awww, wsj - sometimes your political leanings are just soooo cute!

[mattkime]

Why French Parents Are Superior - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...lenews_wsj

"Rest assured, I certainly don't suffer from a pro-France bias. Au contraire, I'm not even sure that I like living here. I certainly don't want my kids growing up to become sniffy Parisians."

---

oh good, for a moment i thought the wsj had published a pro-french article but the unwarranted slur fixes it.

[$tevie]

That woman sounds like an idiot. Her kids tear open sugar packets, spill salt all over and tear around the restaurant throwing food, and she thinks they are normal American kids? She's stupid.

[OWC Jamie]

But for all its problems, France is the perfect foil for the current problems in American parenting. Middle-class French parents (I didn't follow the very rich or poor) have values that look familiar to me.

Familiar because you learned them from American parents ?



This appears to be a work of fiction.
Maybe her "American parents" were her junior high school classmates.

[Spock]

Many american children are spoiled and over indulged just like their parents.

[$tevie]

French Lessons

Children should say hello, goodbye, thank you and please. It helps them to learn that they aren't the only ones with feelings and needs.
When they misbehave, give them the "big eyes"—a stern look of admonishment.
Allow only one snack a day. In France, it's at 4 or 4:30.
Remind them (and yourself) who's the boss. French parents say, "It's me who decides."
Don't be afraid to say "no." Kids have to learn how to cope with some frustration.

She had to go to France to find this out? I repeat: stupid.

[cbelt3]

In other words, the "Miracle" is that French Parents don't spoil their little brats !

Having spent a summer en France with a pair of my French Aunt and Uncle (and one Grand Mere) , I can say that their parenting skills were EXACTLY the kind of parenting skills MY parents had.

Which are, of course, completely FORBIDDEN by the neo-psychological theories of namby pamby nimrods.

Guess what, New Agey Moms.... you spoil your kids, they will be brats.

[rjmacs]

Is this really what the WSJ is printing these days?

[$tevie]

rjmacs wrote:
Is this really what the WSJ is printing these days?

Publications have to have content for their websites so dumb stuff like this is happening pretty much everywhere these days.

[Chakravartin]

I'm hardly the first to point out that middle-class America has a parenting problem. This problem has been painstakingly diagnosed, critiqued and named: overparenting, hyperparenting, helicopter parenting, and my personal favorite, the kindergarchy. Nobody seems to like the relentless, unhappy pace of American parenting, least of all parents themselves.

'Pretty sure that I just read something about a metastudy that declared the exact opposite.

Supposedly, helicopter-parenting inspired schools to get online and open up avenues of communication like never before. Parents today have web-portals, PTA chatrooms, online homework assignments and instant-access to report cards thanks to all of that and it's often allowed parents to address problems before they seriously impair a child's education.

Strange stuff: The last week's news was loaded with absurd complaints about obsessive-compulsive parents showing up at their kids' employers' offices and trying to substitute themselves for their kids at job interviews. I don't believe for an instant that it's happening in any significant numbers. The WSJ piece seems to be related to that campaign. I wonder which wealthy corporation/lobbyist/political-candidate/PAC is blowing scads of money to get this BS in the press and what message they think they're promoting with it.

[$tevie]

We have parents who call Student Affairs to report that their child's roommate does this-that-or-the-other. They want the College to tell the roommate to start picking up their underwear from the bathroom floor, or whatever.