alice-miller Quotes About children

Source: Breaking down the wall of silence: the liberating experience of facing painful truth

“Society chooses to disregard the mistreatment of children, judging it to be altogether normal because it is so commonplace.”

Children Judging Normal Commonplace Disregard Mistreatment

Author:Alice Miller

“someday we will regard our children not as creatures to manipulate or to change but rather as messengers from a world we once deeply knew, but which we have long since forgotten, who can reveal to us more about the true secrets of life, and also our own lives, than our parents were ever able to.”

Source: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“It is precisely because a child's feelings are so strong that they cannot be repressed without serious consequences. The stronger a prisoner is, the thicker the prison walls have to be, which impede or completely prevent later emotional growth.”

Children Feelings Strong Growth Emotional Serious Wall Consequence Stronger Prison Prisoner Repressed Emotional Growth Prison Walls

Book:The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Third Edition

Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Third Edition

“Every child has a legitimate narcissistic need to be noticed, understood, taken seriously, and respected by his mother. In the first weeks and months of life he needs to have the mother at his disposal, must be able to use her and to be mirrored by her.”

Needs Firsts Children Use Able Mother Taken Week Months Understood Narcissistic

Book:Prisoners of Childhood

Source: Prisoners of Childhood

“The child has a primary need to be regarded and respected as the person he really is at any given time, and as the center - the central actor - in his own activity.”

Needs Children Persons Actors Given Activity Primaries

Book:Prisoners of Childhood

Source: Prisoners of Childhood

“I sincerely believe that we not only have the right to know what is good and what is evil; we have the duty to acquire that knowledge if we hope to assume responsibility for our own lives and those of our children. Only by knowing the truth can we be set free.”

Ifs Knows Believe Children Truth Evil Responsibility Knowing Duty Our Children Assuming Acquire Good And Evil Sincerely Knowing The Truth

Book:The Truth Will Set You Free: Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self

Source: The Truth Will Set You Free: Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self

“Anyone who has ever been a mother or father and is at all honest knows from experience how difficult it can be for parents to accept certain aspects of their children. It is especially painful to have to admit this if we really love our child and want to respect his or her individuality yet are unable to do so.”

Ifs Knows Want Children Mother Certain Father Parent Difficult Accepting Honest Aspect Our Children Individuality Painful Love Our Children

Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

Source: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“Every life and every childhood is filled with frustrations; we cannot imagine it otherwise, for even the best mother cannot satisfy all her child's wishes and needs. It is not the suffering caused by frustration, however, that leads to emotional illness, but rather the fact that the child is forbidden by the parents to experience and articulate this suffering, the pain felt at being wounded.”

Needs Children Facts Pain Mother Suffering Wish Felt Parent Imagine Childhood Emotional Filled Illness Frustration Wounded Forbidden Best Mother

Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

Source: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“The knowledge that you were beaten and that this, as your parents tell you, was for your own good may well be retained (although not always), but the suffering caused by the way you were mistreated will remain unconscious and will later prevent you from empathizing with others. This is why battered children grow up to be mothers and fathers who beat their offspring”

Source: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“The attempt to be an ideal parent, that is, to behave correctly toward the child, to raise her correctly, not to give to little ortoo much, is in essence an attempt to be the ideal child--well behaved and dutiful--of one's own parents. But as a result of these efforts the needs of the child go unnoticed. I cannot listen to my child with empathy if I am inwardly preoccupied with being a good mother; I cannot be open to what she is telling me.”

Ifs Needs Giving Wells Children Littles Mother Parent Results Effort Empathy Ideals Essence Raises My Children Behave Unnoticed Good Mother Being A Good Mother

Author:Alice Miller

“For some years now, there has been proof that the devastating effects of the traumatization of children take their inevitable tollon society--a fact that we are still forbidden to recognize. This knowledge concerns every single one of us, and--if disseminated widely enough--should lead to fundamental changes in society; above all, to a halt in the blind escalation of violence.”

Source: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“Till now, society has protected the adult and blamed the victim. It has been abetted in its blindness by theories, still in keeping with the pedagogical principles of our great- grandparents, according to which children are viewed as crafty creatures, dominated by wicked drives, who invent stories and attack their innocent parents or desire them sexually. In reality, children tend to blame themselves for their parents' cruelty and to absolve the parents, whom they invariably love, of all responsibility.”

Source: The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness

“Almost everywhere we find . . . the use of various coercive measures, to rid ourselves as quickly as possible of the child withinus--i.e., the weak, helpless, dependent creature--in order to become an independent competent adult deserving of respect. When we reencounter this creature in our children, we persecute it with the same measures once used in ourselves.”

Children Use Used Order Creatures Adults Weak Our Children Independent Various Dependent Helpless Competent Deserving

Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

Source: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“We are still barely conscious of how harmful it is to treat children in a degrading manner. Treating them with respect and recognizing the consequences of their being humiliated are by no means intellectual matters; otherwise, their importance would long since have been generally recognized.”

Mean Children Long Has Beens Stills Matter Intellectual Conscious Consequence Treats Importance Recognizing Humiliated Degrading

Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

Source: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“It is unlikely that someone could proclaim "truths" that are counter to physical laws for very long (for example, that it is healthy for children to run around in bathing suits in winter and in fur coats in summer) without appearing ridiculous. But it is perfectly normal to speak of the necessity of striking and humiliating children and robbing them of their autonomy, at the same time using such high-sounding words as chastising, upbringing, and guiding onto the right path.”

Source: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“Wherever I look, I see signs of the commandment to honor one's parents and nowhere of a commandment that calls for the respect of a child.”

Looks Children Parent Honor Commandments Umpires Parental

Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

Source: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn.”

Children Persons Turns Grows Results Education Learning Listening Empathy Attentiveness Learned Person

Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

Source: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“Those children who are beaten will in turn give beatings, those who are intimidated will be intimidating, those who are humiliated will impose humiliation, and those whose souls are murdered will murder.”

Giving Children Soul Turns Murder Beaten Humiliation Intimidating Intimidated Intimidation Humiliated

Author:Alice Miller

“The reason why parents mistreat their children has less to do with character and temperament than with the fact that they were mistreated themselves and were not permitted to defend themselves.”

Children Reason Character Facts Parent Reason Why Temperament Mistreated Mistreat

Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

Source: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“The art of not experiencing feelings. A child can experience her feelings only when there is somebody there who accepts her fully, understands her, and supports her. If that person is missing, if the child must risk losing the mother's love of her substitute in order to feel, then she will repress emotions.”

Ifs Feels Children Persons Art Feelings Mother Order Emotion Accepting Support Risk Missing Losing Substitutes Mother's Love

Book:The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

“Many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parents' expectations. This feeling is stronger than any intellectual insight they might have, that it is not a child's task or duty to satisfy his parents needs. No argument can overcome these guilt feelings, for they have their beginnings in life's earliest periods, and from that they derive their intensity and obduracy.”

Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

“In the short term, corporal punishment may produce obedience. But it is a fact documented by research that in the long term the results are inability to learn, violence and rage, bullying, cruelty, inability to feel another's pain, especially that of one's own children, even drug addiction and suicide, unless there are enlightened or at least helping witnesses on hand to prevent that development.”

“We don't yet know, above all, what the world might be like if children were to grow up without being subjected to humiliation, if parents would respect them and take them seriously as people.”

People Ifs Knows World Children Might Grows Parent Growing Up Learning Humiliation Unschooling

Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

Source: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“People whose integrity has not been damaged in childhood, who were protected, respected, and treated with honesty by their parents, will be-both in their youth and in adulthood-intelligent, responsive, empathic, and highly sensitive. They will take pleasure in life and will not feel any need to kill or even hurt others or themselves. They will use their power to defend themselves, not to attack others. They will not be able to do otherwise than respect and protect those weaker than themselves, including their children, because this is what they have learned from their own experience.”

People Needs Feels Children Use Able Parent Hurt Pleasure Childhood Honesty Youth Integrity Protect Ethics Intelligent Including Treated Sensitive Protected Adulthood Moral Ethics

Author:Alice Miller

“The victimization of children is nowhere forbidden; what is forbidden is to write about it.”

Writing Children Cruelty Censorship Child Abuse Forbidden Victimization

Book:Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child

Source: Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child

“Child abuse damages a person for life and that damage is in no way diminished by the ignorance of the perpetrator. It is only with the uncovering of the complete truth as it affects all those involved that a genuinely viable solution can be found to the dangers of child abuse.”

Way Children Persons Found Danger Ignorance Involved Solutions Abuse Damage Child Abuse Perpetrators Uncovering

Book:Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries

Source: Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries

“People who, as children, were intellectually far beyond their parents and therefore admired by them, but who also therefore had to solve their own problems alone. These people, who give us a feeling of their intellectual strength and will power, also seem to demand that we, too, ought to fight off any feeling of weakness with intellectual means. In their presence one feels one cannot be recognized as a person with problems just as they and their problems were unrecognized by their parents, for whom he always had to be strong.”

People Giving Feels Mean Children Persons Feelings Problem Seems Fighting Strong Parent Ought Demand Intellectual Weakness Solve Will Power

Book:The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Third Edition

Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Third Edition

“Child abuse is still sanctioned — indeed, held in high regard — in our society as long as it is defined as child-rearing. It is a tragic fact that parents beat their children in order to escape the emotions from how they were treated by their own parents.”

Children Long Stills Facts Order Parent Emotion Beats Abuse Regard Treated Defined Tragic Our Society Child Abuse Child Rearing Rearing A Child

Book:The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

“The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, and conceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday our body will present its bill, for it is as incorruptible as a child, who, still whole in spirit, will accept no compromises or excuses, and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth.”

Children Stills Whole Feelings Body Spirit Accepting Childhood Our Children Bills Excuse Intellect Compromise Confused Someday Conception Deceived Medication No Compromise

Author:Alice Miller

“Children who are respected learn respect. Children who are cared for learn to care for those weaker than themselves. Children who are loved for what they are cannot learn intolerance. In an environment such as this, they will develop their own ideals, which can be nothing other than humane, since they grew out of the experience of love.”

Love Children Care Psychology Environment Grew Respect Ideals Experience Caring Tolerance Intolerance Humane Raising Children Caring For Others Love And Respect Children Learning

Book:Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child

Source: Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child

“The abused child goes on living within those who have survived such torture, a torture that ended with total repression. They live with the darkness of fear, oppression, and threats. When all its attempts to move the adult to heed its story have failed, it resorts to the language of symptoms to make itself heard. Enter addiction, psychosis, criminality.”

Children Stories Moving Language Darkness Heard Goes On Adults Threat Addiction Oppression Torture Survived Symptoms Resorts Repression Heed Psychosis Criminality Abused Children

Author:Alice Miller

“If a mother respects both herself and her child from his very first day onward, she will never need to teach him respect for others.”

Ifs Needs Firsts Children Mother Teach Respecting Others

Book:Prisoners of Childhood

Source: Prisoners of Childhood

“Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation.”

Way Children Persons Long Situation Fantasy Childhood Disease Strikes Desperate Hopeless Sadism Prehistory Infectious Diseases Hopeless Situations

Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

Source: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“The achievement of freedom is hardly possible without the felt mourning. This ability to mourn, i.e, to give up the illusion of a happy childhood, can restore vitality and creativity if a person is able to experience that he was never loved as a child for what he was, but for his achievements, success and good qualities. And that he sacrificed his childhood for this love, this will shake him very deeply.”

“The abused children are alone with their suffering, not only within the family, but also within themselves. They cannot crate a place in their own soul where they could cry their beart out.”

Children Soul Suffering Self Esteem Cry Esteem Abused Children

Author:Alice Miller

“All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection”

Needs Children Self Feelings Grows Born Protection Self Protection

Book:The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

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