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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. "
Pamela Druckerman
Confidence
Parents
Listening
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" I've gotten used to being a foreigner. "
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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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" 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. "
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" French schools follow a national curriculum that includes arduous surveys of French philosophy and literature. Frenchmen then spend the rest of their lives quoting Proust to one another, with hardly anyone else catching the references. "
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" 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. "
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Me
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Childhood
" Here's some news you might find surprising: By and large, the French like Jews. "
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" Babies aren't savages. Toddlers understand language long before they can talk. "
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Language
Before
Long
" I spend much of my free time listening to podcasts of American comedians talking to each other. "
Pamela Druckerman
Listening
Time
Talking
" 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. "
Pamela Druckerman
Education
Teach
You
" 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. "
Pamela Druckerman
Choice
Live
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" Teach your kids emotional intelligence. Help them become more evolved than you are. Explain that, for instance, not everyone will like them. "
Pamela Druckerman
Everyone
Help
You
" When my mother in Florida mentions that she's off to play golf, I think: Golf? In the age of Trump? "
Pamela Druckerman
Think
Age
Golf
" I always knew the French had a penchant for criticism and abstract thought. Usually, that just meant they complained a lot. "
Pamela Druckerman
Abstract
Always
Criticism
" While I love walking past those beautifully lit bookstores in my neighborhood, what I mostly buy there are blank notebooks and last-minute presents for children's birthdays. "
Pamela Druckerman
Walking
Past
Birthdays
" Having lived in America and France, I've been on both sides of the picky-eating divide. "
Pamela Druckerman
Both Sides
Lived
Sides
" 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. "
Pamela Druckerman
Coffee
Clothing
Early
" Around my neighborhood, I'm known as the American who talks to her computer while she types. "
Pamela Druckerman
She
American
Her
" A lot of French comedy is satire. "
Pamela Druckerman
French
Lot
Satire
" The French view is really one of balance, I think... What French women would tell me over and over is, it's very important that no part of your life - not being a mom, not being a worker, not being a wife - overwhelms the other part. "
Pamela Druckerman
Life
Women
Balance
" 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. "
Pamela Druckerman
Intelligence
Political
School
" Just as dressing well in your forties entails making choices that reflect who you are and not just wearing generic basics, looking good as you get older requires accentuating and enjoying what's specific to you rather than striving for cookie-cutter perfection. "
Pamela Druckerman
Perfection
Looking
Choices
" I'm speaking in very broad brushstrokes, but in France, there's generally this idea that you should look like the best version of the age that you are. "
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Like
France
You
" 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. "
Pamela Druckerman
Age
Child
Childhood
" If you want to know how old you look, just walk into a French cafe. It's like a public referendum on your face. "
Pamela Druckerman
Face
Look
Want
" 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. "
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Parents
School
Reading
" Parisians won't admit that they go to the gym, let alone that they're scared of terrorists. "
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Admit
Alone
Go
" I spent most of my adolescence feeling awkward but never once mentioned it. "
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Never
Awkward
Feeling
" When my kids correct my cultural missteps, I sometimes suspect that they're not embarrassed, they're gleeful. "
Pamela Druckerman
Kids
Embarrassed
Correct
" Every time I pass a cafe, I imagine it being stormed by men with Kalashnikovs. "
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Pass
Being
Cafe
" The whole point of a commencement speech is to say something encouraging. "
Pamela Druckerman
Say
Point
Something