Bringing Up Bébé by Pamela Druckerman

Author:Pamela Druckerman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Baby
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 2011-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Caca boudin

When Bean is about three, she starts using an expression I’ve never heard before. At first I think it’s caca buddha, which sounds like it could be vaguely offensive to my Buddhist friends (as in English, caca is a French kid’s term for poop). But after a while I realize she’s saying caca boudin (pronounced boo-dah). Boudin means sausage. My daughter is going around shouting – if you’ll pardon my French – “poop sausage.”

Like all good curse words, caca boudin is versatile. Bean shouts it gleefully when she’s running through the house with her friends. She also uses it to mean “whatever,” “leave me alone,” and “none of your business.” It’s an all-purpose retort.

Me: What did you do at school today?

Bean: Caca boudin. (snortle)

Me: Would you like some more broccoli?

Bean: Caca boudin! (hysterical laughter)

Simon and I aren’t sure what to make of caca boudin. Is it rude or cute? Should we be angry or amused? We don’t understand the social context, and we have no childhood experience of our own in France to draw on. To be safe, we tell her to stop saying it. She compromises by continuing to say it, but then adding, “We don’t say caca boudin. It’s a bad word.”

Bean’s budding French does have perks. When we go back to America for Christmas, my mother’s friends keep asking her to pronounce the name of her hairdresser, Jean-Pierre, with her Parisian accent. (Jean-Pierre has given her a pixie haircut that they coo is oh-so-French, too.) Bean is happy to sing, on demand, some of the dozens of French songs she’s learned in school. I’m amazed the first time she opens a present and says, spontaneously, oh la la!

But it’s becoming clear that being bilingual is more than just a party trick or a neutral skill. As Bean’s French improves, she’s starting to bring home not just unfamiliar expressions but also new ideas and rules. Her new language is making her into not just a French speaker but into a French person. And I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that. I’m not even sure what a “French person” is.

♦

The main way that France enters our house is through school. Bean has started école maternelle, France’s free public preschool. It’s all day, four days a week, except for Wednesdays. Maternelle isn’t compulsory, and kids can go part-time. But pretty much every three-year-old in France goes to maternelle full time and has a similar experience there. It’s France’s way of turning toddlers into French people.

The maternelle has lofty goals. It is, in effect, a national project to turn the nation’s solipsistic three-year-olds into civilized, empathetic people. A booklet for parents from the education ministry explains that in maternelle kids “discover the richness and the constraints of the group that they’re part of. They feel the pleasure of being welcomed and recognized, and they progressively participate in welcoming their fellow students.”

Charlotte, who’s been a teacher at maternelle for thirty years (and still charmingly has the kids call her maîtresse – teacher or, literally, mistress), tells me that in the first year the kids are very egotistical.

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