Pardon My French

Tonight was my last yoga class. Thank heavens. I think if I have to do another down dog I'll throw up. Jeff just gave me a celebratory chest bump to the face.

My sister in-law Paulette introduced me to a book called Bringing Up Bebe. It's about an American woman who married a British man, and moved to Paris. When she has a baby she starts noticing the differences in French and American parenting, and how well behaved French children are. She starts researching what they do differently, and altering her own parenting style. The book is awesome, and while reading it I realized that I'm totally a French person. My child is not well behaved, so you'd never guess, but the way they think about parenting, and their methods of raising children are exactly like my own. They are obviously doing a better job, which just makes me hate them, but I'm still happy to know that what I do is actually a real parenting method. They believe in allowing lots of freedom with a few strict rules. No means no, indefinitely. But children should mostly hear yes. They shouldn't be hovered over, and protected from every little harm. They should learn from experience, which means they have to be allowed experience, without constant interference from their parents. They have strict rules around sleeping, eating, and respecting others. As long as those rules are obeyed then the rest is pretty much left up to them. French parents don't worry about damaging their children with every little thing they do or say like American parents do. I love that they laugh at American mom's at the park who run around behind their kids giggling, and narrating everything they do in an awful baby voice. The lady I nannied for in New York actually told me that she wanted me to act more like that when playing outside with the kids. I told her that wasn't my style. Anyway, I'm going to move to Paris, and my kids are going to sit at restaurants and not climb on the table or throw food at me, and they're going to go to bed when I ask them, and not get up until morning. Maybe in Paris everyone will stop talking about Chick Fil A, and glaring at me for sitting on a bench at the park instead of following Grace around making sure she's having fun. Everything is better in Paris.