Feels like it could be its own topic. Really, really struggling to understand what's going on here. From what I can gather, he read an NY Times article which set off a Proustian recollection of the time he talked to a Dutch person about mayo (but not peanut sauce) on fries.
Quote:
Be like the Dutch — drop your kids off alone in the forest and drink tiny beers
Though we’ve raised two sons, the last thing Betty wants me to do is to offer unsolicited advice to parents on how to bring up their own children.
Giving parental advice is often arrogant and stupid. Besides, she’s right, it also upsets people.
Once I would tell new parents they just had to get their kids into soccer at a very young age and tie a ball to the left foot at the age of 2, because all the top teams want players with a good left foot.
“And what happened?” she said. “People would run away and roll their eyes.”
They still do. So, I stopped, because in America, telling parents how to raise their kids is the job of the federal government.
But thanks to the idiosyncratic people of the Netherlands, also known as “The Dutch,” there is plenty of parenting advice being tossed around lately and I can’t be blamed.
It’s based on one of those weird Dutch customs. They reportedly have many cultural idiosyncrasies, including drinking tiny beers, combining curse words with diseases and putting peanut sauce on fries.
But this one involves abandoning your preteen children in a scary forest alone at night. Then you wait for them to make it home alive.
They call it “dropping.”
The New York Times wrote this story, and it started a “thing” among arrogant parental advice columnists on the internet.
“You just drop your kids in the world,” novelist Pia de Jong, who raised her children in New Jersey, told the Times. “Of course, you make sure they don’t die, but other than that, they have to find their own way.”
Apparently, they do make their way home after being left alone out there in the creepy, dark forest with only a map and a flashlight. Sometimes a parent will hide in the bushes and make sounds like a wild Dutch boar to scare the kids for fun, but that’s about it.
Naturally, this has triggered American helicopter moms and tiger moms — I can’t tell the difference between them, though I’m sure there is one, since tigers are animals and helicopters are not. The Dutch are naturally bragging that the Dutch way is the best way to raise kids, and they’re probably correct.
My advice to American parents is to give your credit cards to the kids and see if they can survive at the mall.
Just don’t do what my wife and I did — abandon the children in the suburbs in the snow with only rude wooden spears with which the boys were expected to each kill a wolf and wear its pelt, Spartan style, as in the movie “300.”
But don’t try appropriating my culture, yo.
Naturally, some Dutch people were upset with the news stories, since who likes their weirdness on display? Others, though, were quite proud.
Ellen, at @EllenNGNG tweeted the kid dropping story was absolutely correct.
“True,” said Ellen. “It’s part of our beautiful Dutch culture. That’s why I gave birth 8 times in the forest. 3 of them eventually made it home, the strong and independent ones.”
Daan Koopen, @D_Koopen, said, “You miss the part where our children have to fight an angry cow at the age of four. Those that fail are sacrificed to the ocean so we may survive another year without being flooded.”
What is dead may never die but rises again harder and stronger.
My own experience with the Dutch — I got drunk with a few after watching speedskating at the Sochi Olympics — was that they were bluff folk of excellent manners and good humor.
We talked endlessly through the night about mayonnaise on fries and the great left-footed player Arjen Robben of the Dutch national team.
But I never saw them drink “tiny beers,” although that is said to be the Dutch practice, at least according to a story “8 Customs Only the Dutch Will Understand” found on some site called The Culture Trip.
The writer looked as if he were an American habitué of the hash bars of Amsterdam, but I can’t be sure.
Of the other (allegedly) weird Dutch customs, the use of diseases as curse words was truly weird:
“Whereas English speakers usually rely on bodily waste and sexual organs to insult one another, the Dutch have instead developed a whole lexicon of swear words that refer to life threatening illness such as typhus, cholera and cancer. Among the many disturbing insults in the Netherlands, common curses include pestpokke-tering (plague boils-tuberculosis), krijg de klere (catch cholera) and the particularly nasty tyfushond (typhus dog).”
One of their great accomplishments is the world-renowned soccer team FC Barcelona. Cultural philistines think Barca plays in the Spanish style, but in reality, their “Spanish style” was invented by the great Dutchman Johan Cruyff, the father of “totaalvoetbal.”
Instead of Barcelona, they should call themselves Cruyff-a-lona.
Which forest he may have dropped his kids in and whether he opted for mayo or peanut sauce on his fries remains a mystery to this day.
Though we’ve raised two sons, the last thing Betty wants me to do is to offer unsolicited advice to parents on how to bring up their own children.
Giving parental advice is often arrogant and stupid. Besides, she’s right, it also upsets people.
Once I would tell new parents they just had to get their kids into soccer at a very young age and tie a ball to the left foot at the age of 2, because all the top teams want players with a good left foot.
“And what happened?” she said. “People would run away and roll their eyes.”
They still do. So, I stopped, because in America, telling parents how to raise their kids is the job of the federal government.
But thanks to the idiosyncratic people of the Netherlands, also known as “The Dutch,” there is plenty of parenting advice being tossed around lately and I can’t be blamed.
It’s based on one of those weird Dutch customs. They reportedly have many cultural idiosyncrasies, including drinking tiny beers, combining curse words with diseases and putting peanut sauce on fries.
But this one involves abandoning your preteen children in a scary forest alone at night. Then you wait for them to make it home alive.
They call it “dropping.”
The New York Times wrote this story, and it started a “thing” among arrogant parental advice columnists on the internet.
“You just drop your kids in the world,” novelist Pia de Jong, who raised her children in New Jersey, told the Times. “Of course, you make sure they don’t die, but other than that, they have to find their own way.”
Apparently, they do make their way home after being left alone out there in the creepy, dark forest with only a map and a flashlight. Sometimes a parent will hide in the bushes and make sounds like a wild Dutch boar to scare the kids for fun, but that’s about it.
Naturally, this has triggered American helicopter moms and tiger moms — I can’t tell the difference between them, though I’m sure there is one, since tigers are animals and helicopters are not. The Dutch are naturally bragging that the Dutch way is the best way to raise kids, and they’re probably correct.
My advice to American parents is to give your credit cards to the kids and see if they can survive at the mall.
Just don’t do what my wife and I did — abandon the children in the suburbs in the snow with only rude wooden spears with which the boys were expected to each kill a wolf and wear its pelt, Spartan style, as in the movie “300.”
But don’t try appropriating my culture, yo.
Naturally, some Dutch people were upset with the news stories, since who likes their weirdness on display? Others, though, were quite proud.
Ellen, at @EllenNGNG tweeted the kid dropping story was absolutely correct.
“True,” said Ellen. “It’s part of our beautiful Dutch culture. That’s why I gave birth 8 times in the forest. 3 of them eventually made it home, the strong and independent ones.”
Daan Koopen, @D_Koopen, said, “You miss the part where our children have to fight an angry cow at the age of four. Those that fail are sacrificed to the ocean so we may survive another year without being flooded.”
What is dead may never die but rises again harder and stronger.
My own experience with the Dutch — I got drunk with a few after watching speedskating at the Sochi Olympics — was that they were bluff folk of excellent manners and good humor.
We talked endlessly through the night about mayonnaise on fries and the great left-footed player Arjen Robben of the Dutch national team.
But I never saw them drink “tiny beers,” although that is said to be the Dutch practice, at least according to a story “8 Customs Only the Dutch Will Understand” found on some site called The Culture Trip.
The writer looked as if he were an American habitué of the hash bars of Amsterdam, but I can’t be sure.
Of the other (allegedly) weird Dutch customs, the use of diseases as curse words was truly weird:
“Whereas English speakers usually rely on bodily waste and sexual organs to insult one another, the Dutch have instead developed a whole lexicon of swear words that refer to life threatening illness such as typhus, cholera and cancer. Among the many disturbing insults in the Netherlands, common curses include pestpokke-tering (plague boils-tuberculosis), krijg de klere (catch cholera) and the particularly nasty tyfushond (typhus dog).”
One of their great accomplishments is the world-renowned soccer team FC Barcelona. Cultural philistines think Barca plays in the Spanish style, but in reality, their “Spanish style” was invented by the great Dutchman Johan Cruyff, the father of “totaalvoetbal.”
Instead of Barcelona, they should call themselves Cruyff-a-lona.
Which forest he may have dropped his kids in and whether he opted for mayo or peanut sauce on his fries remains a mystery to this day.
