The Cookie Crumbles

As I walk across my living room, I hear a distinct “scrunch” underfoot.  It continues as I round the table to set it.  Mystified, I return to the kitchen, then back to the living room.  Re-scrunch. I cast my eyes downward and see, to my horror, bits of cookies. Chocolate, to boot. Par terre.  The culprit who perpetrated this disaster area has vanished-off to Disneyland Paris-and I am alone to sweep up. The cookie crumbs come from our grandchild’s EATING IN THE LIVING ROOM, a strict no-no if ever there was one.

Well, at least in our day, it was a no-no. Of course in our day, children remained in their playpens, ate in their high chairs or at the table, and didn’t crumble when parents reproved them with a resounding NON!

Ah, playpens! When our first grandchild was born and came to visit with her parents, we entertained heartwarming visions of putting the playpen in the living room and chatting over an aperitif as she played quietly with her toys in utter safety.

Dream on.

“Oh no, she hates the playpen. Not enough freedom,” her parents blithely announced. So instead of the quiet aperitif, we four adults spent most of our time chasing the adorable tot around so she wouldn’t fall, stumble, swallow dangerous products or skewer herself.  Oh well, we thought, when it’s time for bed, this will stop and we’ll enjoy an evening of adult conversation. We hadn’t bargained for the Three Hour Bedtime Ritual. Our adult meal was interrupted several times by “Maman, read me a story” interspersed with horrendous spates of tears. We never did have that adult conversation.

Now for the kicker:  I’m not talking about the stereotypical bratty American kid or indulgent, tolerant, clueless American family here. I’m talking about the descendants of my own Franco-American family in which, from the get-go, the French side (my husband) won the battle on House Rules and Regulations.

If I was ticked by the cookie crumbs, my French husband was horrified. When he was a boy (think Hundred Years War), children were to be seen and not heard-literally. At family dinners in their vast Paris apartment, he could speak, naturellement, but only if spoken to. He could leave the table, but only with permission. Needless to say, he had to eat every single thing on the plate, whether the dish was ratatouille or ris de veau.  From the way he tells it, family meals were some kind of Boot Camp he had to endure in order to survive. Need I add that, in his home, children did not wander about, cookies in hand, leaving traces to mark their path through the living room.

He may not have liked this strict discipline as a kid but as a father he definitely saw the advantages. When our Franco-American brood was young, he actually dreamed of re-creating the situation: the authoritative Sun King Papa everyone respects and slightly fears surrounded by silent, obedient offspring.

Unfortunately, he’d married the wrong woman. As an American, I thought the children should speak up, talk about their day at school, show a little life. We arrived at a compromise in which they acted up too much for his taste but managed perfect French manners when guests arrived. That was Generation 1. Generation 2 overthrew the works, hence Cookie Crumbs et al.

Times have changed, and how. I can’t count the number of times proper little old French ladies would reprimand my children for putting their feet up in the bus or interrupting a conversation or not giving up their seat in the metro.  Now I find myself wanting to reprimand other children, although I can’t bring myself to do so, mainly because the “new French” parents would flip.

French parents vintage 2008 are the very picture of everything they poked fun at in the permissive American age of Dr. Spock. Oh, those spoiled American kids, they would say, gazing fondly at their own perfect progeniture. That was then. Today French kids tear up and down the aisles of trains barefoot, toss their Big Mac wrappers on the sidewalk and shout into their cell phones while plugged into their iPods à l’américaine.

Lest I sound like the curmudgeon of the year, I admit that some incredibly well bred French children are still around.  These children say “Bonjour, Madame” or “Bonjour, Monsieur ” (Bonjour sans the Madame or Monsieur just doesn’t make it.) They are impeccably dressed the way only French mothers can dress their children. (Even infants somehow are always in the perfect shade of pink or blue.) They don’t interrupt adults, they do eat everything on their plates. They cut pizza wedges into bite-size bits with knife and fork. The favorite snack of my cookie-crumbling grandchild is, in fact, not Fritos, not potato chips (pronounced sheeps) but cherry tomatoes (tomates cerises). I shudder to think of THOSE on the living room floor but they are strictly limited to the kitchen (the cookie thing occurred when Grand’mère was not looking, believe me).

In France, these days, it would seem, everyone’s getting crossed signals, starting with newborns. To let the baby cry or not? The Old School says-I’m not kidding, I heard this from my own French in-laws-“Let the baby cry. If you pick him up each time, he’ll get control and manipulate you.” Most young French parents, thank heavens, have loosened up on that point.

When it comes to fashion, strangely enough, while young French children are usually divinely dressed up, they are remarkably dressed down for church. (Strict separation of Dieu and Dior?) Otherwise the French remain very French with their Baby Dior, Bonpoint, or, on a more affordable scale, Monoprix children’s fashions. (All teenagers live in an international sartorial world of their own).

While French parents are almost over-protective (ne fais pas ceci, ne fais pas cela, tu vas te faire mal), some think nothing about sending their children off to ski resorts or summer camps starting at age three! When my nieces were five and three, my French sister-in-law packed them off with nary a qualm for an organized children’s ski vacation in Switzerland. In the States, this would be regarded as almost criminal. As for school, the obligatory age to start is six, but most French kids have been in public pre-school (école maternelle) since the ripe old age of three. (Mine were too, and it didn’t turn them into Mama-starved delinquents-au contraire, they simply had a lot more fun with their peers.)

In fact, in spite of their strict schooling, French children are sometimes given a lot of leeway that American children aren’t. I thought of this when going to the airport to pick up our grandchild Judith, barely age six, who had flown as a “UM” (unaccompanied minor) from Marseilles to Paris.  She looked so tiny as she finally appeared with a group of other little UMs ranging in age from five to twelve.

“Do you like coming to Paris all by yourself?” I asked her, worried that she might have been scared by the experience. Her enthusiastic response: “J’ADORE!”

In fact, although American children are less protected and encouraged to be autonomous early on, French children seem to accommodate their mixture of over-protection and autonomy very well. By the time they’re teenagers, many young French people who spend time in the States feel they are more mature than their American counterparts. Is it having grown up in Europe? Their French education? Hard to tell.

But we’re not there yet.  First of all, I have to sweep up the cookie crumbs. Then I’ve got to get in that kitchen to fix a big bowl of cherry tomatoes for my French granddaughter’s afternoon snack. The bowl, I will tell her, will not, I repeat, NOT, leave the kitchen.

Any kid grown up enough to fly alone at age six will understand that.  Evidemment.