Bringing Up Bébé

What you’re taught in high school is to learn to reason. You’re not supposed to be creative. You’re supposed to be articulate.”

Saying one, two, three isn’t rocket science. Some American parents certainly say it, too. But the logic behind it is very French. “This gives him some time, and it’s respectful to the child,” Daniel Marcelli says.1 The child should be allowed to play an active role in obeying, which requires giving him time to respond.

At bedtime you can really see the

there must be words, time, patience, and reciprocal recognition.

You have to show him that’s the way it is and it’s not a bad way or a good way, it’s just the way.

the mother should remain extremely calm and gently explain that buying the toy isn’t in the day’s plan. Then she should

Most say they started doing The Pause when their babies were a few weeks old.

The child greets, therefore he is. Just as any adult who walks into my house has to acknowledge me, any child who walks in must acknowledge me, too. “Greeting is essentially recognizing someone as a person,”

Rousseau says the biggest parenting trap is to think that because a child can argue well, his argument deserves the same weight as your own. “The worst education is to leave him floating between his will and yours and to dispute endlessly between you and him as to which of the two will be the master.”