The French aren't perfect, but they have some parenting secrets that really do work.

To grow up without risk is to risk not growing up.

The French believe that kids feel confident when they're able to do things for themselves, and do those things well. After children have learned to talk, adults don't praise them for saying just anything. They praise them for saying interesting things, and for speaking well.

There are no soul mates. Not in the traditional sense, at least. In my 20s someone told me that each person has not one but 30 soul mates walking the earth. (“Yes,” said a colleague, when I informed him of this, “and I’m trying to sleep with all of them.”) In fact, “soul mate” isn’t a pre-existing condition. It’s an earned title. They’re made over time.

To be a different kind of parent, you don't just need a different parenting philosophy. You need a very different view of what a child actually is.

Just because you're 40, you don't have to decide whether God exists...when you're already worrying that the National Security Agency is reading your emails, it's better not to know whether yet another entity is watching you.

If you worry less about what people think of you, you can pick up an astonishing amount of information about them. You no longer leave conversations wondering what just happened. Other people's minds and motives are finally revealed.