Franglaise Mummy

Posts Tagged ‘routine’

As a Brit, married to a Frenchman, raising our children first in France and now in the UK in what we call our franglais way, I know that we shock some people with our style of parenting. It is amazing to think that so few miles separate the UK from France but that culturally these two countries are so different.

Before I go on to explain our style of parenting it’s probably good for you to get some background on B and me, and how we were raised, to see where we are coming from.

• B and I were born 6 weeks apart in the mid 1970s: him in the south of France and me in the south of England.
• B’s parents are both doctors (a retired GP and a school doctor); my mum is a (retired) nurse, who trained to be a midwife and set up a local NCT branch in the 1970s, as well as being a breast-feeding counsellor for the NCT, my dad is in IT.
• B is one of twins; I am the middle child of 5 (all from the same, crazy parents!).
• B’s mum went back to work when B and his brother were still very small; my mum stopped work for 15 years to raise us 5 unruly children.
• B’s mum, like most of her generation in France, didn’t breastfeed; my mum breastfed all 5 of us.
• B’s mum weaned B and his brother on pots and purées; my mum weaned us the BLW way before it even had a name, as otherwise nobody would have got fed.
• B and his brother slept in their own bedroom from birth; my siblings and I slept in my parents’ room (but not bed) when we were small babies.
• B and his brother only ever had disposable nappies; my siblings and I only ever had washable nappies.

So that gives you an idea of the parenting style we grew up with, this is the one we developed for ourselves, and that shocks the French in France and the Brits in the UK:

• I breastfed L. This shocked several of my French friends and in particular my MiL who warned me “it’ll ruin your chest”.
  

  Me doing the unthinkable, breastfeeding my newborn baby!

• L slept in her own room from day 5 when we came home from hospital. This shocked pretty much every single Brit and Anglo-saxon I know, but was accepted as the norm in France.
• For the first 3 months I did everything on demand and had zero routine. This shocked my French paediatrician and numerous French friends. The only reason we got into a routine at 3 months was because L was going to the childminder’s…
• I went back to work 4 full days a week when L turned 3 months old. This was very early for most of my friends in the UK, but was standard for France.
• We put L in washable nappies from about her first week onwards. This was very uncommon in France and I kept being asked why I was doing something so unhygienic.
• When L was a few months old I started thinking (worrying) about weaning and I came across Baby Led Weaning (BLW) on the internet, I loved the sound of it and this is what we did with L. You can’t imagine the reactions I got in France, “are you trying to kill your baby?” and “she’s got no teeth, she’s going to starve to death” etc. I had to lie to my paediatrician about it, translate Gill Rapley’s report on it into French for our childminder and basically defend this decision every single day. It was very hard and it’s funny to be in the UK now where BLW is just another totally accepted weaning option.
  

  L’s first taste of BLW and broccoli at 6 months old.

• Whenever we were invited out we took L with us, and when we had parties at our house she generally stayed up and partied with us until the small hours. Fortunately she wakes much later if she goes to bed late which makes this doable. This is not a big deal in France, whereas many of my UK friends are shocked at us letting her stay up late.
  

  L with B and me at one of our house parties for Hallowe’en, aged 3.

  

  L at a fancy dress party we had when she was 2 (this was B’s wig, not hers!).

  

  L with B and me having just celebrated midnight on new year’s eve, age 2.

• We first left her to go out for the night when she was 5 months old, we drove for an hour to meet up with some friends for a night out. We first left her all night when she was 9 months old as we had been invited to try out a posh hotel in Cannes for the night. When she was 2 years old we left her for two weeks to go off on holiday, just B and me, to the Dominican Republic. Every year we try and leave her for a week to go off on holiday as a couple, to reconnect, and to be simply B and me again, not Mummy and Papa. Now this one shocks the hell out of 90% of my UK friends, but all my French friends do this regularly with their kids.
  

  B and my first night out without L, when she was 5 months old.

• When L was 5 years old she flew unaccompanied to Marseille to spend a week with B’s mum in the run-up to Christmas. French parents frequently send their kids across France by plane as the school holidays are so long and everyone works. My UK friends were astounded that I might consider this.
• L started school in France when she was 2 and 3/4. This was 4 days a week, from 9am until 4pm; as B and I worked, she also went to the before school club, the after school club and the Wednesday club (no school in France on Wednesdays) at the same place. So Monday – Friday 8am-6.30pm she was at “school” from the age of not even 3 years old and she loved it! I know many British friends who think this is far too early, but it worked so well for us and for L who excelled there.
• When we moved to the UK, L was 3 and 1/2 so was too young for school. She started full time school when she was 4 and 3/4 and my French friends and family kept asking why she was starting so late.

I am sure if you are French then parts of the above shock you, and if you are British then there are certainly areas you disagree with. But this is what works for us and for L, it’ll be interesting to see if we end up raising baby number 2 the same way too seeing as he/she will be raised in the UK and not France. Watch this space…

After following Tara’s ‘The Gallery’ over at Sticky Fingers for a long time I have finally decided to join in with this week’s theme which is ‘Breakfast’ (nothing to do with this week’s competition, that’s just a coincidence!). I am hoping to make this a regular thing, but let’s not hold our breath!

So this is what breakfast in the Franglais household looked like yesterday morning:

My first photo had B in it too (on the left) but then when I mentioned it was going on the blog he opted out!

Weekday breakfast in our household usually happens between 7.30 and 8am. L doesn’t need to be at school until 9am and it’s a 2 minute walk away, but B leaves at 8am which means L is woken up at 7.30am so we can all have a family breakfast together before going about our respective days. I love the fact that we sit down and have breakfast together as a family every day, despite the occasional arguments that can occur when people have got out of bed the wrong side!

I would just like to reassure everyone that her hair does get tamed down before she goes to school!

We’ve always raised L in the way that suits us best, sometimes this is “the English way”, sometimes “the French way” but most of the time it’s simply our “Franglais way”. Now we are living in the UK what stands out the most, naturally, is the ways in which we raise L in a French way. One thing in particular is her daily routine.

I never really read any books on routines, English or French, and L set her own routine/rhythm when she was first born, so it wasn’t really until we weaned her that we started to establish any real kind of routine. The one that we ended up with just so happened to be the one that worked for us, not anything that either B or I researched.

So when L was 6 months old and we first weaned her, we took something very un-French – Baby Led Weaning (BLW), meaning we ate our meals with her – and mixed it with French timings. At around 6 months old L was waking up around 8am, having a milk feed and breakfast, then in the evening she would eat dinner with B and I at around 7pm before having a milk feed just before bed at 8pm.

Eating at 7pm was a big shock to our system as we were used to eating at 8pm which is fairly typical for the French, but we decided we wanted to have our evening meal all together as a family. We got laughed at by a fair amount of French friends who teased us about eating “comme des poules” which means eating early like hens which is a typical French expression.

Now we are living in the UK and L is older (she’s 5), her/our routine has changed slightly but not much. It goes something like this during the week:

7.30am: Wake L up and have breakfast all together before B and I go to work at 8am.
8-9am: L is got ready for school by our au pair.
9am-3.30pm: L is at school and has lunch at around 11.30am-12pm.
3.30pm: L has a snack after school, something like crackers, rice cakes, fruit, yogurt, seeds, cereal bars etc.
6-7pm: L is bathed by the au pair.
7pm: B and I are usually home from work by now, so we usually have leftovers of whatever we prepared at the weekend, reheated, so we can eat as soon as we get home. This means we all get to eat together as a family.
8-8.30pm: Bedtime for L.

Naturally the weekend is more relaxed with wake-up times, breakfast, lunch, dinner and bedtimes varying depending on where we are and what else is going on.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this routine shocks our English friends but it’s certainly very different to their children’s routines. L’s 5 year old friends are given “tea” (dinner) by their mums/dads/nannies/au pairs at around 5.30-6pm before going to bed around 7-7.30pm. When I recently questioned various English and French friends about this, the outstanding reply was dinner around 6pm for the English children with the parents eating separately later, and around 7-8pm for the French children with the parents and children all eating the same meal together at the same time.

Whilst I don’t want to preach about how children should be raised and I certainly wouldn’t say that one way is better than the other, what I would say is don’t expect your child to be fed at ours if they’re over for a playdate at “tea time”! I just don’t ever think to feed children at that time!

What do you think? What time do your children eat? Would you prefer that they ate at a different time?

Well she certainly seems to sleep well with this routine!