Why American Kids Are Brats
Amidst all the talk this past week about Pamela Druckerman’s new book, Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting, there was one phrase that immediately lodged itself in my mind. It was in a sidebar that ran with the Wall Street Journal adaptation of her book, “Why French Parents Are Superior,” and it said this: “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.”
That statement points directly to what I see as one of the most meaningful differences between the French and (contemporary) American style of parenting. I don’t happen to believe, as the Journal pushed Druckerman’s argument to say, that French parenting is necessarily superior, overall, to what we do in America. I don’t think French children are, overall, better or happier people — such generalizations are silly. But it is true that French kids can be a whole lot more pleasant to be around than our own. They’re more polite. They’re better socialized. They generally get with the program; they help out when called upon to do so, and they don’t demand special treatment. And that comes directly from being taught, from the earliest age, that they’re not the only ones with feelings and needs.
I say all this based on many years of extended hanging out time with French families, both before and after my own girls — who, like Druckerman’s children, were born in France — came along. In fact, that experience — and the contrast with the American way of parenting I discovered when I moved back to the States — inspired my book Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, the main argument of which Druckerman recapitulates at the very beginning of Bringing Up Bébé. (Fuller disclosure: she interviewed me for the book as well.)
Like Druckerman, I’ve often noted wistfully how French children know how to handle themselves in restaurants. I’ve envied how French children eat what’s put in front of them, put themselves to bed when instructed to, and, generally, tend to help keep the wheels of family life moving pretty smoothly. But the difference that struck me the most deeply, when my family moved to Washington, D.C., from Paris and my older daughter began preschool, was how much more basically respectful French children were of other people. Indeed, how much emphasis French parents put on demanding they behave respectfully toward other people. And how that respect helped make life more enjoyable.
Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/02/10/why-american-kids-are-brats/?hpt=hp_t3#ixzz1m7JimGki
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"Can you walk?" (when I catch them running in the hall)
"Can you finish this before recess?" (when they aren't settling down and working)
"Can you keep your hands to yourself?"
And just the other day "Can you just talk to him instead of kicking him?" And the kid said "I was in the hall and didn't want to get in trouble for talking." LOL
Hugs backatcha. 
when young people and even older people whom you think should know better can't even say "excuse me" when they want you to move so they can get up, or get past you, etc. They will literally just wait and stare at you, not saying anything!
Especially love the ones who will just brush past you, when all they could have said was "excuse me". Very simple manners!
Uh, just say something people, I will move for you if you ask me, and I won't bite as well! 
It's called manners. I will wait for people to use them; I deserve simple consideration.
and you don't automatically move out of the way? And you are complaining about THEIR manners?
What, do you think you are the Black Knight and have a right to block the way? 
Sure, they should say excuse me as they pass, but you are as rude or more than they are.
Last edited Sun Feb 12, 2012, 04:22 PM - Edit history (1)
Delusional ,it Diluted my message.Thanks 
My parents were immigrants from Europe, and they were pretty strict about who was boss in the house, manners, respect and so forth. I've been told my table manners at age 4 or 5 were so exquisite that people used to stop and watch me eat when we ate at a department store cafeteria. (I had to unlearn them in junior high after being told I ate "like a chipmunk"
. People have long commented that my (now adult) daughters are very polite and well mannered. I should hope so. I tried hard to teach them, though not with the strictness that my parents used.
The problem is that parents often don't make much of an effort to parent. They park their kids in front of the tv rather than talk with them or work on manners with them. Every weekend I see parents walking in stores with their kids while yammering away on their cell phones, as though the kids didn't exist. When I went to a store with my kids, I interacted with them, talking about foods and prices and shopping manners. In the car, the kids now watch tv instead of interacting with the parents.
One of my daughters has worked as a nanny and in other child-related jobs for many years. She finds that parents, especially the more affluent ones, aren't even bothering to potty-train their kids by age 3. She worked in an expensive preschool where she routinely had to change diapers on kids aged 4 or 5. A good number of these kids, she says, are given mountains of toys as guilt gifts by parents who have busy careers and social lives, and consequently spend little time with their offspring.
When the kids enter their teens, some act out just to get attention from their parents. We live in a fairly affluent suburb of Washington DC where, I've heard from my daughters, some kids from really affluent families get drunk on weekends and throw up in Dad's Mercedes or Mom's Volvo. They do it because negative attention (getting yelled at) is better than getting no attention.
From my experience doing safety workshops in local schools, I've found that many kids of all income levels are home alone after school from a very young age. Some are terrified of being alone. Some get harassed and hit by siblings. I can't blame parents for working hard to make ends meet. But we need much more good before- and after-school care than exists today. And jobs that pay enough so people don't have to work 2 or 3 jobs just to survive.
I don't know what's going to happen with so many kids growing up with minimal attention from their parents.
but where's the proof. This, at best, is anecdotal. Mostly it smacks of book selling.
I had a friend who spent a year as an exchange student in France when he was 15. By the sounds of it the kids were pretty wild. On his first night there the host family got him drunk. So, there's another anecdote to add to the "french children are angels" story
"Please, let me help you with that! No, it's not trouble at all, really."
