Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting

by Pamela Druckerman

“During pregnancy, it’s important to pamper your inner woman,” another article says. “Above all, resist the urge to borrow your partner’s shirts.” A list of aphrodisiacs for moms-to-be includes chocolate, ginger, cinnamon, and—this being France—mustard.

“We believe a lot in le feeling,” Vincent says, using the English word. “We guess that children understand things.”

“Sleep reveals the child and the life of the family,” De Leersnyder writes. “To go to bed and fall asleep, to separate himself from his parents for a few hours, the child must trust his body to keep him alive, even when he’s not in control of it. And he must be serene enough to approach the strangeness of pensée de la nuit (thoughts that come in the night).”

“To learn to sleep, to learn to live, are these not synonyms?” De Leersnyder asks.

To the contrary, she was carefully observing them. She trusted that when they cried, they were telling her something. During The Pause, she watched and listened. (She adds that there’s another reason for The Pause: “to teach them patience.”)

Among other skills, the good delayers were better at concentrating and reasoning. And according to a report that Mischel and his colleagues published in 1988, they “do not tend to go to pieces under stress.”

Having kids who can wait makes family life more pleasant.

This is yet another way that French parents teach their kids to wait. They model waiting themselves.

Cadre means that kids have very firm limits—that’s the frame—and that the parents strictly enforce those limits. But within those limits, the kids have a lot of freedom.

The point of the cadre isn’t to hem in the child; it’s to create a world that’s predictable and coherent to her.