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" I've got letters from all over the world saying what you're describing as American parenting is Chilean middle-class parenting, or it is Finnish middle-class parenting, or it is Slovak middle-class parenting. "

Pamela Druckerman

World

American

Parenting

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" French children seem to be able to play by themselves in a way. "

" When you're further along in your career, you probably have more money and more means; you have to stop yourself from giving your child too much. Whereas, if you're in twenties, you might just get by. "

" America's parenting customs can shock foreigners. "

" Teach your kids emotional intelligence. Help them become more evolved than you are. Explain that, for instance, not everyone will like them. "

" 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. "

" A lot of French comedy is satire. "

" It's refreshing to have some time off from wondering whether I look fat. "

" You know you're in your 40s when you've spent 48 hours trying to think of a word, and that word was 'hemorrhoids.' "

" There's this idea in America that you can be whatever you want. That remains an ideal in terms of how you dress too - when you go shopping, you try on all possible selves and then decide. "

" In the Nineties, there was all this new research into brain development, with evidence saying poor kids fall behind in school because no one is talking to them at home, no one is reading to them. And middle-class parents seized on this research. "

" We're understandably worried that staring at screens all day, and blogging about our breakfasts, is turning America into a nation of narcissists. But the opposite might be true. "

" I guess we're all supposed to get used to living in a more dangerous world. "

Pamela Druckerman

Dangerous

Used

" If you had asked me what I wanted when I was 12 years old, I probably would have said, 'To marry a plastic surgeon.' You can hardly blame me: I was growing up in Miami. "

" 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. "

" I've gotten used to being a foreigner. "

" Discrimination was a problem before terrorism. Now, the bad deeds of a few people have made life worse for millions. "

" Unlike the time sink of binge-watching a TV series, podcasts actually made me more efficient. Practically every dull activity - folding laundry, applying makeup - became tolerable when I did it while listening to a country singer describing his hardscrabble childhood, or a novelist defending her open marriage. "

Pamela Druckerman

Time

Childhood

" Your child probably won't get into the Ivy League or win a sports scholarship. At age 24, he might be back in his childhood bedroom, in debt, after a mediocre college career. Raise him so that, if that happens, it will still have been worth it. "

" Being an immigrant mother can be hard, but being a poor immigrant mother is much harder. You don't generally get to sit in cafes polishing your French by reading 'Le Monde.' "

" Sometimes I just tell my kids, 'Outside of France, I'm considered completely normal.' This worked until we traveled to London. "

" Even for natives, French satire is rarely laugh-out-loud funny. Its unspoken punch line is typically that things have gone irrevocably wrong, and the government is to blame. "

" And as a mother of three with a full-time job, podcasts gave me the illusion of having a vibrant social life. I was constantly 'meeting' new people. My favorite hosts started to seem like friends: I could detect small shifts in their moods and tell when they were flirting with guests. "

Pamela Druckerman

Job

Life

" Just do what you want more often. Don't be so worried about what other people expect. "

" When people used to ask me what I missed about America, I would say, 'The optimism.' I grew up in the land of hope, then moved to one whose catchphrases are 'It's not possible' and 'Hell is other people.' I walked around Paris feeling conspicuously chipper. "

" Podcasts immersed me in colloquial English and put me back in the American zeitgeist. "

Pamela Druckerman

Immersed

Back

" The question on my husband's birthday is always, What do you get for the man who has nothing? "

" I'm a third-generation Miamian. I'm fond of it. I'm an expatriate, so it's the only American city I can still legitimately claim. "

" I think, in writing a memoir, you kind of give order to your life. "

" 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. "

Pamela Druckerman

Two

Time

" Earnestness makes British people gag. "