John Rosemond > Quotes

“We have forgotten what Thomas Jefferson told us in 1776: that we are endowed by the Creator "with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Not happiness, mind you, but its pursuit. By implication Jefferson warned that if you pursue happiness for someone else, you deny him the right to pursue it on his own.”
― John Rosemond, Making the "Terrible" Twos Terrific!

“The essence of successful discipline is not technique; rather, it is self-confidence.”
― John Rosemond, A Family of Value

“How do you prevent a little sociopath from becoming a big, full-blown sociopath? Sit on him.”
― John Rosemond, Parenting by the Book: Biblical Wisdom for Raising Your Child

“Discussion requires the participation of two people whose willingness to listen is as great as their desire to be heard.”
― John Rosemond, The New Six-Point Plan for Raising Happy, Healthy Children: A Newly Updated, Greatly Expanded Version of the Parenting Classic (John Rosemond Book 13)

“The reasons: • They think it’s funny. • They take perverse satisfaction out of upsetting adults. • Sometimes they get what they want when they misbehave. • Rebelling against authority gives them a sense of power. • They often get a lot of attention when they misbehave. • They discover that they can control certain people and situations by misbehaving.”
― John Rosemond, The Well-Behaved Child: Discipline That Really Works!

“Antispanking laws would solve a nagging problem for Child Protective Service agencies nationwide: to wit, the criticism that current child abuse and neglect laws discriminate against the poor-that, in fact, definitions of neglect and abuse are often synonomous with definitions of poverty. A prohibition on spanking would be nondiscriminatory; it would "tie the hands," so to speak, of haves and have-nots alike. After all, the typical Fortune 500 CEO has probably never beaten his children in ways that produced bruises on their bodies; nevertheless, he has probably spanked them. Antispanking laws would mean that he would be no less vulnerable to the forced "interventions" of Child Protective Services workers than an unemployed single mother of three living hand-to-mouth in a slum tenement.”
― John Rosemond, To Spank Or Not To Spank (John Rosemond Book 5)

“behavior and school-performance problems with their”
― John Rosemond, The New Six-Point Plan for Raising Happy, Healthy Children: A Newly Updated, Greatly Expanded Version of the Parenting Classic (John Rosemond Book 13)

“look at your child next time he is watching television and ask yourself what he is doing—or, better yet, what he is not doing.

, the child is not:
• Scanning
• Practicing motor skills, gross or fine
• Practicing eye-hand coordination
• Using more than two senses
• Asking questions
• Exploring
• Exercising initiative or motivation
• Being challenged
• Solving problems
• Thinking analytically
• Exercising imagination
• Practicing communication skills
• Being either creative or constructive”
― John Rosemond

“This amounts to nothing more than misleading propaganda. The purpose is to create a climate of acceptance for the passage of legislation which will turn the majority of parents into criminals of the most heinous kind-those whose victims are defenseless children. The resulting body of law will play directly into the hands of ultraliberal social engineers as well as social activists within the professional community. The outward motive-the protection of children-conceals several more insidious ones:
• The desire to expand and consolidate the power of the helping professions. At the present time, there is no law that says an individual must, under certain circumstances, submit to psychological evaluation and counseling. If they are written as is being suggested, however, antispanking laws will require exactly that. They will give helping professionals the power to define when the law has been broken, who is in need of "help" and how much, and when a certain parent's "rehabilitation" is complete. It is significant to note that in all of history the only other state to confer this much power on psychologists and their ilk was the former Soviet Union.
• The desire to manipulate the inner workings of the American family; specifically, the desire to exercise significant control over the child-rearing process. Take it from someone who was, at one time, similarly guilty, a significant number of helping professionals possess a "save the world" mentality. They believe they know what's best for individuals, families, and children. The only problem, as they see it, is that most people are "in denial"-unwilling to recognize their need for help. This self-righteousness fuels a zealous, missionary attitude. And like the first missionaries to the New World, many helping professionals seem
to believe that their vision of a perfect world justifies whatever means they deem necessary, including licensing parents, taking children away from parents they define as unfit, and the like. (For a close look at the social engineering being proposed by some professionals, see Debating Children's Lives, Mason and Gambrill, eds., Sage Publications, 1994).”
― John Rosemond, To Spank Or Not To Spank (John Rosemond Book 5)

“A child is not a bona fide adult, regardless of age, until the child is self-supporting.)   During”
― John Rosemond, Teen-Proofing: Fostering Responsible Decision Making in Your Teenager

“The more attention you pay to your child, the less attention he will pay to you.”
― John Rosemond, The New Six-Point Plan for Raising Happy, Healthy Children: A Newly Updated, Greatly Expanded Version of the Parenting Classic (John Rosemond Book 13)

“That’s exactly what the job of parent is all about. It’s about helping our children get out of our lives.”
― John Rosemond, The New Six-Point Plan for Raising Happy, Healthy Children: A Newly Updated, Greatly Expanded Version of the Parenting Classic (John Rosemond Book 13)

“In the 1960s, helping professionals began actively promoting a child-rearing philosophy which holds that parent and child are equals-not in theory, mind you, but in fact. According to psychologist Thomas Gordon, one of the chief architects of the democratic family movement and author of Parent Effectiveness Training (1970), or P.E. T, one of the all-time best-sellers in the parenting field, parents should treat children as they would treat adult friends.”
― John Rosemond, To Spank Or Not To Spank (John Rosemond Book 5)