Sublime

Raising children has come to look more and more like a business endeavor and less and less like an endeavor of the heart. We are overly concerned with “the bottom line,” with how our children “do” rather than with who our children “are.” We pour time, attention, and money into insuring their performance, consistently making it to their soccer game ... See more

"Psychological development goes awry when children are pressured into valuing the views of others over their own.

"Parents need to reassure their children that they will not “die poor and lonely” if they don’t get into honors math, or become school valedictorian, or go to Harvard."

"By allowing them to get occasionally bruised in childhood we are helping to make certain that they don’t get broken in adolescence. And by allowing them their failures in adolescence, we are helping to lay the groundwork for success in adulthood."

In my work with people in the helping professions, I have often been confronted with a childhood history that seems significant to me. • There was a mother* who at the core was emotionally insecure and who depended for her equilibrium on her child’s behaving in a particular way. This mother was able to hide her insecurity from her child and from ev

... See more