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Parenting the American Way<br />
I'm getting a little tired of reading how<br />
parents in (or from) other countries are<br />
superior to American parents. First, we<br />
had Tiger mum Amy Chua, the Yale<br />
professor who practically beat her<br />
children on the head with a stick if they<br />
didn't practice piano and violin for five<br />
hours straight every day. Now, we have<br />
Mademoiselle Mama, the American<br />
woman living in Paris who marvels at<br />
the angelic behaviour of French<br />
children, in this Wall Street Journal<br />
article:<br />
“Why was it, for example, that in the<br />
hundreds of hours I'd clocked at French<br />
playgrounds, I'd never seen a child<br />
(except my own) throw a temper<br />
tantrum? Why didn't my French friends<br />
ever need to rush off the phone<br />
because their kids were demanding<br />
something? Why hadn't their living<br />
rooms been taken over by tee pees and<br />
toy kitchens?”<br />
All right, I get the message about<br />
waiting. Americans, and especially<br />
their kids, don’t appear to value this<br />
skill as much as their European<br />
counterparts. Sorry, Parisians. Maybe<br />
this proclivity toward impatience is why<br />
we've had more success in business.<br />
However, whenever I hear a mum<br />
saying that her 18-month-old still wakes<br />
up for a bottle in the middle of the<br />
night, I cringe. That's just not good for<br />
anyone. Please, allow the baby to learn<br />
how to cry it out a little bit so that<br />
both of you can finally sleep through<br />
the night.<br />
Later in the article, the author alludes<br />
to the fact that Americans spend way<br />
too much time playing with and<br />
attending to their kids: "For me, the<br />
evenings are for the parents," one<br />
Parisian mother told me. "My daughter<br />
can be with us if she wants, but it's<br />
adult time."<br />
With all due respect, here is my<br />
rebuttal to this latest assault on<br />
American parenting:<br />
1. Temper tantrums: what's wrong<br />
with these? Frankly, I'm glad my kids<br />
had tantrums, even in public places.<br />
Toddlers are wound-up balls of energy<br />
and if those emotions and erratic<br />
impulses don't come out now, they<br />
surely will later when they're teenagers<br />
driving your car and out of sight doing<br />
God-knows-what. There’s been plenty<br />
of research on the positive benefits of<br />
tantrums. I’d much rather my child<br />
learn how to express their emotions<br />
when they are little, rather than grow<br />
up to be a passive-aggressive adult with<br />
pent-up anger and self-destructive<br />
tendencies.<br />
2. Children who interrupt. Yes,<br />
whenever I get the phone the kids<br />
invariably tug on my sleeve and ask any<br />
number of non-urgent questions. Do I<br />
get off the phone? No. I simply say<br />
“child to wait until I'm done”. Usually,<br />
they actually manage to do so, even if
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