The French talk about education, the education of their children. They don't talk about raising kids. They talk about education. And that has nothing to do with school. It's this kind of broad description of how you raise children and what you teach them.

When we're in the U.S., my kids instantly start snacking all the time. I don't know how it happens. There is just more food available all the time. There aren't all these little different varieties of snack foods in France.

I think kids in France, and certainly in my household, don't necessarily stop interrupting when you tell them, but they gradually become more aware of other people, and that means that you can have the expectation of finishing a conversation.

I'm always hoping no one is following me around with a camera.

I don't like rules, because rules, you have to follow.

If you want to know how old you look, just walk into a French cafe. It's like a public referendum on your face.

You know you're in your 40s when you've spent 48 hours trying to think of a word, and that word was 'hemorrhoids.'

Childhood and adolescence are nothing but milestones: You grow taller, advance to new grades, and get your period, your driver's license, and your diploma. Then, in your 20s and 30s, you romance potential partners, find jobs, and learn to support yourself.

Here's some news you might find surprising: By and large, the French like Jews.

When people used to ask me what I missed about America, I would say, 'The optimism.' I grew up in the land of hope, then moved to one whose catchphrases are 'It's not possible' and 'Hell is other people.' I walked around Paris feeling conspicuously chipper.

Before Donald Trump took office, optimism about his presidency was the lowest of any president-elect since at least the 1970s.

I had applied to become French - or, rather, Franco-American, as I'm now a dual citizen - partly because I could: I'd lived and paid taxes here for long enough.

My husband is so upset by President Trump's scapegoating of immigrants and Muslims, he refuses to even visit the United States.

When my mother in Florida mentions that she's off to play golf, I think: Golf? In the age of Trump?

How hard or easy it is to raise kids, especially while working, is a big part of people's well-being everywhere.

I gradually understood why European mothers aren't in perpetual panic about their work-life balance and don't write books about how executive moms should just try harder: Their governments are helping them - and doing it competently.

America's parenting customs can shock foreigners.

Early childhood offerings vary, but everywhere in Europe and in Canada, they're far more generous than in the United States. Ukrainian dads may not change enough diapers, but their government offers paid maternity leave; practically free preschool; and per-baby payments equivalent to eight months of an average salary.

The French don't think everyone should have the same bank balance, but they're offended by extremes of inequality.

When I moved to Europe 12 years ago, my biggest concern was whether I'd ever speak decent French. Practically every American I knew came to visit, many saying they dreamed of living here, too.

Around my neighborhood, I'm known as the American who talks to her computer while she types.

I guess we're all supposed to get used to living in a more dangerous world.

I spent most of my adolescence feeling awkward but never once mentioned it.

We're understandably worried that staring at screens all day, and blogging about our breakfasts, is turning America into a nation of narcissists. But the opposite might be true.

One of the great joys of a creative life is that your observations and loose moments aren't lost forever; they live in your work.

I've never gotten a good idea while checking Twitter or shopping.

The whole point of a commencement speech is to say something encouraging.

When my kids correct my cultural missteps, I sometimes suspect that they're not embarrassed, they're gleeful.

Having lived in America and France, I've been on both sides of the picky-eating divide.

The overarching conventional wisdom - what everyone from government experts to my French girlfriends take as articles of faith - is that restrictive diets generally don't make you healthier or slimmer. Instead, it's best to eat a variety of high-quality foods in moderation and pay attention to whether you're hungry.

We Anglophones have reasons for adopting strange diets. Increasingly, we live alone. We have an unprecedented choice of foods, and we're not sure what's in them or whether they're good for us. And we expect to customize practically everything: parenting, news, medicines, even our own faces.

Eating among the French certainly affected me. After a few years here, I gave up most of my selective food habits.

Practically every time I speak up at a school conference, a political event, or my apartment building association's annual meeting, I'm met with a display of someone else's superior intelligence.

Earnestness makes British people gag.

I always knew the French had a penchant for criticism and abstract thought. Usually, that just meant they complained a lot.

I've gotten used to being a foreigner.

French schools follow a national curriculum that includes arduous surveys of French philosophy and literature. Frenchmen then spend the rest of their lives quoting Proust to one another, with hardly anyone else catching the references.

Your child probably won't get into the Ivy League or win a sports scholarship. At age 24, he might be back in his childhood bedroom, in debt, after a mediocre college career. Raise him so that, if that happens, it will still have been worth it.

If you had asked me what I wanted when I was 12 years old, I probably would have said, 'To marry a plastic surgeon.' You can hardly blame me: I was growing up in Miami.

When I left for college, I put Miami behind me and tried to have a life of the mind. I got a graduate degree. I traveled. I even married a fellow writer, whose only real estate was a dingy one-bedroom apartment in Paris, where we lived.

Like practically everyone who grew up in Miami, I knew little about its history. We were more worried about mangoes falling on our cars.

I'm a third-generation Miamian. I'm fond of it. I'm an expatriate, so it's the only American city I can still legitimately claim.

One of the maddening things about being a foreigner in France is that hardly anyone in the rest of the world knows what's really happening here. They think Paris is a socialist museum where people are exceptionally good at eating small bits of chocolate and tying scarves.

While I love walking past those beautifully lit bookstores in my neighborhood, what I mostly buy there are blank notebooks and last-minute presents for children's birthdays.

Soccer may not explain the world or even contain the world. But it makes the world a slightly happier place.

I spend much of my free time listening to podcasts of American comedians talking to each other.

A lot of French comedy is satire.

The French aren't known for being hilarious. When I told Parisians I was interested in French humor, they'd say 'French what?'

Even for natives, French satire is rarely laugh-out-loud funny. Its unspoken punch line is typically that things have gone irrevocably wrong, and the government is to blame.

Not many foreigners move to Paris for their dream job. Many do it on a romantic whim.