children - children 2
children 3 - children 4

When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.

Tom Robbins

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All teenagers need support from their parents.  However, parents also
need to step back and allow their children to learn through their own
experiences, which will add to their inner strength and help develop vital
coping skills so they're better prepared to tackle whatever life throws their
way.  Teenagers learn far more about life from their own actions than they
learn from listening to others.  All teens make mistakes, but it's often the
case that the eventual outcome is a positive experience that leads to
self-growth.  Teens learn many lessons by tackling life's challenges
on their own, without parental help or interference.  Likewise, the process
of fixing their own mistakes can also be a learning experience for teens.

Bill Resler
The Heart of the Team

It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and
heartless world.  It's our job to raise children who will make the
world a little less cruel and heartless.

L.R. Knost

children - children 2
children 3 - children 4

Little children are still the symbol of the eternal
marriage between love and duty.

George Eliot

If you are like me, most valuable parts of your childhood did not
take place in a special classroom or perfect practice field. Sure,
you had teachers and parents to encourage you to do your best
and work toward a goal, but that was balanced by plenty of other
worthwhile pursuits such as tearing apart a Stretch Armstrong doll
to see what was inside, building bike ramps in the driveway,
and racing leaf boats through a drainage ditch in a rainstorm.
   But we've sacrificed these things in pursuit of an ideal, and we've
turned our children into little mini-adults in the process. Tiny
professionals who have no time for brain-building, soul-boosting
play during the week, so they desperately cram it into a weekend
schedule packed with structured sports and recitals.
   It's sad.

Scott Dannemiller

We have to get children to understand that not only do they have this
incredible uniqueness, but they also have something that sometimes
we forget about.  They are also potentiality.  They are much more
undiscovered than they are discovered.  And there's the wonder of it.
It doesn't matter where they are, they're only just beginning and the big
magical trip of life is digging it all out and discovering the wonderful you.

Leo Buscaglia

When the milk is splattered all over the floor and those little eyes are looking
at you for your reaction, remember what really matters.  It takes five minutes
to clean up spilled milk; it takes much longer to clean up a broken spirit.

Rebecca Eanes

Thus children learn, by wiggling skills through their fingers and
their toes, into themselves.  By soaking up habits and attitudes
of those around them, by pushing and pulling their own worlds.
Thus children learn, more through trial than error, more through
pleasure than pain, more through experience than suggestion
and telling, and more through suggestion than direction.  And thus
children learn through affection, through love, through patience,
through understanding, through belonging, through doing and
being.  Day by day children come to know a little bit of what you
know, a little bit more of what you think and understand.  That
which you dream and believe are in truth what is becoming those
children.  As you perceive dully or clearly, as you think fuzzily or
sharply, as you believe foolishly or wisely, as you dream drably
or goldenly, as you bear false witness or tell the truth,
thus children learn.

Frederick Moffett

Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.

W.E.B. DuBois

children - children 2
children 3 - children 4

There once was a child, and he strolled about a good deal, and thought of
a number of things.  He had a sister, who was a child too, and his constant
companion.  These two used to wonder all day long.  They wondered at
the beauty of the flowers; they wondered at the height and blueness
of the sky; they wondered at the depth of the bright water; they wondered
at the goodness and the power of God who made the lovely world.

Charles Dickens

Wisdom is to the Taoist a child's state.  Children are born with it;
most adults have lost it, or a good deal of it.  And those who
haven't are, in one way or another, like children.  Is it Mere
Coincidence that the Chinese suffix tse, which has come to
mean "master," which literally means child?  As the Confucianist-
yet-surprisingly-Taoist philosopher Meng-tse wrote,
"Great man retains child's mind."

Benjamin Hoff
The Te of Piglet

Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child.  They consider it
necessary, but they also enjoy it.  The children very quickly
figure it out and then practice deception themselves.

Elias Canetti

Parents are often so busy with the physical rearing of
children that they miss the glory of parenthood, just as
the grandeur of the trees is lost when raking leaves.

Marcelene Cox

Have you ever watched small children playing alone in a room?  They will
talk to themselves, and they will answer.  They will dress themselves up.
They sing and dance.
A small child in a room all alone can have a marvelous time entertaining him-
or herself.  Children can do this not only because they have an innocence that
helps them to rise above the cares of the world; they don’t mind being alone
with their thoughts and dreams.  They don’t mind acting out their fantasies.
They can live their lives beyond the expectations of others.  In a room all alone,
children have no inhibitions.
They have nothing to prove and no one to satisfy but themselves.  They feel free!
They are unencumbered by opinions and directives.
It happens because nobody is watching them.
   Live your life like nobody is watching you.

Iyanla Vanzant

As far as the education of children is concerned I think
they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones.
Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution
but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness
and a love of truth; not tact but love for one’s neighbor and
self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know.

Natalia Ginzburg

Children are a wonderful gift.  They are young and small persons with minds
and ideas, hating to be talked down to.  They have an extraordinary capacity
to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.

Desmond Tutu

quotations - contents - welcome page - obstacles
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Daily Meditations, Year One - Year Two - Year Three - Year Four
     
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A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and
excitement.  It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed
vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is
dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.

Rachel Carson

While we try to teach our children all about life,
our children teach us what life is all about.

Angela Schwindt

children - children 2
children 3 - children 4

Children are the happiest people on the planet because they are not dragging
the baggage of a long heavy past around with them.  If they trip and fall or get
upset, they get over it quickly.  Nor are they pondering or planning what comes
next.  The now moment provides them with all the entertainment and fulfillment
they need.  At some point we all got hung up on time and we abandoned the
current moment.  We have distracted ourselves with what is not here.

Alan Cohen
The Tao Made Easy