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" There's an American idea that you want to look as young as you can for as long as you can. If you can be mistaken for a teenager from behind into your 50s, then you've won; you've succeeded. "

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" 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. "

Pamela Druckerman

Said

You

Miami

" One of the many problems with parenting is that kids keep changing. Just when you're used to one stage, they zoom into another. "

" 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. "

" I don't like rules, because rules, you have to follow. "

Pamela Druckerman

Because

Rules

" When my mother in Florida mentions that she's off to play golf, I think: Golf? In the age of Trump? "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" As an American married to an Englishman and living in France, I've spent much of my adult life trying to decode the rules of conversation in three countries. Paradoxically, these rules are almost always unspoken. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I spend much of my free time listening to podcasts of American comedians talking to each other. "

" Like practically everyone who grew up in Miami, I knew little about its history. We were more worried about mangoes falling on our cars. "

" How hard or easy it is to raise kids, especially while working, is a big part of people's well-being everywhere. "

" I think kids in France, and certainly in my household, don't necessarily stop interrupting when you tell them, but they gradually become more aware of other people, and that means that you can have the expectation of finishing a conversation. "

" Not many foreigners move to Paris for their dream job. Many do it on a romantic whim. "

" 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. "

" The French talk about education, the education of their children. They don't talk about raising kids. They talk about education. And that has nothing to do with school. It's this kind of broad description of how you raise children and what you teach them. "

" Certain woman will be jealous of how skinny you are, no matter what's causing it. "

" Here's some news you might find surprising: By and large, the French like Jews. "

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

" I had applied to become French - or, rather, Franco-American, as I'm now a dual citizen - partly because I could: I'd lived and paid taxes here for long enough. "

" I spent most of my adolescence feeling awkward but never once mentioned it. "

" My family was once invited to lunch at a chateau owned by a friend of a friend. As we drove our rental car up to the giant castle, my kids gasped and said, 'They must be rich!' "

" I hear people in their 20s describe the 40s as a far-off decade of too-late, when they'll regret things that they haven't done. But for older people I meet, the 40s are the decade that they would most like to travel back to. "

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

" We Anglophones have reasons for adopting strange diets. Increasingly, we live alone. We have an unprecedented choice of foods, and we're not sure what's in them or whether they're good for us. And we expect to customize practically everything: parenting, news, medicines, even our own faces. "

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

" Before Donald Trump took office, optimism about his presidency was the lowest of any president-elect since at least the 1970s. "

" 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. "

" Having lived in America and France, I've been on both sides of the picky-eating divide. "