In case it is not obvious, whilst many of these quotations are consistent with Taking Children Seriously, many of them are not. Sometimes it is just interesting that that person said it, or it is interesting for some other reason.
“A child’s nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being.”
– Charles Lamb, 1823, Essays of Elia
“In my opinion […] the duty of the parent […] is this: to encourage all experiments of the child and assist him in reaching such conclusions as he will adopt as his own, so that he may, by the process of elimination, discard futile and false ideals.”
– Homer Lane, cited in Elsie Theodora Bazeley, 1928, Homer Lane and the Little Commonwealth, p. 51
“By what right, I ask you, are we going to inject into him our own disease-germs of ideas and infallible motives? By the right of the diseased, who want to infect everybody.”
– D. H. Lawrence, 1922, Fantasia of the Unconscious, Chapter VII: First Steps in Education
“We, who sail under the flag of freedom, are bullies such as the world has never known before: idealist bullies: bullying idealism, which will allow nothing except in terms of itself. […] Drag a lad […] through the processes of education, and what do you produce in him, in the end? A profound contempt for education, and for all educated people. It has meant nothing to him but irritation and disgust. And that which a man finds irritating and disgusting he finds odious and contemptible.”
– D. H. Lawrence, 1918, Education of the People, I
“How to begin to educate a child. First rule, leave him alone. Second rule, leave him alone. Third rule, leave him alone. That is the whole beginning.”
– D. H. Lawrence, 1918, Education of the People, VI
“Our system of education today threatens our whole social existence tomorrow. We should be wise if by decree we shut up all elementary schools at once, and kept them shut.”
– D. H. Lawrence, 1918, Education of the People, II
“Let’s raise children who won’t have to recover from their childhood.”
– Pam Leo, 2005, 2007, Connection Parenting: parenting through connection instead of coercion, through love instead of fear, second edition, Chapter 2: Connecting with children through respecting children, p. 96
“Children need at least one person in their life who thinks the sun rises and sets on them, someone who delights in their existence and loves them unconditionally.”
– Pam Leo, 2005, 2007, Connection Parenting: parenting through connection instead of coercion, through love instead of fear, second edition, Chapter 4: Connecting through filling the love cup, p. 79
“Children lose confidence when they feel powerless. They disconnect either by withdrawing or by trying to control things.”
– Pam Leo, 2005, 2007, Connection Parenting: parenting through connection instead of coercion, through love instead of fear, second edition, Chapter 4: Connecting through filling the love cup, p. 84
“It is never too late to create a stronger connection with our children.”
– Pam Leo, 2005, 2007, Connection Parenting: parenting through connection instead of coercion, through love instead of fear, second edition, Introduction, p. 28
“Forcing children to share their toys is coercion. When we use our size and power to force children to share, they comply out of fear, not generosity. […] If they own something, they expect to be able to decide about it. Being respectful means that we respect children’s right to decide about their things.”
– Pam Leo, 2005, 2007, Connection Parenting: parenting through connection instead of coercion, through love instead of fear, second edition, Chapter 2: Connecting with children through respecting children, p. 50
“It is an adult’s job to meet a child’s emotional needs. It is not a child’s job to meet an adult’s emotional needs. Did you ever have to hug or kiss a relative even when you did not want to? Do you remember what that felt like? […] Demanding that children hug or kiss family members or a friend does not teach children to be affectionate. It teaches children that they don’t get to decide about their bodies.”
– Pam Leo, 2005, 2007, Connection Parenting: parenting through connection instead of coercion, through love instead of fear, second edition, Chapter 2: Connecting with children through respecting children, p. 51
“Some of the disrespectful ways adults treat children have been said and done to children for so long, we are often unaware that they are disrespectful. When you were a child did any adult ever:
• Prompt you to say please and thank you?
• Insist that you say you were sorry?
• Force you to share your toys?
• Demand that you to hug or kiss family members or friends
when you didn’t want to?
• Give orders instead of requests?
• Talk about you in front of you as if you were not there?
Can you remember how it felt to be treated that way?”
– Pam Leo, 2005, 2007, Connection Parenting: parenting through connection instead of coercion, through love instead of fear, second edition, Chapter 2: Connecting with children through respecting children, p. 47
“We know that children need attention, but attention is not the same as connection. We can pay attention to children and still not connect with them emotionally. Children need high quality time to meet their minimum daily requirement for connection. We provide high quality time by engaging with children. […] We give children attention by watching and acknowledging them. We provide connection by engaging with them. Attention feels good, but connection feels better. Children seeking attention are requesting connection.”
– Pam Leo, 2005, 2007, Connection Parenting: parenting through connection instead of coercion, through love instead of fear, second edition, Chapter 4: Connecting through filling the love cup, pp. 81-82
“A consistent, loving connection with at least one adult is essential to create the healthy, strong parent-child bond that children need to thrive.”
– Pam Leo, 2005, 2007, Connection Parenting: parenting through connection instead of coercion, through love instead of fear, second edition, Introduction, p. 15
“Children only hurt others when they are hurting. A hurtful child is a ‘hurt-filled’ child. When we punish a child for being hurtful, we hurt the already hurting child.”
– Pam Leo, 2005, 2007, Connection Parenting: parenting through connection instead of coercion, through love instead of fear, second edition, Chapter 3: Connecting through listening to children’s feelings, p. 68
“When we have a strong connection with children, we are more likely to notice their early, subtle cues of need, before need escalates to pain. The less connected we are, the less likely we will notice children’s cues. If we don’t respond to children’s cues, they have to become more emphatic in communicating their needs to attract our attention.”
– Pam Leo, 2005, 2007, Connection Parenting: parenting through connection instead of coercion, through love instead of fear, second edition, Chapter 6: Connecting through the discipline of decoding children’s behavior, p. 125
“Children feel better and more connected to us when we listen to their feelings without interrupting, giving advice, or trying to fix it. Listening to children’s feelings builds connection and strengthens the bond.”
– Pam Leo, 2005, 2007, Connection Parenting: parenting through connection instead of coercion, through love instead of fear, second edition, Chapter 3: Connecting through listening to children’s feelings, p. 57
“Let the child be where he is happiest. We owe it to him.”
– Benzion Liber, 1923, The Child and The Home: Essays on the rational bringing-up of children, 2nd enlarged edition, Second Part: Some Practical Advice: The child’s dwelling place, p. 47
“[I]t is easy for radicals to speak about liberty, but the real test for their love of liberty is in their relations with children.”
– Benzion Liber, 1922, The Child and The Home: Essays on the rational bringing-up of children, Author’s reply to Sinclair, pp. 11-13
“If we are for liberty, we must allow the individual traits in men to exist. If we are for progress, we must encourage them and do all in our power for their development.”
– Benzion Liber, 1923, The Child and The Home: Essays on the rational bringing-up of children, 2nd enlarged edition, First Part: Fundamental Errors, p. 24
“It is a great fortune for the child that he does not always obey, that he preserves enough wilfulness not to be altogether submerged or destroyed. It is good that boys and girls are sufficiently ‘bad’ not to be entirely suppressed in a moral sense by their parents and other adults. How sad our world would look if the children’s seniors had their way and if their ideal of the child’s obedience were realized! The little progress humanity has achieved is undoubtedly due to that innate and marvelous and, yes, indestructible inclination to be free, to be as much one-self as it is possible within the boundaries of society. The little advancement that we see has been made in spite of the thousands of smaller and larger obstacles placed on our way by individual and group authorities, by systematic repression, whether with good or bad intentions,—through the order to obey. Can the parents not see that, no matter what they have done for their child, he is not their property and owes them nothing?”
– Benzion Liber, 1922, The Child and The Home: Essays on the rational bringing-up of children, Obedience, p. 85
“Give the children love, more love and still more love—and the common sense will come by itself.”
– Astrid Lindgren, 1948, in a debate about the rights of children, in Husmodern (“The homemaker”) magazine
“[A child’s] Drink should be only Small Beer; and that too he should never be suffered to have between Meals, but after he had eat a Piece of Bread. […] And it being the Lullaby used by Nurses, to still crying Children, I believe Mothers generally find some Difficulty to wean their Children from Drinking in the Night, when they first take them home. […] I once lived in a House, where, to appease a froward Child, they gave him Drink as often as he cried; so that he was constantly bibbing: And tho’ he could not speak, yet he drank more in Twenty four Hours than I did. […] Above all, Take great Care that he seldom, if ever, taste any Wine, or Strong Drink. There is nothing so ordinarily given Children in England, and nothing so destructive to them. They ought never to drink any Strong Liquor, but when they need it as a Cordial, and the Doctor prescribes it. And in this Case it is, that Servants are most narrowly to be watched, and most severely to be reprehended when they transgress. Those mean Sort of People […] foolishly think ’twill do the Child no Harm. […] [T]here [is] nothing that lays a surer Foundation of Mischief, both to Body and Mind, than Children being used to Strong Drink; especially, to drink in private, with the Servants.”
– John Locke, 1693, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, pp. 16-20
“It is customary, but I think it is a mistake, to speak of happy childhood. Children are often overanxious and acutely sensitive. Man ought to be man and master of his fate; but children are at the mercy of those around them.”
John Lubbock (Lord Avebury), 1887, The Pleasures of Life, I
Return to alphabetical index of Quotations pages
Taking Children Seriously, ‘Quotations L’, https://takingchildrenseriously.com/quotations/