an American context, that’s supposed to be fine with me. I don’t need the child’s acknowledgment because I don’t quite count him as a full person; he’s in a separate kids’ realm. I might hear all about how gifted he is, but he never actually speaks to me. When I’m at a family luncheon back in the United States, I’m struck that the cousins and stepcousins at the table, who range in age from five to fourteen, don’t say anything at all to me unless I pry it out of them. Some can only muster one-word responses to my questions. Even the teenagers aren’t used to expressing themselves with confidence to a grown-up they don’t know well. Part of what the French obsession with bonjour reveals is that, in France, kids don’t get to have this shadowy presence. The child greets, therefore he is. Just as any adult who walks into my house has to acknowledge me, any child who walks in must acknowledge me, too. “Greeting is essentially recognizing someone as a person,” says Benoît, the professor. “People feel injured if they’re not greeted by children that way. "
― , Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting
19
" French parents do offer a few sleep tips. They almost all say that in the early months, they kept their babies with them in the light during the day, even for naps, and put them to bed in the dark at night. And almost all say that, from birth, they carefully “observed” their babies, and then followed the babies’ own “rhythms.” French parents talk so much about rhythm, you’d think they were starting rock bands, not raising kids. “From zero to six months, the best is to respect the rhythms of their sleep,” explains Alexandra, the mother whose babies slept through the night practically from birth. "
― , Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting
20
" One rule on the handout was that parents should not hold, rock, or nurse a baby to sleep in the evenings, in order to help him learn the difference between day and night. Another instruction for week-old babies was that if they cried between midnight and five A.M., parents should reswaddle, pat, rediaper, or walk the baby around, but that the mother should offer the breast only if the baby continued crying after that. An additional instruction was that, from the child’s birth, the mothers should distinguish between when their babies were crying and when they were just whimpering in their sleep. In other words, before picking up a noisy baby, the mother should pause to make sure he’s awake. "
― , Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting