Quotes from Pamela Druckerman

Perfection isn't a requirement of friendship, but showing people who you are definitely is.

Though I'm winging it, I've realized that everyone else is, too. Parenting starts out as a concrete project. You're full of ideas about how to shape your children. But you end up with this jellyfish of a family that you can't control exactly. All you can do is warm the waters and nudge it in the right direction.

The family is based on the couple. If it exists only through children, it withers,

trying to keep young children happy all the time will make them less happy later on.

There are stages of becoming a grown-up. First, you definitely aren't one. Then you pretend to be one. Then you're sure that there are no grown -ups; that they're mythological and don't really exist. And then finally, maybe one day in your forties, you just are one.

Avoid castigating your child in front of others.

Mielihyvä on "elämän motivaatio

I might as well have declared my devotion to processed cheese.

If your child is your only goal in life, it's not good for the child," Danièle says. "What happens to the child if he's the only hope for his mother? I think this is the opinion of all psychoanalysts.

There are no grown-ups. Everyone is winging it; some just do it more confidently.

At dinner parties other women's husbands and boyfriends hold my gaze a bit longer than all but the most lecherous American men would dare. I never find out whether these approaches might lead to something more, but they don't have to. Flirting with someone else's partner isn't a betrayal of your spouse or a gateway to extramarital sex. It's a harmless way to have fun.

He reads up on the science of taste and concludes that the main problem with new foods is simply that they're new. So just having them around should chip away at the eater's innate resistance.

I'm aware that American-style instant bonding between women doesn't happen in France. I've heard that female friendships here start out slowly and can take years to ramp up. (Though once you're finally "in" with a Frenchwoman, you're supposedly stuck with her for life. American insta-friends can drop you anytime.)

Thompson, who has a French mother and an English father, points out that kids often get very angry at their parents when parents block them. She says English-speaking parents often interpret this anger as a sign that the parents doing something wrong. But she warns that parents should't mistake angering a child for bad parenting.

You're fluent in a language once you can explain to someone—in that language—how to tie his shoes"? (I can.)

they believe that children can achieve these goals only if they respect boundaries and have self-control. So alongside character, there has to be cadre.

the main point of parental authority is to authorize children to do things, not to block them.

According to Cohen, it's only until the baby is four months old. After that, bad sleep habits are formed.

We're at—or approaching—our lifetime peak in earnings, but Botox now seems like a reasonable idea. We're reaching the height of our careers, but we can now see how they will probably end.