
French kids know how to play - bootload
http://www.salon.com/2016/05/28/french_kids_know_how_to_play_american_parents_obsession_with_structured_playtime_is_stifling_our_kids/
======
vonnik
In books and news articles, France often plays the foil to America, just as it
once did to England. The French language serves as a sign of socio-economic
distinction, a class marker, and for its disciples, it is probably easy to
think that French ways are superior in everything from cooking to flirtation
to parenthood.

Americans moving to France in search of a more sophisticated lifestyle are
confronted with a stagnating economy, a society riven by inequality and
racism, and a cuisine in many ways inferior to that of the US, Germany or
other countries embracing fresh and organic good.

After an initial lost period, these American immigrants make careers out of
France itself, trading off its pre-war reputation. "French women don't get
fat", "Why French Parents Are Superior", "Bringing Up Bebe" and "La Seduction:
How the French Play the Game of Life" \-- these are all real works published
by people monetizing their lifestyle choices by preaching French superiority
to those they have left behind.

Unfortunately, none of it is true. I spent 14 years in Paris, enough time to
gauge the average weight of French womanhood and watch many French parents
strut their stuff. France is becoming heavier and heavier as fast foods make
deeper inroads. And French parenting is often a hystrionic affair that verges
on verbal abuse when applied to toddlers. It's shocking, actually.

So these articles simply use France as a rhetorical trope to introduce new
ideas to American society. Those ideas should be considered independently of
the distortions applied to France itself. In fact, someone should build an app
that substitutes the word "Utopia" for France in those articles. It will clear
the mind and steer the reader clear of the many impasses in which French
society is stuck.

~~~
sithadmin
>a cuisine in many ways inferior to that of the US, Germany or other countries
embracing fresh and organic good.

Okay, I was with you until this bit. Food doesn't necessarily need to be fresh
to be good or healthy, and there's nothing inherently good in organics.
Putting fresh/local and organic food on a pedestal stinks of privilege at
best, and represents a rather problematic neo-luddite worldview at worst.

~~~
vonnik
Good food, and innovations in food, follow the money. The money's not really
in France. What ideas they had to contribute, other countries have now
absorbed. There is as much good food and wine to be had in the Bay area as
there is to be eaten in Paris, if not more.

~~~
riffraff
But food culture, like all culture, takes a lot to build up.

The US might have a lot of high quality restaurants, but it also has walmart
selling a ton of kinds of "asiago", most of them spreadable.

The fact that a movie like "supersize me" can be produced, is a symptom of a
totally broken approach to food, not because eating pizza margherita and
drinking wine for a month would be healthier than mcdonald's, but because any
10 year old would tell you it's idiotic to have a monotonous diet.

(For the uninitiated, Asiago is a single kind of cheese with a couple minor
variations produced in northern italy. It is very much non-spreadable.)

------
terda12
Anecdote, I've stayed at an AirBnB in the outskirts of Paris where the host
was a father of a daughter. Daughter had some friends over and they seemed
pretty chilled. They just ran around the house talking French and doing
whatever kids do. Father was pretty relaxed about parenting.

This concept of structured playtime seems foreign to me. I grew up in Thailand
where my parents would just let me run around the neighborhood with some
friends. We would start fires and explore abandoned buildings.

Trying to plan out kids playtime just seems counterintuitive. Seems like
helicopter parenting to me.

~~~
riffraff
IMO things are just getting out of hand as time goes by.

I grew up in italy and I guess I had similar experiences (at least, I did
start fires and explore abandoned buildings :) ).

But my friends' kids in my home town don't do that anymore.

It seems to me this is in a way a result of the replacement of the "local
community" with a wider world, which often brings a sense of uneaseness or
unsafety.

I.e. if you know basically everyone who lives in your neighborhood you feel
kids are pretty safe, and at most tell them not to go play near the "bad
people".

If you don't know who lives near to you, and you hear a lot of news about kids
being abducted/molested/injured (which might have happened before, but it was
less often in the news) you get worried about kids running around
unsupervised.

------
crucifiction
These blog posts are all the same. Effectively this person has discovered she
does not like or share the same values as the set of parents she is friends
with in the US. Instead of trying to find new friends who take a similar
parenting attitude, the rational choice, she has decided the entire country is
on the wrong path. Maybe she just needs to find new friends.

------
bitwize
This seems to be a problem mainly among upper-middle-class toffs who are
afraid their kids might not get into Harvard if they aren't signed for as much
personal development stuff as can fit in a week since they could walk. And a
very recent development at that.

In a recent article I saw on HN on how ugly, oppressive, and _typically
American_ suburbs are, the author stated that the design of suburbs forces
children out of unstructured play and necessarily makes their parents
structure their free time around play dates. Which conflicts with my lived
experience of going to a friend's house in Upper West Burbville, riding bikes
and messing around with every kid in the neighborhood. The scenery was bland,
but the _people_ made the experience memorable.

------
whistlerbrk
I see this a lot in high anxiety parents. People who have rearranged their
lives around their children rather than letting their children follow their
lead. It's bad for you and them.

~~~
usaphp
Why is rearranging your life around your children is bad for you?

~~~
protomyth
Because you need to be you. You have a partner and they need that you too. The
kids need to understand that adults need to be adults with adult activities.
Subverting everything for the children puts you in stasis and doesn't properly
teach the children about growing up and being an individual or how to be with
a partner. If the children cannot fill the unstructured time then they will
never truly be adults.

~~~
usaphp
So you can stay partying till 1 am and not spend time with your kids, working
till 9 and let a babysitter put your kids to bed? Spend your weekend drinking
beer and having fun with your friends instead of teaching your kid riding a
bike or something else. Until you have kids you won't realize - it is actually
fun and joy to spend your day with your kids and they appreciate it when they
grow up and will want to spend time with you when they grow up, instead of not
knowing their parents because they spend all time with a baby sitter while
their parents are being "adults with adult activities"

~~~
protomyth
Only on a message board would someone think I said that. We are talking about
rearranging your whole life. I am most certainly not saying going to the other
extreme.

~~~
usaphp
So let's say you had a gym session at 8 am, and now you have to drop your kid
at school at 8, according to your words "kids should understand that you have
your activities" And you can just go to gym while your babysitter will cook
breakfast and drop them at school? Why have kids then if you can't and don't
want to change something in your life to be with them more?

~~~
protomyth
Nope, that's not what I said or meant. Your a family and you balance. We are
talking about people obsessing about scheduling and removing all adult time.

------
eeks
It must depend on the neighborhood, or on the social class. As a middle-class
frenchman living in the outskirts of NYC and accompanying my kids to plenty of
birthday parties or playdates my experiences are anything but "structured". If
anything compared to France parties tend to happen more often at stores or
specialized venues than at people's home, but schedules are pretty much the
same: play, eat, and more play, with light parental/staff supervision.

------
rtpg
When growing up I ended up going through both systems (living in Texas and
France), so I feel qualified to talk about this:

I would finish school at 3 in the US, at 5/6 in France. There's 3 hours of the
day that French kids can't spend in structured things. That alone completely
changes dynamics. Basically you get to have one structured activity (like
learning an instrument) and that's about it.

The French education system also doesn't promote much in terms of
extracurricular activities. There's gym but you don't have sports in school or
whatnot. Most depressing thing for me going from TX to France was losing
Orchestra as a school class. Tried signing up to a conservatory but it would
have ended up being my "1 thing" that I could do.

Honestly I preferred the American system much better. It gives you more
flexibility for things like Boy Scouts, sports, or learning to program. And I
still had loads of time to go to my friends house to do whatever.

So in the end the US system gives you more structured activities AND more
unstructured time. School as an educational system is overrated. School as a
socialised event organiser (like for Orchestra, Arts, and the like) is way
underrated, and totally not a part of the French system.

The counterpoint is that I've heard recently that US schools have started
giving waaaay too much homework, eating up at the unstructured time. I'm a fan
of letting kids investigate what they want to do. Homework's important but so
is giving people the opportunity to discover things.

Side note about the article: who brings their kids to Yoga class? Is that a
thing?

~~~
vmarsy
The elementary school I went to in France would finish at 4:30pm _, and most
busy days in middle school at 5pm. Did you go to some private school?

In elementary school there's the long playground times, one in the morning,
one big at lunch, and one in the afternoon. Kids have plenty of time to play
soccer.

In middle school the Wednesdays afternoon are always free, you have time do
extracurricular activities there: soccer, swimming, tennis, music, whatever.
There was time to do those things in elementary school, I don't remember
exactly when.

_ There was a special extra hours until 6 for those who want to, but basically
at the end of those you'd be completely done with your homework.

~~~
rtpg
Oh, yeah, forgot about Wednesdays. Like you said, it's a good opportunity for
sports and whatnot. I also had the half days on Wednesdays but basically my
classes always ended between 5 and 6PM (This was High School).

There are the recesses in between, but it was like 20 minute breaks. I could
sit and read, but usually ended up just chatting with friends. A nice break
but kinda felt forced for me. I would have much rather taken most of that time
and gotten out of school earlier and go to a friend's house or something...

The schoolwork thing is a good point, I don't remember having much schoolwork
for home in France compared to the US. There were books to read or things to
study but I had math homework every day in the US.

I think the big thing I dislike about the French system is the lack of many
elective courses (apart from art, latin, or something like an extra foreign
language). Felt like I had a lot more choice in the US (at least in my well-
funded school). On the other hand, the French system isn't just multiple
choice questions...

------
jasonkester
Does this actually happen? Can any American parents here confirm that they
actually do structure every free minute of their kids' time and never let them
simply run around and play on their own?

We raise our kids kinda like the author describes as the "French" way. You
know, taking them along as we live our lives, and letting them play however
they like. As it happens, we do actually live in France, but it never occurred
to me that we were doing anything particularly novel.

If anything I thought our way of raising kids was the "American" way, and that
the French are too stifling in the way they confine their kids to pushchairs
with pacifiers in their mouths to sit quietly in the corner until age 5.

The only case I can think of among my acquaintance of the overscheduling
described in the article was an English mother. Still, I wouldn't use that as
an example to base an article like this on.

In short, I don't buy it. Surely nobody actually thinks that is a good idea.

------
yason
_No longer is it enough to spend the weekend running errands, doing what we
normally do, and knowing that my daughter Sophie will find a way to play,
whether juggling the grapes in the grocery store cart or throwing rocks into
the water at Walden Pond. No: We must pay for playtime, and have it be
organized for us._

"No longer is it enough?"――and who exactly is forcing this except the parents'
own minds?

------
gbog
> To help kids become more creative, we actually need to start doing less.

Yes to doing less, yes to let kids getting bored, because "boredom" is fertile
and even necessary. But the aim is not to make kids "more creative", this is
not something you really want for your kids as a parent. What you really want
is to maximise chances that your kids will have a "good (enough) life".

~~~
Retra
That's entirely unsustainable. If enough people do what you suggest, your
children will find themselves facing a Malthusian catastrophe with the wrong
values to avoid it. It's also quite selfish.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Depends on what you understand as "good life", and differences in that
understanding are probably why we aren't in the middle of that catastrophe yet
(at least in this area of life). But if everyone were to raise their kids for
optimal job-market value, then yeah, that would start sucking pretty quickly.

> _It 's also quite selfish._

Seems that having children in general does that to you. It's something that I
hope I'll be able to avoid when I have children of my own.

------
ap22213
Maybe it depends on where you are?I have several (male) french friends in the
DC area, and they are some of the most structured and, frankly, unplayful
parents I've ever seen. They almost seem uncomfortable even being around
children. But, DC is pretty serious and high strung in general, so maybe it's
the type of people the area attracts.

------
dasil003
Unsolicited parenting advice is a flaming bag of shit on your doorstep.

------
Aelinsaar
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it's like the author has never even
heard of the phrase, "The grass is always greener..." and taken a moment to
think of why that is. A glimpse of something, at a moment in time, doesn't
give you a real sense of it's long-term efficacy or real costs.

~~~
ktRolster
You should put a finer point on it, and say why you think it is. I am 99.999%
certain the author, as a writer, has heard the phrase "The grass is always
greener...."

~~~
KC8ZKF
The article's author is making a point that the GP disagrees with, therefore
the article's author must not be rational. It's a tired trope.[1]

1\.
[https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=%22knee+jerk%22+site:ne...](https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=%22knee+jerk%22+site:news.ycombinator.com)

~~~
Aelinsaar
Meanwhile half-assed assumptions about other people based on a single post? I
don't know about tropes, but it gets exhausting after a while.

~~~
KC8ZKF
You're right. I'm sorry.

~~~
Aelinsaar
Apology accepted, thanks for that.

~~~
ktRolster
And yet you _still_ didn't explain what you don't like about the OP.

~~~
Aelinsaar
I did in my original post, just not to your satisfaction apparently.

~~~
ktRolster
Yes, you referred to a bunch of cliches.....you FAILED to show why they apply
in this situation.

It's easy for me to point out that you are the type of person who doesn't see
the forest for the trees.

------
aaron695
Seriously why are we liking Salon?

For more self reinforced rubbish that has zero citations?

Left wing person is outrage now about a self perceived issue they once saw!

There's plenty of real sites that talk about this re-occurring perceived issue
we've all heard a million times before.

