Pamela Druckerman Quotes
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Where Americans might coo over a child's most inane remark to boost his confidence, middle-class French parents teach their kids to be concise and amusing, to keep everyone listening.
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Eating among the French certainly affected me. After a few years here, I gave up most of my selective food habits.
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I've gotten used to being a foreigner.
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I was scared to say I was in my 40s because at that point, it sounded really old, and to out myself as a middle-aged human - I felt very awkward about it.
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A lot of French comedy is satire.
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Podcasts immersed me in colloquial English and put me back in the American zeitgeist.
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I don't like rules, because rules, you have to follow.
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One of the maddening things about being a foreigner in France is that hardly anyone in the rest of the world knows what's really happening here. They think Paris is a socialist museum where people are exceptionally good at eating small bits of chocolate and tying scarves.
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I guess we're all supposed to get used to living in a more dangerous world.
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When I tell French parents that I know lots of American kids who will eat only pasta or only white rice, they can't believe it. I mean, they can understand how the kid left to his own devices might do that, but they can't imagine that parents would allow that to happen.
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One of the many problems with parenting is that kids keep changing. Just when you're used to one stage, they zoom into another.
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Earnestness makes British people gag.
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Soccer may not explain the world or even contain the world. But it makes the world a slightly happier place.
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In my 40s, I expect to finally reap the average-looking girl's revenge. I've entered the stage of life where you don't need to be beautiful; simply by being well-preserved and not obese, I would now pass for pretty.
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In the English books, the American kids' books, typically, there is a problem, the characters grapple with that problem, and the problem is resolved.
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Get rid of the idea of kids' food. Kids can eat whatever adults can eat. You know, there is one dinner, and everyone has the same thing.
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When we're in the U.S., my kids instantly start snacking all the time. I don't know how it happens. There is just more food available all the time. There aren't all these little different varieties of snack foods in France.
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Remember that the problem with hyper-parenting isn't that it's bad for children; it's that it's bad for parents.
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When I left for college, I put Miami behind me and tried to have a life of the mind. I got a graduate degree. I traveled. I even married a fellow writer, whose only real estate was a dingy one-bedroom apartment in Paris, where we lived.
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Around my neighborhood, I'm known as the American who talks to her computer while she types.
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I've been vacationing in western North Carolina and northern Georgia since I was a kid. I arrive, marvel at the mountains, and put on an unconvincing Southern drawl.
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When you're the foreigner and your kids are the natives, they realize you're clueless much sooner than they ordinarily would. I'm pretty sure mine skipped the Mommy-is-infallible stage entirely.
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Soon after Donald Trump was inaugurated, I got a letter from France's interior ministry informing me that I was now French. By the time it arrived, I'd been French for nearly two weeks without even knowing it.
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Early childhood offerings vary, but everywhere in Europe and in Canada, they're far more generous than in the United States. Ukrainian dads may not change enough diapers, but their government offers paid maternity leave; practically free preschool; and per-baby payments equivalent to eight months of an average salary.