This piece resonated with me in many ways.  I lived in France during college and spent 3 months with a French family that had young children.  I remember thinking that the children were so adult like and this was when I really knew nothing nor cared about child raising.  I agree wholeheartedly that we eat too much during the day.  I lost 10 lbs when I lived there and it was mostly because I never ate in between meals.  Those habits stuck with me and to this day, I don’t eat in between meals.
I admire the French culture.  With my French family, we sat down for two nice meals a day, we hiked and spent time outdoors.  The way of life was much slower than I was accustomed to, but it was very enjoyable.

I have a very good friend of mine, who is French, and we had this conversation last week. It’s not just France that does not snack, but other European countries, too. Anyway, she said in the U.S. the meals are much smaller than in France. Breakfast and lunch are the biggest meals in France and there are a more courses compared to the U.S. She doesn’t see any harm with U.S. children snacking because of this reason.
ohpleasenot again: I totally agree with you!

I agree with ohpleasenot again, as well.  My brother is a Benedictine monk in Italy, where his community has been invited to the homes of local townspeople for dinner.  Such meals, he says, are literally painful.  He BEGS the hostess to stop heaping food on his plate and she will not.  “You’re a growing boy!” She tells him.  “But only from side-to-side!” He always replies.  To no avail.  My brother always says he has to skip both breakfast and lunch the next day before he is hungry to eat again.  Naturally, I imagine the Italian’s don’t snack after dinners like that, either!

Personally, I think that the Americans who are fat (in particular kids) are this way because of TV and/or a sedentary lifestyle.  I lived for years in Colorado where almost no one is fat (at least they weren’t in my town).  Every weekend our family hit the mountain slopes.  They were jammed with people (including families with children and babies in slings).  In the spring, fall, and summer everyone hiked; in the winter they snowshoed and skiied.  Let me tell you, that lifestyle does NOT lend itself to fatness, no matter HOW many meals you eat!  (And my dear husband ate many—he is very tall, has a fast metabolism, and could barely keep the skin on his bones doing so much outdoor trekking!) 

A final word about delayed gratification: whether its food or toys or TV or whatEVER, setting boundaries so kids know what they can have and what they must wait for seems sensible.  If delaying food makes sense for your family, great; if not, I don’t think its any big deal.

I only give my son snacks when we’re on playdates (and he gets them at preschool twice/week).  Otherwise he just has three meals/day, and he eats very well.

First to the food aspect:  It is a proven medical fact that it is better to keep the blood sugar level through the day by having more frequent smaller meals rather than a few big meals.  Before the advent of modern conveniences it took a long long time to make a meal so they would do it less frequently but eat more at each meal and that became part of the culture.  But today with all the appliances and healthy food available we can easily have a no-sugar yogurt of some baby carrots between meals.  The problem is Americans graze on junk, not healthy food.  It’s not the grazing itself that is bad.  I do agree that for treats, delayed gratification is best.  We don’t do treats often (mostly just feast days) but when we do it is after dinner.

Second, i do agree that Americans do expect instant gratification.  American children also have short attention spans thanks to video games and other media.  I couldn’t believe when I took my kids out of school how they couldn’t focus on one subject for more than 10 or 15 minutes.  I realize they are boys and active but after just one year of homeschooling they learned to focus on one subject for at least a couple of hours.  So I had to teach patience and it was like pulling teeth at first.  So I agree with the premise of the article but not the bit about the grazing.

I lived in France for a couple of years, lived with a French family with small children, and have French friends with many children—everything she says about French families is true.  Of course there are exceptions, but they really run their families well.  No one eats between meals, everyone sits down to eat together, no eating in the car, the civility and decorum of the household are most important, and no one is overweight!  Also, they expect way more out of their children in terms of school work and housework.  The children do not have a lot of possessions, clothes or toys (even the French I know in the USA).  I have learned a lot from these families.

Read this article over the weekend and I really enjoyed it.  I think Dr. Ray would agree with the author - the average American parent is not firm enough.  We have relied too much on experts to tell us how to parent, rather than using common sense.  I love the way the French have longer, slower meals.  We can barely get through 15 - 20 minutes here before my kids are leaving the table.  And yes, I have raised kids with poor manners!    I don’t think we need to emphasize the food issue much - except it makes sense to me that a child would sit at a table longer and eat if he was actually hungry, which in many cases my picky eaters are not because they have “oversnacked” after school.  There was another book a while ago about why French women aren’t fat - it has a lot to do with how active people and the fact that they do not eat junk food full of empty calories.

Wow, just wow.  And this coming from a country with a 0.5% population growth rate.  Their country is literally shrinking in population size.

This article reminds me of one I read a couple years ago on a website that I visit.  I grew up eating together with my family, but now with a family of my own and busy schedules, it’s something that I have to try to do.  The link to the article below is…

http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2009/03/what-the-fork-or-why-you-should-not-eat-the-person-sitting-next-to-you/

I am a French Mama myself and just wanted to add that we also do not drink any sodas. Only for big occasions like birthday etc.. We also spend time outside everyday, even when the weather is bad. French kids also spend less time on themselves. I was so suprised on how “fun” life is for kids in America. French kids are expected to visit elderly neighbors and relatives for example. I dont think there is a ‘better’ culture or anything. The key is balance. I like many of the American habits as well. Especially spirituality, Americans do a better job at this and I wish there were more children at mass in France.

I have read again and again that the best way to be healthy is to eat many small meals.  But they have to be healthy snacks not chips & soda!  So if you are eating apples and carrots and cheese all day it won’t make you fat.  But I also think that it is important to teach our children how to be patient and wait for good things.  There are LOTS of opportunities for any child to have to wait for something they want. We do live in a culture that encourages immediate gratification for both children and adults.

I agree with the author, at least the parts Rebecca quotes, I haven’t read the book.  I don’t believe at all it’s trying to place one culture above another, but I do believe it’s about placing certain habits above others.  These are good virtues to instill in children, and from what I’ve read, most Americans (there are always exceptions) up until around the 70’s and 80’s used to run their family meals this way too, so It may be more of a modern American problem.  I think it would do well for us Catholics to acknowledge truth when we encounter it, even if not everything the author proposes is true.  In Catholic teaching the body is important and good habits involving the desires of the flesh are intimately linked to the formation of our soul, we cannot separate the two, it’s how God made us. 

  Personally, I follow this model for my own family and my children are often complimented for their patience when we are in public.  I do believe that their ability to be patient is partly the result of a structured family-centered meal approach.  My children are never hungry, we don’t make them starve, but then again, like some comments have mentioned, the meals we serve are large.  We eat real food ( real butter and cream in sauces, good hearty bread, fruits, vegetables etc.) and I think it satisfies the cravings. We also have dessert after lunch and dinner.  I don’t have a no snacking rule, the children are aloud to get a snack whenever they want, the only constraint is it has to be a fruit or a vegetable.  No one in our family has any weight issues either ( I have gained weight in the past when I was eating in more of the modern American style.)  I also think this type of eating meshes beautifully with attachment parenting.  The American model of parenting tends toward trying to stop their legitimate crying when they are babies in an effort to “train” them and then all of a sudden giving in to their every whine when they are toddlers and young children…this never made sense to me.  Attachment parenting is the reverse of this.

I certainly think there are problems with the French culture in terms of the disappearance of Catholic identity and the resulting population issues, but I don’t see that those things are necessarily connected to the parenting style, as some seem to suggest here.  (Meaning just because the French are not having big families does not mean they do not have some virtues in their parenting style that we can learn from.)  The most positive trait I thought the article highlighted was the virtue of delayed gratification in children, which I honestly do not see promoted much here.  This plays out not just in eating, which is what’s quoted here, but also in speaking, playing, scheduling, etc.  It is something I feel very strongly about with my own children.  As for eating, we do three full meals a day (no snacks) without any behavioral (or weight issues, but if I had a child with blood sugar problems who seemed to act out out of hunger, I would adjust our eating times accordingly and they would learn delayed gratification through all the other opportunities that occur in our daily life—and I would say that more opportunities than usual arise in a large family anyway!

I just found an interesting article on this:

http://www.ahaparenting.com/_blog/Parenting_Blog/post/Are_French_Parents_Better_or_Do_They_Just_Spank_More/

I enjoyed the article.  This is a nation of immigrants and we have gained so much from that.  Why shouldn’t we also learn something from how another culture parents?  We can take what is useful and applicable and disregard the rest.  This goes for the Tiger Mom stuff as well.  It sounds as though there is a lot of value here.  The French parenting is fairly close to how we are raising our children (DH’s parents are South American, my mother is European so we were also raised outside the mainstream of American culture), I never actually thought of it as a cultural thing.  I would see other families doing differently and just thought of it as a family-to-family difference, not an entire culture or ethnicity.  Interesting!