French Children Don't Throw Food: The hilarious NO. 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER changing parents’ lives

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I'd heard a lot of discussion about this particular book and I have to say, if it ends up being the ONLY book on parenting I read in the lead-up to my child's birth this fall, I'm better off for having made the choice. While some American toddlers are getting Mandarin tutors and preliteracy training, French kids are- by design-toddling around and discovering the world at their own pace.

The way they look and getting their bodies back (if they even lost them in the first place) seemed more important that caring for the babies that they gave life to. every chapter was just generalization after generalization - All french mothers do this and it works, and all american mothers do this and look how we hover. They may be noisier and less well behaved, but they seem to become much more social and community-minded as adults. I don’t like to generalise and say the French get it right, any more than say there’s an upper-class or working-class way parents parent,” she says.The four small people wandering around my home are a tribe of nomads and they are just passing through so I have no dog in this fight regarding the best way to raise children. A culture unafraid to teach its children patience ("You must teach your children frustration" is a French parenting maxim that I whole-heartedly endorse). In a sidenote about relationships in France and elsewhere, I'd be interested to read the author's other book about how Fidelity/Cheating is viewed in different countries). But quietly and en masse, French parents are achieving outcomes that create a whole different atmosphere for family life.

If anything, within my community, more parents are like the French parents- perhaps that's because people where I live have more children than average and cannot afford the time or money required to helicopter parent each child the way she described.

I don't think kids should hit their parents (this is apparently not a hanging offense in the Druckerman home) and I do insist that "I get to decide" on the rules for my home. I failed to appreciate much of what this book had to offer based on many poorly backed assumptions and one substantial thought flaw. Obwohl mich im Grunde der französische Ansatz mehr anspricht, gibt es oft sicher einen Mittelweg zwischen den beiden Extremen. Child care workers, grandparents, teachers, everyone you meet on the street shares the same child rearing philosophy, so French parents have a support system which does not exist in America. I was at an English friend's house and her six-year-old son was thumping the piano as we were trying to speak.

After a few more restaurant meals, I notice that the French families all around us don’t look like they’re in hell. What I was expecting was another pat, self-help-section miracle solution to everyone's parenting woes type of book (the endorsement by and comparison to French Women Don't Get Fat wasn't helping).Why is it that so many of the Anglophone kids I meet are on mono-diets of pasta or white rice, or eat only a narrow menu of ‘children’s’ foods? Added to that, they stop breastfeeding early and have no qualms in going back to work, seeing themselves as women as well as mothers.