Review: French children don’t throw food

Here’s the thing: I don’t have children. I have no immediate plans to have children (though my gynecologist was quick to point out that children can be unplanned) but this book really resonated with me.

The book is French Children Don’t Throw Food, and to be perfectly honest – I got it for the title alone. It’s not a perfect manual on how to raise children (I would presume), but I found it funny, and interesting.

At the same time, I recognize that some of those points that Pamela Druckerman noted in the beginning of her book – kids pulling their parents arm to get attention while the parents are having a conversation with other adults and kids not being able to play on their own but having to be activated by adults the whole time is something that annoys me from real life – so I could definitely see some learning points to bring along for when/if I have kids.

With the caveat that my mother who is a trained pre-school teacher, and had plenty of child-rearing theories to back her up, had the comment after she had kids: Theory and practical application are two very different things, and kids don’t necessarily conform to the theories you’d like to use.

But all in all, I found it a good read, and I’ve recommended it to several friends.