Bringing up Bébé

Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

**I'm updating this review to give it another star because I haven't been able to stop talking about, thinking about, mulling over, and agreeing with the philosophies I learned in reading this book.**

I came into the reading this book with a pretty firm understanding of how I want to raise my children. I was skeptical when my sister recommended it to me, because when I think of French people the label "not spoiled" does not seem to fit. But having just read French Women Don't Get Fat, I started to think deeper about how there is so much healthy delayed gratification in the culture of France. So I gave it a try!

So much about French living is that Le Pause that she speaks about in French parenting. I know I would do well to include such a pause in my own adult life. Druckerman does a fine job of explaining all of these concepts, which revolve around learning how to wait, and thinking critically about "educating" children to delay gratification.

When you break it down, it is basically the way that our great-grandparents would have preferred to raise children: adults are in charge, they know they're in charge, the children respect that, and the respect is mutual.

I'm giving it four stars as it's not a comprehensive book for me because it doesn't include faith in it (not a surprise), but I really enjoyed a lot of the takeaways I got.

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