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children -
children 3 - children 4 - children
5
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The
world was not left to us by our parents;
it was lent to us by our children.
African
Proverb
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Children who are not encouraged to do, to try, to
explore, to master, and
to risk failure, often feel helpless and inadequate. Over-controlled by
anxious,
fearful parents, these children often become anxious and fearful
themselves. This makes it difficult for them to mature. Many never outgrow the need
for
ongoing parental guidance and control. As a result, their parents
continue to
invade, manipulate, and frequently dominate their lives.
Susan Forward
Toxic Parents
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Oh, what a tangled web
do parents weave
when they think that their children are
naive.
Ogden Nash
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It is infinitely more useful for a child to
hear a story told by a person
than
by computer. Because the greatest part of the learning
experience
lies not in the
particular words of the story but in the involvement
with
the individual reading it.
Frank Smith
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To become mature is to
recover that sense
of seriousness which one had as a
child at play.
Friedrich Nietzsche
I advise the young to
tell themselves constantly
that most often it is up to
them alone.
Andre Gide |
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Who of us is mature
enough for offspring before the
offspring themselves
arrive? The value of marriage is not
that adults
produce children but that children produce adults.
Peter DeVries
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Children not only have to learn what
their parents
learned in school, but also have to learn how
to learn.
This has to be recognized as a new
problem which is only partly solved.
Margaret Mead
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The
best compliment to children or
friends
is
the feeling
you
give them
that they have been
set free
to make
their
own
inquiries,
to come to
conclusions
that are right for
them,
whether or
not they coincide with your own.
Alistair Cooke
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I think that the ideals of youth are fine,
clear
and
unencumbered; and that the real art of living
consists
in keeping alive the conscience and
sense of
values
we had when we were young.
Rockwell
Kent
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Youth is a wonderful thing.
What a crime to
waste it on children.
George Bernard Shaw
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I
love working with children and around children.
I love being with children when we go to a picnic
or a party because while the adults sit around and talk,
the children do. They find things, they
invent things, they're active. I can sit and talk
with another adult on a cold rainy day when it's not a
good idea (for health reasons) to get cold and wet, but on a
bright spring or summer or fall day, even a winter day, I want to be
alive--I want to feel my blood flow, I want to
feel my muscles being used. Kids do that naturally,
and when I'm with them, I can feel their energy, their
aliveness.
Being with children also gives me a
much healthier perspective. while there are of
course exceptions, most kids don't judge as harshly as
the adults tend to do--they want to know things, but they
don't need to judge, to put value on something; cynical
children come few and far between, but cynical adults are
a dollar a dozen (due to inflation, of course).
There is a very real tendency among
many adults to romanticize childhood, to make it sound as
if it's the best of all possible times, but we also have
to remember the temper tantrums, the hissy fits, the not
wanting to share, the crankiness when they're tired (but
that's me, too), the not listening when they're told to
do something, even (especially?) when that something is dangerous. I
think we must take the best from
children, though, and I think that has to do with
perspective, appreciation, awe, and action.
I think
we need to think less--we overvalue our cognitive
capabilities, without realizing just how often we
complicate things much more than they need to be
complicated, or we think too much and assign designs and
motives to other people's actions and words that just
aren't there. Everyone's a psychoanalyst these days,
thanks to poor television programs and movies, and few
people are willing just to let people be people, and
accept them for what they are.
We can be like kids in seeing the
wonder of the trees and the flowers and the cows by the
side of the road. We can be
like kids when we see the extraordinary power and beauty
of the mountains. We can be like children when we
meet other people and want to find out who they are, not
what they make or what their social class is.
I'm glad there are children around,
for, as much as I hate to say it, I would get incredibly
bored being around adults all the time. Adults seem
rarely to want to play, to want to enjoy themselves, to
want to take chances and discover new things and draw or paint without worrying what people will say about their
art or their abilities.
Thanks, kids, for brightening my life.
tom walsh
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children -
children 3
children 4 - children
5
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Children need models
more than they
need critics.
Joseph Joubert
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Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.
William Martin
The Parent's Tao Te Ching
Ancient Advice for Modern Parents
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I
believe that infants and babies whose mothers give them
loving comfort whenever and however they can are truly
the fortunate ones. I think they're more likely to find life's
times of troubles manageable, and I think they may also
turn out to be the adults most able to pass loving concern
along to the generations that follow after them.
Fred Rogers
The
World According to Mr. Rogers
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And
a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to
us of Children."
And he said: Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path
of the infinite, and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Khalil Gibran
The Prophet
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Because I was once a
child, I know how often and how deeply
I needed to be comforted and made to feel safe. I was very
lucky because I was always made to feel wanted and loved.
Today, I love children and I strive to understand and help them.
I accept the responsibility of protecting children,
of being a reassuring and helpful presence in their lives.
unattributed
Happiness One Day at a Time
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children -
children 3
children 4 - children
5
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Nurse's Song
When the voices of children are heard on the green,
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything else is still.
"Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of the night arise;
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies."
"No, no, let us play, for it is yet day,
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly,
And the hills are all cover'd with sheep."
"Well, well, go and play till the light fades away,
And then go home to bed."
The little ones leaped and shouted and laughed
And all the hills echoed.
William Blake
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As children, we are not
jaded by the sophistication of the world.
We're real. We're humble. We're willing to admit our needs
and
trust that others can help us. We're unpretentious and
adventurous.
We're lighthearted and imaginative. And we're fearless, willing
to
take a risk--a juvenile version of what the early twentieth-century
Bible teacher Oswald Chambers calls "reckless joy."
And then, of course, we grow up. And what
happens? In many
cases, we get jaded by the world. Instead of being real, we
rationalize
behaviors. We learn to put our personal spin on our shortcomings
rather than deal with them. We become pretentious. We
throw
ourselves into all sorts of physical adventure but are cowardly
regarding relationships, flitting from one person
to the next, lacking the courage to commit.
Bob Welch
52
Little Lessons from It's
a Wonderful Life
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I hear babies cry
I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll ever know
And I think to myself,
"What a wonderful world."
Weiss/Thiele
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Talk
to your children and listen to them, no matter what they say.
Let
them know that you're interested and that they have all your
attention.
Listening to them doesn't mean that you agree with them;
it simply means that you agree to hear them out.
Janet Woititz
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The Children's Hour
Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations,
That is known as the Children's Hour.
I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.
From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.
A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.
A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall! |
They climb up into my turret
O'er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.
They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!
Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!
I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.
And there I will keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
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Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.
Robert A. Heinlein
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A
happy childhood can't be cured. Mine'll hang around
my neck like a
rainbow,
that's all, instead of a noose.
Hortense
Calisher
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The spiritual
interests of children have a lot to teach us. . . . I have listened
to
children of eight or nine or ten getting to the heart of the
Bible.
I have found in elementary schools a good deal of spiritual
curiosity
that does not reflect mere indoctrination.
Robert Coles
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When my little daughter Margaret was about five
years old, I was awakened one morning by the sound of her
childish voice in the nursery next to my room. It was
about six o'clock, and she was carrying on a great conversation
with herself, interspersed with bubbling laughter.
I went into the nursery and interrupted the monologue by
saying: "Margaret, this is a strange time for you to
be talking so noisily to yourself. You are disturbing
everyone who is trying to sleep in this house.
Furthermore," I continued, "it seems to me rather
foolish for you to lie there talking to yourself and laughing at
your own remarks."
"Oh, Daddy," she said in that tone with which
children immemorially have put parents in their proper place,
"Oh, Daddy, you don't understand. I have an awful
good time with myself."
Norman
Vincent Peale |
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children -
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When you want to
teach children to think, you begin by treating them
seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to
them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making
them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning.
That’s if you want to teach them to think.
Bertrand Russell
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What can we make
of the inexpressible joy of children? It is a kind of gratitude,
I think—the gratitude of the ten-year-old who wakes to her own energy
and the
brisk challenge of the world. You thought you knew the place and all its
routines,
but you see you hadn’t known. Whole stacks at the library held books
devoted
to things you knew nothing about. The boundary of knowledge receded, as
you
poked about in books, like Lake Erie’s rim as you climbed its cliffs.
And each
area of knowledge disclosed another, and another. Knowledge wasn’t a
body, or
a tree, but instead air, or space, or being—whatever pervaded,
whatever never
ended and fitted into the smallest cracks and the widest space between
stars.
Annie Dillard
An American Childhood
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Returning
from the pantry, she sees that her two-year-old has climbed onto
the table, opened the egg carton and, two-handed, is transferring one
egg at
a time into the egg container. "No, no," she cries out
in alarm, "that's not for
little girls, you'll break them," and she lifts her daughter who
has begun to cry
down from the table and puts away the rest of the eggs herself.
Fourteen
years later she will probably still be putting the eggs away herself and
perhaps cleaning up her daughter's room as well.
Chances are that any helpful two-year-old will break some eggs. We
are
often not very good at things when we are new. But there may be an
important
choice to make at such moments. Do we support and protect the
innate wish
to be of help to others in our children, or do we protect the
eggs? Hard as it
seems, the greater mother wisdom may lie in a willingness to clean up
broken
eggs or replace a mitten and a box of crayons.
Rachel Naomi Remen
My Grandfather's Blessings
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quotations
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-
welcome
page
-
obstacles
the
people behind the words
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our
current e-zine
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articles
and excerpts
Daily
Meditations, Year One - Year
Two - Year Three
- Year Four
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We can't
form our children on our own concepts;
we must take
them
and love them
as God gives them to us.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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If it's hard for you
to daydream, hang around children and
ask them
to
tell you stories.
They are experts at using
their
imagination. Boys and
girls
freely use fantasy to cope
with the
pressures of life.
Unfortunately,
many of us take
ourselves
much too seriously and,
in
the name of maturity
and responsibility,
work too hard. Take
time
for make-believe.
Abandon
yourself in play.
I think
God gives us an imagination
for a reason. Christ
knows the
pressures we endure.
Perhaps
this is one reason He encourages
us
to "become as little children."
Jean Lush
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Children are happy because they
don't yet have a file in their minds
called "All the Things That Could Go Wrong." They don't
have a
mind-set that puts "Things to Fear" before "Things to
Love." Unless
we can be like little children, we can't enter into the kingdom of
heaven; unless we can be like little children, we can't be happy.
Children are happy because they don't have all the facts yet.
Marianne
Williamson
Illuminata
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