One Way the French Are Much, Much Better Than Us

[Perknose]

Excerpted from this excellent New Yorker article, Spoiled Rotten.

Kids of OT, make your doting parents read this to you.

Druckerman talked to a lot of French mothers, all of them svelte and most apparently well rested. She learned that the French believe ignoring children is good for them. “French parents don’t worry that they’re going to damage their kids by frustrating them,” she writes. “To the contrary, they think their kids will be damaged if they can’t cope with frustration.” One mother, Martine, tells Druckerman that she always waited five minutes before picking up her infant daughter when she cried. While Druckerman and Martine are talking, in Martine’s suburban home, the daughter, now three, is baking cupcakes by herself. Bean is roughly the same age, “but it wouldn’t have occurred to me to let her do a complicated task like this all on her own,” Druckerman observes. “I’d be supervising, and she’d be resisting my supervision.”

Also key, Druckerman discovered, is just saying non. In contrast to American parents, French parents, when they say it, actually mean it. They “view learning to cope with ‘no’ as a crucial step in a child’s evolution,” Druckerman writes. “It forces them to understand that there are other people in the world, with needs as powerful as their own.”

 

[zerocool84]

The only thing the French ever got right was fries.

 

[brianmanahan]

france has done way more harm than good imho

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/3634345/30-reasons-why-we-hate-the-French.html

 

[KK]

The only thing the French ever got right was fries.

And french maids

 

[Ichinisan]

Trying to figure out this statement:

While Druckerman and Martine are talking, in Martine’s suburban home, the daughter, now three, is baking cupcakes by herself.

A 3-year-old is making cupcakes...unsupervised?!

 

[brianmanahan]

also, this premise is anecdotal

 

[Perknose]

Trying to figure out this statement:


A 3-year-old is making cupcakes...unsupervised?!

Yes. Read the entire article.

Your uniformed incredulity that this could be so pretty much makes the author's point.

 

[Perknose]

also, this premise is anecdotal

Read the article, you fat, lazy, over-entitled crybaby. This is about YOU.

 

[brianmanahan]

Read the article, you fat, lazy, over-entitled crybaby. This is about YOU.

lol wow

 

[brianmanahan]

tried to read the article but only made it halfway thru page 2 its just so stinking dry

almost as if it is french :hmm:

 

[Perknose]

tried to read the article but only made it halfway thru page 2

Exactly, you're useless, not really up to any adult task, and yet so over-entitled that not only don't you feel ashamed by this, you feel smugly proud about it.

You are a poster child for the abject failure of the over-protective American approach to child rearing.

Please sue the next woman who slaps you for insulting her. Maybe 4channel will take notice.

 

[Ichinisan]

Yes. Read the entire article.

Your uniformed incredulity that this could be so pretty much makes the author's point.

I remember when I was 3 years old.

I snuck into the kitchen and tried to eat dry macaroni.

I ate my sister's diet pills because I thought they were candy.

I honestly don't think I could make cupcakes when I was 3 years old.

At 5 years old, I was allowed to roam the neighborhood by myself.

 

[lxskllr]

I remember when I was 3 years old.

I snuck into the kitchen and tried to eat dry macaroni.

I ate my sister's diet pills because I thought they were candy.

I honestly don't think I could make cupcakes when I was 3 years old.

At 5 years old, I was allowed to roam the neighborhood by myself.

I have an old National Geographic book on remote tribes around the world. The book was from the 60s/70s, so all those people are probably extinct by now, but one of the pictures showed a three year old holding a knife that had a ~6" blade. The child helped the adults work, and it wasn't an especially gifted child; they all did that. More importantly, they all did that without injury. Kids will live up or down to your expectations/demands every time. It's the adult's job to determine, and guide the direction.

 

[Phoenix86]

Exactly, you're useless, not really up to any adult task, and yet so over-entitled that not only don't you feel ashamed by this, you feel smugly proud about it.

You are a poster child for the abject failure of the over-protective American approach to child rearing.

Please sue the next woman who slaps you for insulting her. Maybe 4channel will take notice.

Fuck, I'm becoming old.

:beer;

 

[JS80]

lol personal attack much?

 

[Smoblikat]

The only thing the French ever got right was fries.

I dont even think the french made fries

 

[BoomerD]

The only thing the French ever got right was fries.

They did a damned good job with their toast too...

 

[brianmanahan]

lol personal attack much?

:thumbsup:

 

[Perknose]

I have an old National Geographic book on remote tribes around the world. The book was from the 60s/70s, so all those people are probably extinct by now, but one of the pictures showed a three year old holding a knife that had a ~6" blade. The child helped the adults work, and it wasn't an especially gifted child; they all did that. More importantly, they all did that without injury. Kids will live up or down to your expectations/demands every time. It's the adult's job to determine, and guide the direction.

Exact point of the article. The author even talks at length about a similar tribe.

 

[Kadarin]

One thing that is true is that in the US a great many parents have become fucking useless.

 

[Sluggo]

Read the article, you fat, lazy, over-entitled crybaby. This is about YOU.

Yeah brianmanahan, read the fucking article, you FAT, LAZY, OVER-ENTITLED CRYBABY.

I fart in your general direction as well.

Oh, and you smell.

Oh, and your clothes are very much out of the current acceptable style.

Oh, and you are poor and can't drive a car as nice as mine is.

Oh, and your education level is far below mine.

Fucking Philistines.

 

[OCGuy]

Is this the self-hate syndrome that Moonbeemerbat was talking about?

 

[schneiderguy]

Excerpted from this excellent New Yorker article, Spoiled Rotten.

Kids of OT, make your doting parents read this to you.

tl;dr

 

[Perknose]

tl;dr

:biggrin:

 

[HamburgerBoy]

As Melvin Konner, a psychiatrist and anthropologist at Emory University, points out in “The Evolution of Childhood” (Belknap), one of the defining characteristics of Homo sapiens is its “prolonged juvenile period.” Compared with other apes, humans are “altricial,” which is to say immature at birth. Chimpanzees, for instance, are born with brains half their adult size; the brains of human babies are only a third of their adult size. Chimps reach puberty shortly after they’re weaned; humans take another decade or so. No one knows when exactly in the process of hominid evolution juvenile development began to slow down, but even Homo ergaster, who evolved some 1.8 million years ago, seems to have enjoyed—if that’s the right word—a protracted childhood. It’s often argued by anthropologists that the drawn-out timetable is what made humans human in the first place. It’s the fact that we grow up slowly that makes acquiring language and building complicated social structures possible.

tl;dr the people of Peru and France are less evolved than us. Genius autistic man-children are the future of humanity.

Yet another Perknose is old thread.