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

Pamela Druckerman

You

Problems

Parenting

" Soccer may not explain the world or even contain the world. But it makes the world a slightly happier place. "

" I've never gotten a good idea while checking Twitter or shopping. "

" I'm not an early adopter. I'll only start wearing new styles of clothing once they're practically out of date, and I won't move into a neighborhood until it's fully saturated with upscale coffee shops. "

" America's parenting customs can shock foreigners. "

" I gradually understood why European mothers aren't in perpetual panic about their work-life balance and don't write books about how executive moms should just try harder: Their governments are helping them - and doing it competently. "

" 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. "

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

Pamela Druckerman

Because

Rules

" The French aren't known for being hilarious. When I told Parisians I was interested in French humor, they'd say 'French what?' "

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

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

" What you can say, what French parents say to their kids is, 'You don't have to eat everything, honey, you just have to taste it.' And it's that tasting little by little by little that gets kids more familiar with the food and more comfortable with it and more likely to eat it the next time. "

" 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" A lot of French comedy is satire. "

" 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. "

" Every time I pass a cafe, I imagine it being stormed by men with Kalashnikovs. "

" Practically every time I speak up at a school conference, a political event, or my apartment building association's annual meeting, I'm met with a display of someone else's superior intelligence. "

" One of the great joys of a creative life is that your observations and loose moments aren't lost forever; they live in your work. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" Usually, I'm so self-absorbed that my companion could be bleeding to death, and I might not notice. "