Read Online Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman - Free Book Online
Authors: Pamela Druckerman
Ads: Link
kids sleep, I expect these women to cite lots of theories, then to give the usual American complaints about one-year-olds waking up twice per night. But they don’t. Instead, they say that lots of babies in Tribeca do their nights à la
française at about two months old. One mother, a photographer, mentions that she and many others bring their kids to a local pediatrician named Michel Cohen. She pronounces his first name “me-shell,” like the Beatles’ song.
“Is he French?” I venture.
“Yeah,” she says.
“French from France?” I ask.
“French from France,” she says.
I immediately make an appointment to meet Cohen. When I walk into his waiting room, there’s no doubt that I’m in Tribeca and not in Paris. There’s an Eames lounge chair, retro seventies wallpaper, and a lesbian mother in a fedora. A receptionist in a black tank top is calling out the names of the next patients: “Ella? Benjamin?”
When Cohen comes out, I immediately see why he’s such a hit with mothers. He has tousled brown hair, doelike eyes, and a deep tan. He wears his designer shirts untucked, with sandals and Bermuda shorts. Despite two decades in the United States, he has hung onto a charming French accent and parlance (“When I give my advices to parents . . .”). He’s done for the day, so he suggests that we sit outside at a local café. I readily agree.
Cohen clearly loves America, in part because America venerates its mavericks and entrepreneurs. In the land of managed care, he’s fashioned himself into a neighborhood doctor. (He greets a dozen passersby by name as we sip our beers.) His practice, Tribeca Pediatrics, has expanded to five locations. And he’s published a pithy parenting book called
The New Basics
with his picture on the cover.
Cohen is reluctant to credit France for the innovations he’s brought to lower Manhattan. He left France in the late 1980s and remembers it as a country where newborn babies were left to cry it out in the hospital. Even now, he says, “You can’t go to a park without seeing a kid take a beating.” (Perhaps this used to be true. However, in the scores of hours I’ve clocked in Parisian parks recently, I witnessed a spanking only once.)
But some of Cohen’s “advices” are exactly what today’s Parisian parents do. Like the French, he starts babies off on vegetables and fruits rather than bland cereals. He’s not obsessed with allergies. He talks about “rhythm” and teaching kids to handle frustration. He values calm. And he gives real weight to the parents’ own quality of life, not just to the child’s welfare.
So how does Cohen get the babies of Tribeca to do their nights?
“My first intervention is to say, when your baby is born, just don’t jump on your kid at night,” Cohen says. “Give your baby a chance to self-soothe, don’t automatically respond, even from birth.”
Maybe it’s the beer (or Cohen’s doe eyes), but I get a little jolt when he says this. I realize that I’ve seen French mothers and nannies pausing exactly this little bit before tending to their babies during the day. It hadn’t occurred to me that this was deliberate or that it was at all significant. In fact, it had bothered me. I didn’t think that you were supposed to make babies wait. Could this explain why French babies do their nights so early on, supposedly with few tears?
Cohen’s advic Shen wait. Coe to pause a little bit does seem like a natural extension of “observing” a baby. A mother isn’t strictly “observing” if she jumps up and holds the baby the moment he cries.
For Cohen, this pause—I’m tempted to call it “
La Pause
”—is crucial. He says that using it very early on makes a big difference in how babies sleep. “The parents who were a little less responsive to late-night fussing always had kids who were good sleepers, while the jumpy folks had kids who would wake up repeatedly at night until it became unbearable,” he writes. Most
française at about two months old. One mother, a photographer, mentions that she and many others bring their kids to a local pediatrician named Michel Cohen. She pronounces his first name “me-shell,” like the Beatles’ song.
“Is he French?” I venture.
“Yeah,” she says.
“French from France?” I ask.
“French from France,” she says.
I immediately make an appointment to meet Cohen. When I walk into his waiting room, there’s no doubt that I’m in Tribeca and not in Paris. There’s an Eames lounge chair, retro seventies wallpaper, and a lesbian mother in a fedora. A receptionist in a black tank top is calling out the names of the next patients: “Ella? Benjamin?”
When Cohen comes out, I immediately see why he’s such a hit with mothers. He has tousled brown hair, doelike eyes, and a deep tan. He wears his designer shirts untucked, with sandals and Bermuda shorts. Despite two decades in the United States, he has hung onto a charming French accent and parlance (“When I give my advices to parents . . .”). He’s done for the day, so he suggests that we sit outside at a local café. I readily agree.
Cohen clearly loves America, in part because America venerates its mavericks and entrepreneurs. In the land of managed care, he’s fashioned himself into a neighborhood doctor. (He greets a dozen passersby by name as we sip our beers.) His practice, Tribeca Pediatrics, has expanded to five locations. And he’s published a pithy parenting book called
The New Basics
with his picture on the cover.
Cohen is reluctant to credit France for the innovations he’s brought to lower Manhattan. He left France in the late 1980s and remembers it as a country where newborn babies were left to cry it out in the hospital. Even now, he says, “You can’t go to a park without seeing a kid take a beating.” (Perhaps this used to be true. However, in the scores of hours I’ve clocked in Parisian parks recently, I witnessed a spanking only once.)
But some of Cohen’s “advices” are exactly what today’s Parisian parents do. Like the French, he starts babies off on vegetables and fruits rather than bland cereals. He’s not obsessed with allergies. He talks about “rhythm” and teaching kids to handle frustration. He values calm. And he gives real weight to the parents’ own quality of life, not just to the child’s welfare.
So how does Cohen get the babies of Tribeca to do their nights?
“My first intervention is to say, when your baby is born, just don’t jump on your kid at night,” Cohen says. “Give your baby a chance to self-soothe, don’t automatically respond, even from birth.”
Maybe it’s the beer (or Cohen’s doe eyes), but I get a little jolt when he says this. I realize that I’ve seen French mothers and nannies pausing exactly this little bit before tending to their babies during the day. It hadn’t occurred to me that this was deliberate or that it was at all significant. In fact, it had bothered me. I didn’t think that you were supposed to make babies wait. Could this explain why French babies do their nights so early on, supposedly with few tears?
Cohen’s advic Shen wait. Coe to pause a little bit does seem like a natural extension of “observing” a baby. A mother isn’t strictly “observing” if she jumps up and holds the baby the moment he cries.
For Cohen, this pause—I’m tempted to call it “
La Pause
”—is crucial. He says that using it very early on makes a big difference in how babies sleep. “The parents who were a little less responsive to late-night fussing always had kids who were good sleepers, while the jumpy folks had kids who would wake up repeatedly at night until it became unbearable,” he writes. Most
Similar Books
