The Poopsie Collective

Polishing off a bottle of wine over a lunchtime playdate was standard operating procedure in the South of France. That’s where we were living when I got knocked up. I was the only childless one in my circle of girlfriends and it didn’t occur to me that back in the States moms might not share the same laissez-faire attitude toward playdates as my French amies.

When I was finally initiated into the world of American playdates I was devastated. I desperately needed a good chat and a break from my little monster. I had imagined us moms sitting on the sidelines in a well earned moment of relaxation, discussing the Kardashians and nail polish trends, while the kids would toddle back-and-forth contentedly. But one kid took another’s toy, the crying began, and we spent the next hour on the floor refereeing. The whole time I wondered if I was a bad mother because I didn’t care that the other kid made mine cry. Why couldn’t the two of them figure out how to play together?  Shouldn’t they learn how to socialize without an adult interrupting to say, “No honey. We share our toys.”

The little lady in the red sweater is my monster. She’s assessing whether or not to snatch the drum from the kid facing her.   

Then the other morning I opened my email to find a link from a friend to the Wall Street Journal article entitled Why French Parents Are Superior. It outlines Pamela Druckerman’s new book, “Bringing up Bebe”, about the cultural parenting differences between Americans and the French. According to Druckerman, French parents are involved without being obsessive. Here I’d been, mulling over the sharp contrast between American and French playdates for some time without being able to put my finger on what exactly what was causing it, but Druckerman nailed it: American parents are obsessive. 

And it’s highly contagious. After just a few playdates my hands-off approach fell to the wayside. I now fall right in-line, hovering over my daughter and scolding her natural curiosities. And I hate myself for it.

Us American moms love our children, as do our French counterparts. But our meddling and hovering isn’t coming from a place of love. In fact, it has very little even to do with our children. It’s coming instead from a place of insecurity. I think that American moms are afraid of what our peers will think if we don’t intervene over issues of bad manners, like not sharing. We’re obsessively polite. Somehow, if we allow our children to take another’s toy, it means that we aren’t teaching our children basic morals. It means we aren’t moral people ourselves. 

I find this absurd, and yet feel the pressure upon me all the same. I worry that our cultural obsession over good manners, and the insecurity it breeds, is going to trickle into our children’s psyches making them insecure as well. 

I don’t want my daughter to look to me to solve her problems, or expect any involvement from me during her peer playtime. I worry that by meddling in her playtime she will feel that there’s something wrong with the way she engages with other kids. I want her to learn to navigate peer relationships on her own. I want her to be confident and independent.

So, on that note, if anyone wants to come over for a glass of wine (or three) while our kids fight it out, give me a shout.