On beige food and kids menus
This time, I'll start with something I genuinely love about France: there are no kids’ menus.
Yes, you read that right - and yes, I think that’s a very good thing.
The idea that children only like pasta, nuggets, fish fingers, or burgers (in other words: beige food or beige with meat) when out at a restaurant does everyone a disservice. It lowers expectations, says children are not sophisticated enough and cuts off so many opportunities for variety, and shared enjoyment.
Of course, if there is a kids’ menu, my kids will ask for it — who wouldn’t? But in France, that option often doesn’t exist. Instead, children simply choose something off the main menu and restaurants serve it in a smaller portion. Simple. Respectful. And totally normal.
Now for something I found much harder: French kids aren’t allowed to snack.
This is often held up as the secret to those mythical French children who sit nicely at the table and eat three full meals a day with their families. But for me, it raises a lot of red flags.
For starters, children have smaller stomachs — they get hungry more often. The idea that we should all function on three neatly scheduled meals a day is just that: an idea. A piece of cultural conditioning. Not a biological truth.
More importantly, strict “no snacking” rules disconnect kids from their own bodies.
If a child is hungry and told to wait for the next official mealtime, what they learn is not patience - they learn not to trust their hunger cues. And that disconnection can last a lifetime.
How can a child develop a strong internal compass - a sense of “this is what my body needs” - if that wisdom is constantly overridden by adults?
All this fits into a broader pattern I noticed in France:
There is, like so many other things in their nation, one approved way of parenting - and (almost) everyone agrees to it. Childcare workers, grandparents, teachers, strangers in the street - they all follow a similar childrearing philosophy, based on the idea that children can't be trusted and that they need to be actively taught how to become members of a society.
Now, imagine if everyone who interacted with your child reinforced the exact same boundaries and values you were trying to teach. That would make parenting easier. You wouldn't worry about how to tell the grandparents you're doing things differently, or sending them off to play-dates with parents who use punishments... etc.
But it also comes at a huge cost.
When there’s only one “approved” way of doing things, the pressure to conform is enormous, because they’re so deeply woven into the culture. And it's so much harder for those who don't follow this way...
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These are just some of the reflections I’ve been sitting with from our trip. And they all tie back to the same questions I come back to again and again:
What does it mean to raise children who trust their bodies and feelings?
How do we, as a society, hold space for emotions, needs, and connection — without power-over?
If these questions speak to you too, Empowered Parenting is the space to explore them.
The next live round will happen the second week of November, 2025.
We’ll look at control patterns and emotional expression, how to support a balanced nervous system, and how to build long-term emotional resilience — for our children and ourselves.