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Quote by Selma Fraiberg

“There must be a solemn and terrible aloneness that comes over the child as he takes those first independent steps. All this is lost to memory and we can only reconstruct it through analogies in later life....To the child who takes his first steps and finds himself walking alone, this moment must bring the first sharp sense of the uniqueness and separateness of his body and his person, the discovery of the solitary self.”

Quote by Selma Fraiberg

Author

Selma Fraiberg (March 8, 1918 - December 19, 1981) was an American psychologist and author. Her book 'The Magic Years' had a profound impact on the field of child psychology. more

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“We find that even the parents who justify spanking to themselves are defensive and embarrassed about it....I suspect that deep inthe memory of every parent are the feelings that had attended his own childhood spankings, the feelings of humiliation, of helplessness, of submission through fear. The parent who finds himself spanking his own child cannot dispel the ghosts of his own childhood.”

Children Feelings Parent Memories Childhood Style Ghost Justify Suspects Embarrassed Humiliation Submission Helplessness Spanking Parenting Styles

Author:Selma Fraiberg

“A two-year-old can be taught to curb his aggressions completely if the parents employ strong enough methods, but the achievement of such control at an early age may be bought at a price which few parents today would be willing to pay. The slow education for control demands much more parental time and patience at the beginning, but the child who learns control in this way will be the child who acquires healthy self-discipline later.”

Source: The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood

“We find that the child who does not yet have language at his command, the child under two and a half, will be able to cooperate with our education if we go easy on the "blocking" techniques, the outright prohibitions, the "no's" and go heavy on "substitution" techniques, that is, the redirection or certain impulses and the offering of substitute satisfactions.”

Ifs Children Doe Two Able Certain Language Easy Half Discipline Satisfaction Heavy Technique Command Block Impulse Substitutes Offering Prohibition Substitution Redirection

Author:Selma Fraiberg

“The experience of a sense of guilt for wrong-doing is necessary for the development of self-control. The guilt feelings will laterserve as a warning signal which the child can produce himself when an impulse to repeat the naughty act comes over him. When the child can produce his on warning signals, independent of the actual presence of the adult, he is on the way to developing a conscience.”

Way Children Self Feelings Produce Development Conscience Adults Independent Guilt Developing Impulse Repeats Warning Self Control Signals Naughty Guilt Feelings

Author:Selma Fraiberg

“For the child whose impulsiveness is indulged, who retains his primitive-discharge mechanisms, is not only an ill-behaved child but a child whose intellectual development is slowed down. No matter how well he is endowed intellectually, if direct action and immediate gratification are the guiding principles of his behavior, there will be less incentive to develop the higher mental processes, to reason, to employ the imagination creatively. . . .”

Source: The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood

“Whenever reality reinforces a child's fantasied dangers, the child will have more difficulty in overcoming them...So, while parents may not regard a spanking as a physical attack or an assault on a child's body, the child may regard it as such, and experience it as a confirmation of his fears that grown-ups under certain circumstances can really hurt you.”

May Children Body Reality Certain Parent Hurt Danger Circumstances Overcoming Difficulty Regard Assault Confirmation Spanking

Author:Selma Fraiberg

“Mental health depends upon the maintenance of a balance within the personality between the basic human urges and egocentric wisheson the one hand and the demands of conscience and society on the other hand.”

Humans Hands Personality Depends Balance Demand Conscience Mental Health Urges Maintenance Egocentric

Book:The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood

Source: The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood

“We must remember when we speak of the "negativism" of the toddler that this is also the child who is intoxicated with the discoveries of the second year, a joyful child who is firmly bound to his parents and his new-found world through ties of love. The so-called negativism is one of the aspects of this development, but under ordinary circumstances it does not become anarchy. It's a kind of declaration of independence, but there is no intention to unseat the government.”

“We have good reason to believe that memories of early childhood do not persist in consciousness because of the absence or fragmentary character of language covering this period. Words serve as fixatives for mental images. . . . Even at the end of the second year of life when word tags exist for a number of objects in the child's life, these words are discrete and do not yet bind together the parts of an experience or organize them in a way that can produce a coherent memory.”

Source: The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood

“If we can find a principle to guide us in the handling of the child between nine and eighteen months, we can see that we need to allow enough opportunity for handling and investigation of objects to further intellectual development and just enough restriction required for family harmony and for the safety of the child.”

Ifs Needs Children Enough Opportunity Principles Objects Months Development Intellectual Harmony Safety Guides Nine Investigation Restriction Eighteen Intellectual Development

Author:Selma Fraiberg