Bedtime, Bottles, and Binkies

I have to say with all certainty, childrearing has the biggest culture shock I've encountered here.  The way people raise their children here is just so so SO different.  I have tried to write this post 4 times, and every time it comes off as culturally insensitive, and very ethnocentric.  In other words, it oozes an attitude of "we're right, and they are wrong."  Parenting is just like that, I think.  Even within our own country, even within my own circle of friends, there is always a bit of whispering gossip about what everyone is doing "wrong".....nursing their toddler, putting baby to sleep on their tummy, spanking, not spanking, working, staying home, using loose blankets in the crib, co-sleeping, crying it out....I'm rubbing my temples just thinking about it.  In spite of that, please consider this post strictly for cultural enlightenment, and not a dig on Brazilian (or at least Horizontinian) parenting styles.

1. Bedtime:  My kids go to bed at 7:30/8/8:30.  That has always been pretty firm.  I can count on one hand the number of times any kid of mine saw 9PM with open eyes before coming here.  Now, on rare occasions, special events, I have been known to let them stay up as late 10.  I cringe, but the classmates of my children go to bed between 10-midnight every night.  This has been hard for me to work around.  The earliest you can have a pizza delivered is 7, and that's on a really lucky night, otherwise plan on 8 or after.  The "family" Christmas party started at 7:30, dinner was served after 9.  We're learning to cope, or bow out early, or occasionally find an excuse to stay home.
2. Bottles: My kids never really had bottles, and I have to say I'm quite proud of that.  A few early bottles to "train" them to take breast milk out of a bottle, and that was it.  I think peds encourage US parents to move away from the bottle around 12 months.  M, who is in preschool with 4 and 5 year olds, has classmates who bring bottles of juice to school every day.  Our maid told me the child she used to care for took a bottle of milk to bed with him until he was 9.  (I really want to fly off on a tangent about this, but I am holding myself back.)  Now, all that said, looking from the eyes of a Brazilian, the sippy cup my 20 month old is hauling around....it looks an awful lot like a bottle, and really, we just gave it a hard nipple, changed it's name and feel better about ourselves for using it instead.
3. Binkies: ditto to above.  If you are under 5 or 6, pacifiers are no problem here.  Compare that to the US where parents are told by pediatricians and dentists to ditch the paci by age 2.  Just recently we said bye bye to the binkie in our house, and I told the maid H was no longer using it.  She was shocked, saddened, and asked why H doesn't like it anymore.  I'm not trying to win any cultural battles, so I just shrugged a kind of "I don't know" and decided not to say "maybe it's because I snipped off the end of it and there is no satisfaction sucking on a pacifier without any suction."
4. Childcare: I'm all for women with careers.  I also totally get a need for 2 incomes.  I am greatly blessed with a wonderfully bright, hardworking husband.  He pays the bills and then some.  We don't have a need to even consider childcare.  Here, childcare is the norm, and at least for our relative economic peers, a nanny or "tata" takes care of the little ones.  I know families who have two tatas.  One for the morning through lunch and another to pick the kids up from school and feed them dinner and take care of them until bedtime.  Oftentimes they also work at least part time on Saturday.  I know more tatas at my kids school than moms.  I know a few stay at home moms here.  They have full time tatas too.  If I needed childcare, I think a nanny would be the ultimate choice, financially inconceivable in the States, but here very doable.  I like that the kids are one on one and not in a big group day care.  To me, though, and American moms I know (working moms included), we want to spend as much time as we have available with our kids.
5. Medical Consult Required: There are hypochondriacs everywhere, but I have learned not to mention a fever in a child to any Brazilian, or I will find myself with the favor of a doctor appointment squeezed in for 1 o'clock this afternoon, or an offer to accompany me to the ER.  I have never heard "wait and see" or "watchful waiting" related to an illness.  A few weeks ago, M  woke with a bug, no fever, one bout of vomiting, 2 hours later eating a second bowl of oatmeal, and by noon perfectly herself.  When she returned to school the next day some moms were commenting about it going around and that the ER doc said it's viral, gave their kids IVs and sent them home.  They all took their kids to the ER for a 1-day fever-less vomiting virus.
6. Discipline: We are not spankers, but we discipline our kids.  They know the rules and the consequences (some of them better than I wish!)  I have rarely seen a Brazilian child disciplined, by parents or teachers.  When I asked about M's complaint of being regularly pushed down by a classmate, the teacher more or less told me "kids are kids."  I have gotten more than one look by passers-by for correcting behavior in my children.  Our maid tries to cheer up and engage M while she's having a "time-out" although I've asked her to let her be.  She just can't stand her being unhappy.  After we moved here I commented to DaddyHealy about how much more our kids cry than Brazilian kids.  He explained it well, Brazilian kids are never told no.
7. The Count: Oddly of the 6 American families here, 3 of us have 3 children and one is expecting their 3rd. I don't think 3 kids is the norm in the states, but to Brazilians in this town, it probably looks like it. Here I see a LOT of only children. And when I see families with 2, I see baby #2 coming, well planned, about 8-12 years after baby #1. I talked about this with my Portuguese teacher and explained how we want to get "past the diaper stage" then "past the toddler stage" the "get all the kids in school" and so on until eventually we "get them all out of the house." Why drag that out? She laughed at me and said Brazilians want to enjoy their first child, all those moments, and when they grow and start moving on--becoming more independent, parents start to desire being able to do that over again. Why rush through it? That is such a wonderfully Brazilian attitude....one I could well learn from.