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Children can’t go elsewhere. They have no extended social network. Even when things are going right, childhood is a gentle open prison. As a result of the peculiarities of our early years, we lose balance. Things within us start to develop in wayward directions. We may find that we can’t trust easily, or need to keep any sign of dirt at bay, or get
... See moreAlain De Botton • The School of Life: An Emotional Education
They may have little empathy for their child and are able to love her only conditionally. For a young, defenseless child, this can be a very painful experience.
Steven Kessler • The 5 Personality Patterns: Your Guide to Understanding Yourself and Others and Developing Emotional Maturity
Babies need interaction with parents and other humans; they need to manipulate their environment (to touch things, to feel and move them), and they need to do “problem-solving” activities (such as the eternal “where did it go?” problem-solving of peekaboo).3
Kim John Payne M.Ed. • Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids
agree totally with Dr. Thomas Gordon, who says, “I think all parents are potential child-abusers, because the basic way of raising children is through power and authority. I think it is destructive when many parents have the idea: ‘It is my kid, I can do what I want to do with my kid.’ It is violent, it is destructive.” A child is not a thing, it i
... See moreOsho • Love, Freedom, and Aloneness: On Relationships, Sex, Meditation, and Silence
We can provide the kind of stability and security that they will internalize, a base camp that doesn’t move.
Kim John Payne M.Ed. • Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids
Children, in particular, have suffered a grievous decline in just the goods that are most important to them: adult time, energy, and company. The child-rearing work that men and women and an extended family did a hundred years ago, and that women did thirty years ago, has to be done somehow by someone. The scientific moral is not that we need exper
... See moreAlison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff, • The Scientist In The Crib: Minds, Brains, And How Children Learn
But things can go seriously wrong when mothers are unable to tune in to their baby’s physical reality. If a mother cannot meet her baby’s impulses and needs, “the baby learns to become the mother’s idea of what the baby is.”
Bessel van der Kolk • The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
We’ve all heard the saying “Children are meant to be seen, not heard.” It was a slogan of sorts that summed up our older generations’ mindset around raising children. This mindset was born out of an understanding that the only needs children had were basic, such as food and shelter. Resource scarcity was a reality for many members of these generati
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