On Children

Sunday, July 15, 2007

If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

James Baldwin

Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, first we have to make them feel worse? Think of the last time you felt humiliated or treated unfairly. Did you feel like cooperating or doing better?

Jane Nelson

You know children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers.

John J. Plomp

Your children are not your children. / They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

Kahlil Gibran

When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments; tenderness for what he is, and respect for what he may become.

Louis Pasteur

If you as parents cut corners, your children will too. If you lie, they will too. If you spend all your money on yourselves and tithe no portion of it for charities, colleges, churches, synagogues, and civic causes, your children won't either. And if parents snicker at racial and gender jokes, another generation will pass on the poison adults still have not had the courage to snuff out.

If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much. 

Marian Wright Edelman

To nourish children and raise them against odds is at any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons.

Marilyn French

Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist.

Michael Levine

You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going.

P. J. O'Rourke

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

Pablo Picasso

Bitter are the tears of a child: Sweeten them.
Deep are the thoughts of a child: Quiet them.
Sharp is the grief of a child: Take it from him.
Soft is the heart of a child: Do not harden it.

Pamela Glenconner

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.

Rabbinical saying

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.

Rachel Carson

To value his own good opinion, a child has to feel that he is a worthwhile person. He has to have confidence in himself as an individual.

Sidonie Gruenberg