Following along on the success of the marvelous parenting manual ‘French Children Don’t Throw Food’ I have decided to write my own parenting manual based on my experiences as an expatriated mother living in Europe.
Except I am not going to write it from the view point of an expatriate Anglophile living in France who notices how French children are very sophisticated and pleasant to have as dinner guests compared to the whiney gobshites American and Brit type parents tend to have spoiling every adult occasion. Oh no. I am going to write it from the view point of an expatriate Anglophile living in Denmark.
As to what I have noticed about Danish children, ah well, we’ll just have to wait and see won’t we?
But if some clever broad can write a parenting tome about how French children are, I am sure as hell sure I can write one about how Danish children are.
Except this is all part of a backlash. My parenting manual about the differences between children of certain cultures is going to be uplifting for the common mother in contrast to ‘French Children Don’t Throw food’ which had all us American and Brit style moms feeling as if we have got it all wrong and we really should have put ourselves first or at least said “NON!” more often instead of “Oh Hepzibah! I understand you want the cookie now and you do not feel you can wait another moment, but mummy is busy right now operating this heavy machinery. You can have a cookie later, when my hands can be made free without having someones eye out and when you have finished your organic wholemeal dried fruit husk….Hepzibah..Hepzi! Now listen Hepzi…if you don’t stop pulling on mummy, mummy will drop the heavy machinery and it will spin out of control and cut both your legs off and that will hurt, Hepzi..HEPZI! IT WILL HURT and we are all out of biodynamic arnica and you will BLEED goddammit, and everybody knows you can’t apply arnica to an OPEN WOUND. Oh fuck it, have the cookie, here, have the packet, I’m going next door to Mette’s for a joint and a mug of cheap wine from FAKTA. Yes of course you can watch TV. JAYZUZ.”
My book will speak about roughly the same sorts of things as the ‘French Children don’t..’ book. Pregnancy, childbirth, kindergarten, being bilingual, what Danish mothers look like, the sort of things they say, what their apartments look like, and what sort of sex lives they have. It will also go on to say all the things Danish children do, or at least what I have found them to do. I will draw heavily on interviews with people I know who work or have worked in daycare here, and they will speak off the record of course. I will of course do some sort of formal work to back all this up, I will look into how child care workers are trained here. I will look into the history of child care here and do a little chapter on how in the old days, Danish children were tied to stumps in Jutland so their mothers could go and make cheese but that now all that is changed and that mothers in Jutland now take their kids to vuggestue instead, so they can go and make cheese or work in Nordea bank or be a student. Or train to work in a vuggestue.
I will contact Danish Childcare experts and ask for their opinion and see what they will say.
It is going to be great.
But like I say, instead of making parents feel bad about how their kids aren’t French and they aren’t skinny Parisians themselves, this book is going to make parents feel okay about their choices. It’s all relative after all.
If anybody has a suggestion about something I could put in the book do let me know, I can’t decide on the title as I am presently rather underwhelmed with it all.
It would be really helpful if I got some more accounts from expat mothers in Denmark about how they see the Danish kids to be compared to their own kids, or even French kids.
And if any publisher wants to send me a huge advance and a ghostwriter that would be fab too. I am sure the rest of the world wants to know how Danish parents do it, what with ‘The Killing’ and Sara Lund being such hotstuff.
Love ya xxx
I’d read it.
Loved your article. I am English born, but raised in Australia. I then married an American and moved to his Country, and then he asked me to move to Denmark with him. My oldest was 8 and my youngest 2, with the worst tantrums you can imagine. Later, I found out he had an Autism Spectrum Disorder, and much of his behavior in public was probably attributed to the emergence of what defines this disorder. I allowed my son his tantrums, much to my own humiliation. I was the only mother in the streets with a child. The rest of them were in day care. I felt the eyes of pedestrians drilling into me. I hated the feeling. I’m just as human as anyone else, and clueless as to what to do to ease these public tantrums. A young man approached me with admiration. That I didn’t flinch and allowed my son his public displays, as most Danish parents would never be able to deal or overcome these displays if it were their own children. I had a sense that their kids were probably spanked to submission. They looked like meek and obedient children, who would never ever step out of line. Most of us parents are insecure with parenting, and it is that more humiliating when your child is more complex in his nature and personality traits which are continuously emerging. Isn’t it interesting that we ex-pats all share the same stories and the same difficulties.
I am not so sure I can understand what you are saying. Please say it again but in Denish.
I have had the pleasure of teaching in a technical high school in southern Jutland where I have seen all the kinds of behaviour you would like to write about. When they banned smoking on the entire site, we would have 30 students puffing away on the steps of the school with the disgusting aroma wafting in to the building. Of course all the cigarette buts got dropped right there on the steps.
Lately, the HTX dears have taken to playing football with the Ikea furniture. You know those turquoise poofs that they sell. At least I think they are from Ikea.
All the lab equipment gets broken because the kids are allowed to go into the labs unsupervised and take what they like.
I have been teaching here for a year. I recently had a student who walked out of my class because I ran one minute over time saying ‘I’m leaving. I have a bus to catch.’ You have to imagine the tone it was said in. Sort of like accusatory and hurt all at the same time.
I have given up on getting homework in from the kids. It is a waste of energy and our ‘management’ couldn’t give a toss either. As for the administration at this school, my God what a waste of time.
When I told my boss that I was leaving and going back to the UK in a confidential email, he spread the news to the entire staff room. He is so incompetent that I cannot trust him to do even a simple task or remember anything I have told him.
Goodbye Denmark and thank you for the memories.
HTX….mwahahaha…is that like a COURSE…or something? Fuck that shit.