Are you American or Parisian?

Have you seen this new book Bringing Up Bebe, by Pamela Druckerman? For a synopsis, see this Wall Street Journal article. Are you more American in how you're raising your kids? Or more Parisian? 

I'm not sure if I'm more American or Parisian, but one of the suggestions from this book that was mentioned in the WSJ article has already worked for us. We've always had a hard time with Bean at restaurants. She's never been interested in restaurant food so she would always cause trouble, making it more annoying than enjoyable for us. The culprit? Snacks. She's always been a big snacker, preferring small snacks all day long instead of three larger meals. I actually don't think this is a bad eating strategy, and in fact if you look at most diets they suggest snacking and having smaller meals as a weight loss strategy. And I'm a big snacker. So we probably won't change this up on a regular basis.

But the snacks do fill Bean up through the day so by the time we get to dinner she's mostly full and not all that interested in eating her dinner. In the past if we've gone out to eat she would be all over us while we were eating, or trying to get out of her chair, or pitching a fit. So annoying. 

Over the last few weeks we've tried the Bringing Up Bebe Parisian strategy on the days we want to go out to dinner as a family, which is to have only one very small snack during the day in addition to meals. And no more bringing snacks to restaurants to keep her occupied while we're waiting. I bring a small notebook and a pen for her to play with instead. And all of a sudden, Bean is better at restaurants - because she's...wait for it...hungry. Last night we actually got to enjoy our food for the first time ever. Bean didn't even say a word let alone try and get out of her chair. She was too busy eating. Brilliant.

I'm pretty sure I won't agree with everything in this book and honestly I don't want Bean to act Parisian. They aren't the nicest people ever. But this one tip worked so well that I'm definitely getting the book.

Au Revoir!