Adele Faber > Quotes

“I was a wonderful parent before I had children.”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“When we give children advice or instant solutions, we deprive them of the experience that comes from wrestling with their own problems.”
― Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, How To Talk So Kids Will Listen

“Let us be different in our homes. Let us realize that, along with food, shelter, and clothing, we have another obligation to our children, and that is to affirm their “rightness.” The whole world will tell them what’s wrong with them—loud and often. Our job is to let our children know what’s right about them.”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk

“The attitude behind your words is as important as the words themselves.”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“Children don’t need to have their feelings agreed with; they need to have them acknowledged.”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“Some children can tell you why they’re frightened, angry, or unhappy. For many, however, the question “Why?” only adds to their problem. In addition to their original distress, they must now analyze the cause and come up with a reasonable explanation. Very often children don’t know why they feel as they do. At other times they’re reluctant to tell because they fear that in the adult’s eyes their reason won’t seem good enough. (“For that you’re crying?”) It’s much more helpful for an unhappy youngster to hear, “I see something is making you sad,” rather than to be interrogated with “What happened?” or “Why do you feel that way?” It’s easier to talk to a grown-up who accepts what you’re feeling rather than one who presses you for explanations.”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“The more you try to push a child's unhappy feelings away, the more he becomes stuck in them. The more comfortable you can accept the bad feelings, the easier it is for kids to leg go of them.”
― Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“When a person is drowning, it’s not the time to give swimming lessons.”
― Adele Faber, How To Talk So Kids Can Learn

“It’s important to make a distinction between allowing feelings and allowing actions,” I replied. “We permit children to express all their feelings. We don’t permit them to hurt each other. Our job is to show them how to express their anger without doing damage.”
― Adele Faber, Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too

“It’s a bittersweet road we parents travel. We start with total commitment to a small, helpless human being. Over the years we worry, plan, comfort, and try to understand. We give our love, our labor, our knowledge, and our experience—so that one day he or she will have the inner strength and confidence to leave us.”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“To Engage a Child’s Cooperation 1. DESCRIBE WHAT YOU SEE, OR DESCRIBE THE PROBLEM. “There’s a wet towel on the bed.” 2. GIVE INFORMATION. “The towel is getting my blanket wet.” 3. SAY IT WITH A WORD. “The towel!” 4. DESCRIBE WHAT YOU FEEL. “I don’t like sleeping in a wet bed!” 5. WRITE A NOTE. (above towel rack) Please put me back so I can dry.           Thanks!           Your Towel”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“Finally, are most of my moments with my child spent asking her to “do things?” Or am I taking out some time to be alone with her—just to “be together”?”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“I was a wonderful parent before I had children. I was an expert on why everyone else was having problems with theirs. Then I had three of my own.”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“Parents don’t usually give this kind of response, because they fear that by giving a name to the feeling they’ll make it worse. Just the opposite is true. The child who hears the words for what she is experiencing is deeply comforted. Someone has acknowledged her inner experience.”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“Sometimes just having someone understand how much you want something makes reality easier to bear. So”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“It’s also not helpful when parents respond with more intensity than the child feels.”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“INSTEAD OF DISMISSING NEGATIVE FEELINGS ABOUT A SIBLING, ACKNOWLEDGE THE FEELINGS.”
― Adele Faber, How To Talk: Siblings Without Rivalry

“All we are given is possibilities— to make ourselves one thing or another. JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“Children Need to Have Their Feelings Accepted and Respected. 1. YOU CAN LISTEN QUIETLY AND ATTENTIVELY. 2. YOU CAN ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR FEELINGS WITH A WORD.     “Oh . . . Mmm . . . I see . . .” 3. YOU CAN GIVE THE FEELING A NAME.     “That sounds frustrating!” 4. YOU CAN GIVE THE CHILD HIS WISHES IN FANTASY.     “I wish I could make the banana ripe for you right now!”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“at the outset it needs to be stressed that discipline means education. Discipline is essentially programmed guidance that helps people to develop internal self-control, self-direction, and efficiency. If it is to work, discipline requires mutual respect and trust. On the other hand, punishment requires external control over a person by force and coercion. Punishing agents seldom respect or trust the one punished.”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“By being kind to ourselves, we teach our children to be kind to themselves.”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“It’s hard for children to change their behavior when their feelings are completely ignored.”
― Adele Faber, How To Talk So Kids Can Learn

“There are youngsters who prefer no talk at all when they’re upset. For them, Mom or Dad’s presence is comfort enough. One mother told us about walking into the living room and seeing her ten-year-old daughter slumped on the sofa with tear-stained eyes. The mother sat down beside her daughter, put her arms around her, murmured, “Something happened,” and sat silently with her for five minutes. Finally, her daughter sighed and said, “Thanks, Mom. I’m better now.”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“To be loved equally,” I continued, “is somehow to be loved less. To be loved uniquely—for one’s own special self—is to be loved as much as we need to be loved.”
― Adele Faber, Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too

“There is an important message built into this approach. It says, “When there is conflict between us, we no longer have to mobilize our forces against each other and worry about who will emerge victorious and who will go down in defeat. Instead, we can put our energy into searching for the kinds of solutions that respect both our needs as individuals.”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“نذرف الدموع أنا و أمي عندما تستحضر في ذهنها كيف كانت تحادثنا عندما كنا أطفالا، تقول: حينما أسمعك تتكلمين مع ابنك أخجل كيف كانت تحادثنا عندما كنا أطفالا."
(إحدى الرسائل التي أرسلها الآباء الذين استفادوا من الكتاب)”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“It’s hard for a child to think clearly or constructively when someone is questioning, blaming, or advising her.”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

“Imagine,” I thought, “a world in which brothers and sisters grow up in homes where hurting isn’t allowed; where children are taught to express their anger at each other sanely and safely; where each child is valued as an individual, not in relation to the others; where cooperation, rather than competition is the norm; where no one is trapped in a role; where children have daily experience and guidance in resolving their differences.”
― Adele Faber, Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too

“The passion and excitement you feel about a child’s achievement should be saved for a moment when just the two of you are together. It’s too much for the other siblings to have to listen to.”
― Adele Faber, Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too

“Kids, this is a tough problem, but I have confidence that you two can put your heads together and come up with a solution that you can both agree to.”
― Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk