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Child Development Quotes

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Child Development Quotes

“When children can’t rely on their parents to meet their needs, they cannot develop a sense of safety, trust, or confidence. Trust is a colossal development issue. Without the learning of trust in our early years, we are set up to have a major handicap with believing in ourselves and feeling safe in intimate connections.”

“After a few days of rain, the seedlings will push through the soil and unfold their tiny leaves. Two weeks later, if the rain is still good, we then carefully apply the first round of fertilizer, because each seedling requires love and attention like any living thing if it's going to grow up strong.”

“No child can be good enough to evoke love from a highly self-involved parent. Nevertheless, these children come to believe that the price of making a connection is to put other people first and treat them as more important. They think they can keep relationships by being the giver. Children who try to be good enough to win their parents’ love have no way of knowing that unconditional love cannot be bought with conditional behavior.”

“By protecting our children from adversity, have we made them deathly afraid of it? By bolstering their self-esteem with false praise and a lack of real-world consequences, have we made them less tolerant, more entitled, and ignorant of their own character defects? By giving in to their every desire, have we encouraged a new age of hedonism?”

“Autonomy, as I see it, is a condition of integration in which the possibility of living in harmony with one's own needs and feelings is realized. What is meant here are not those feelings and needs artificially produced by the consumer society but those originating in the joy produced by a mother's love for the aliveness of her child or in the sorrow stemming from the lack of this love.”

“One of the best perks of being a child therapist is that parents think you are awfully clever when their child shows dramatic improvement. Mostly what happens is that the child grew up. He reached a new developmental stage that let him share, control his aggressive impulses, or make a friend.”

“It seems contradictory, but if you want your child to be adventurous, you need to cuddle her more. If you want your child to always be close, you need to applaud her explorations. Some children need a little push out of the nest, but never give the shove without an unlimited free pass for coming back home. Children of all ages need to be able to regress sometimes, pretending to be younger than they really are. They need to know they can cuddle with you or check back with you any time they want. Other children will race away recklessly and need to be held in check a little. Don’t hold them back, however, without a clear message that you’re eager for them to try their wings, once they can do it a bit more safely. Otherwise, the clingy children will just cling tighter or stumble out into the world unprepared. Conversely, the reckless child will just rush out even more impulsively or catch the parent’s anxiety and become fearful.”

“No matter how old your child is now, try to remember that incredible sociability of infants and toddlers – the way they flirt, smile, pull at our heartstrings. Everything you see now has been built on that foundation. It’s hard to see that happy little guy you raised inside your touchy fifteen year old. But does that little boy emerge when your son is laughing with a group or watching TV with a friend? If so, relax. If, however, you cannot spot any sign of your happy youngster in your older child, if he or she cannot take any pleasure in friends or in a group or is always isolated, then, as a psychologist, I am worried - and you should be too.”

“When babies are born, they can typically only focus on objects eight to twelve inches in front of them. Their eye muscles strengthen and improve quickly so that they can see and take in more of the world through their eyes. I find it somewhat ironic that most of the human race now spends so much time staring at objects — phones and tablets — eight to twelve inches in front of our faces. Perhaps we all just want to return to our childhood?”

“If there is one thing developmental psychologists have learned over the years, it is that parents don’t have to be brilliant psychologists to succeed. They don’t have to be supremely gifted teachers. Most of the stuff parents do with flashcards and special drills and tutorials to hone their kids into perfect achievement machines don’t have any effect at all. Instead, parents just have to be good enough. They have to provide their kids with stable and predictable rhythms. They need to be able to fall in tune with their kids’ needs, combining warmth and discipline. They need to establish the secure emotional bonds that kids can fall back upon in the face of stress. They need to be there to provide living examples of how to cope with the problems of the world so that their children can develop unconscious models in their heads.”

“This book consists of the following chapters: 1- ‘The Turkish currency reform’: Naïve inflation, endowment effect, anchoring and the money illusion. 2- Towards a developmental economic psychology: A review of the literature. 3- Economic crisis as trauma and psychotherapy as the guardian of status quo. 4- On father attachment: a preliminary review. 5- Developing at a kibbutz context: a review on recent studies.”

“Being able to freely explore my identity through aesthetic and expressive play is a joy. Why on earth would we seek to deny that to children, the very people for whom play was not only invented but who are its most ingenious architects?”

“The observer self, a part of who we really are, is that part of us that is watching both our false self and our True Self. We might say that it even watches us when we watch. It is our Consciousness, it is the core experience of our Child Within. It thus cannot be watched—at least by anything or any being that we know of on this earth. It transcends our five senses, our co-dependent self and all other lower, though necessary parts, of us. Adult children may confuse their observer self with a kind of defense they may have used to avoid their Real Self and all of its feelings. One might call this defense “false observer self” since its awareness is clouded. It is unfocused as it “spaces” or “numbs out.” It denies and distorts our Child Within, and is often judgmental.”

“If your children are popular or accepted, I am delighted for them. They’re going to have an easier childhood than some other kids. However, your work is not done. The daily newspaper provides numerous examples of well-known political or entertainment figures who behave extremely badly toward others. Such misbehavior begins early because such leaders were allowed, when they were young, to use their social influence in any way that they wanted. As we have seen through countless examples in this book, popular and accepted children wield a lot of power over the lives of other children. Some of that power is pretty destructive, so parents have to take every opportunity to be moral leaders. Many potential bullies can be transformed into positive leaders who actually enhance the moral and social atmosphere of a school or a group of children.”

“Our cultures make it seem as if male children are worthier than female ones, but that is not the case. The value of a child is not a function of what he or she can bring to the family, ability to work in the farm or protect their clan or community. The value of a child is not in whether he or she will carry on the name of the family. ... All children are worth in the same way, irrespective of gender. ...children are a gift from God, and the worst thing is when the person receiving this gift fails to appreciate its value.”

“God wanted parents to train their children in the way of the Lord. Deuteronomy 6:1, 2 says: “These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. So that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.” It was expected that every Jewish parent will have a relationship with God and be qualified to instruct his children on how to relate with the Lord.”

“In some respects, children are better placed to perceive their connectedness to the world around them, and in this respect, adults might learn from them. Here we could recognize the child as being more open to a state of becoming as an intrinsic worldly intelligence, rather than thinking of them on the way to 'becoming' something else (intelligent, for example).”

“Moments like these underline the importance of adults reserving their own personal judgments and accepting the child's wishes and actions. Awareness of potential schematic underpinnings also help us value and appreciate behaviors so that we can accept what the child may be showing us. Although firm conclusions can rarely be drawn, reflections remind us of the potentially multiple benefits of schematic actions for a child, and also the value in repetitive behaviors which tend to be labeled as negative. Educators should remain curious about a child's seeds of inquiry and make more such opportunities available to meet this need.”

“Noticing the potential message in children's behaviors and responding appropriately and respectfully is our aim. Reflecting upon Becky's enclosing and tying-up of her toys, it is clear that she needed the freedom to safely express herself without judgment and for an adult to interact and not interfere. Many adults seek to control children's play or stop them if they see a child playing in ways they deem inappropriate.”

“Just like providing healthy food, clean water, comfortable home, good education and health care to children is a must and a right, teaching them how to read books passionately is a skill that they need to live in life living by values, and think logically, and know what's right from wrong, and have a compassionate heart.”

“Parents who have more than one child are very aware that, while we certainly have an impact on our child's development, it has as much to do with them as with us. "I can't believe how different my kids are" should inform us that child development is an uneven process only partly tied to parenting (and no one knows exactly how much that "partly" is).”

“Development is directed toward the inner world if children receive the kind of love that enables them to experience helplessness without feeling alone. If this is the case, helplessness will not be perceived as a total abandonment or condemnation but as a state through pain and sorrow to new strength rather than to destruction. This sort of experience will produce a self that does not perceive helplessness as a deadly threat but as a possibility for new integration and new beginnings.”

“To take an analogy from botany, she imagined a child as an unopened flower; a parent had a responsability to provide light and water, but also to stand back and watch. 'He can do anything he wants', she said, 'as long as he's happy and cool.' In contrast, I saw no reason why the flower should not be bracketed to a bamboo stick, pruned, exposed to artificial light; if it made for a stronger, more resilient plant, why not? (pag. 337)”