Virginia M. Axline > Quotes

“Perhaps there is more understanding and beauty in life when the glaring sunlight is softened by the patterns of shadows. Perhaps there is more depth in a relationship that has weathered some storms. Experience that never disappoints or saddens or stirs up feeling is a bland experience with little challenge or variation of color. Perhaps it's when we experience confidence and faith and hope that we see materialize before our eyes this builds up within us a feeling of inner strength, courage, and security. We are all personalities that grow and develop as a result of our experiences, relationships, thoughts, and emotions. We are the sum total of all the parts that go into the making of a life.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs in Search of Self

“Sometimes it is very difficult to keep in mind the fact that the parents, too, have reasons for what they do-- have reasons, locked in the depths of their personalities, for their inability to love, to understand, to give of themselves to their children.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs in Search of Self

“Perhaps it is easier to understand that even though we do not have the wisdom to enumerate the reasons for the behavior of another person, we can grant that each individual does have their private world of meaning, conceived out of the integrity and dignity of their personality.”
― virginia axline

“When a child is forced to prove himself as capable, results are often disastrous. A child needs love, acceptance, and understanding. He is devastated when confronted with rejection, doubts, and never ending testing.”
― Virgina M. Axline

“What are the purposes of examinations anyhow? Are they to increase our educational attainment? Or are they instruments used to bring suffering and humiliation and deep hurt to a person who is trying so hard to succeed?”
― Virginia Mae Axline, Dibs in Search of Self

“A child is only confused by questions that have been answered by someone else before he is asked.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs: In Search of Self

“research is a fascinating combination of hunches, speculation, subjectivity, imagination, hopes, and dreams blended precisely with objectively gathered facts ties down to the reality of a mathematical science”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs in Search of Self

“One need only to observe the physical response of a child to realize that, when happy, he is happy all over.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Play Therapy: The Groundbreaking Book That Has Become a Vital Tool in the Growth and Development of Children

“...even though we do not have the wisdom to enumerate the reasons for the behaviour of another person, we can grant that every individual does have his private world of meaning, conceived out of the integrity and dignity of his personality.”
― Virginia M. Axline

“He had learned to understand his feelings. He had learned how to cope with them and to control them. Dibs was no longer submerged under his feelings of fear, anger, hatred and guilt. He had become a person in his own right. He found a sense of dignity and self-respect.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs in Search of Self

“child is only confused by questions that have been answered by someone else before he is asked.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs: In Search of Self

“What would ultimately help Dibs the most was not the sand mountain, not the powerful, little plastic duck, but the feeling of security and adequacy that they symbolized in the creation he had built last week. Now, faced with the disappearance of the concrete symbols, I hoped that he could experience within himself confidence and adequacy as he coped now with his disappointment and realization that things outside ourselves change - and many times we have little control over those elements, but if we learn to utilize our inner resources, we carry our security around with us.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs in Search of Self

“I attempted to keep my comments in line with his activity, trying not to say anything that would indicate any desire on my part that he do any particular thing, but rather to communicate, understandingly and simply, recognition in line with his frame of reference.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs: In Search of Self

“Understanding grows from personal experience that enables a person to see and feel im ways so varied and so full of changeable meanings that one’s self-awareness is the determining factor.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs in Search of Self

“the important things are what we remember after we have forgotten everything else.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs: In Search of Self

“Dibs was coming to terms with himself. In his symbolic playhe had pired out his hurt, bruised feelings, and had emerged with feelings of strength and security. He had gone in search of a self that he could claim with proud identity. Now he was beginning to build a concept of self that was more in harmony with the capacities within him. He was achieving personal integration.”
― Virginia M. Axline

“They left together - a little boy who had the opprtunity to state himself through his play and who had emerged a happy, capable child, and a mother who had grown in understanding and appreciation for her very gifted child.

A child, given the opportunity, has the gift of honest, forthright communication. A mother who is respected and accepted with dignity can also be sincerely expressive when she knows that she will not be criticized and blamed.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs in Search of Self

“In the therapy hour—once the child has established confidence in the therapist and has accepted the therapist even as she has accepted him—he shares his inner world with her and, by the sharing, extends the horizons of both their worlds.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Play Therapy: The Groundbreaking Book That Has Become a Vital Tool in the Growth and Development of Children

“His search for self was a tedious troubled experience that brought him increasing awareness of his feelings, attitudes and relationship with those around him. There were many feelings that Dibs had not dug out of his past and flung out in his play to know and understand and control better.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs in Search of Self

“There is no severer discipline than to maintain the completely accepting attitude and to refrain at all times from injecting any directive suggestions or insinuations into the play of the child.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Play Therapy: The Groundbreaking Book That Has Become a Vital Tool in the Growth and Development of Children

“As I went down the East River Drive, I thought of many children I had known — children who were unhappy, each frustrated in the attempt to achieve a selfhood he could claim with dignity — children not understood, but striving again and again to become persons in their own right. Out of projected feelings, thoughts, fantasies, dreams, and hopes, new horizons grew in each child.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs: In Search of Self

“He was exchanging his anger and fear and anxiety for hope and confidence and gladness.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs in Search of Self

“I wanted him to take the initiative in building up this relationship. Too often, this is done for a child by some eager adult.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs: In Search of Self

“the realization that things outside ourselves change — and many times we have little control over those elements, but if we learn to utilize our inner resources, we carry our security around with us.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs: In Search of Self

“Perhaps there is more understanding and beauty in life when the glaring sunlight is softened by the patterns of shadows. Perhaps there is more depth in a relationship that has weathered some storms.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs: In Search of Self

“Too often those terms are only convenient labels tied on as alibis to excuse our ignorance. We must avoid clichés, quick, ready-made interpretations and explanations. If we want to get closer to the truth we must look deeper into the reasons for our behavior.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs: In Search of Self

“Perhaps he felt safer in manipulating intellectual concepts about things, rather than probing any deeper feelings about himself that he could not accept with ease.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs in Search of Self

“He manifests in every way an eagerness, a curiosity, a great love of life that thrills and delights him in its simplest pleasures. Normally, a child loves growing up and strives for it constantly—sometimes outreaching himself in his eagerness. He is both humble and proud, courageous and afraid, dominant and submissive, curious and satisfied, eager and indifferent. He loves and hates and fights and makes peace, is delightfully happy and despairingly sad.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Play Therapy: The Groundbreaking Book That Has Become a Vital Tool in the Growth and Development of Children

“I didn’t say that I would see him next week, because I had not yet completed the plans with his mother. This child had been hurt enough without my introducing promises that might not materialize. I didn’t ask him if he had had a good time. Why”
― Virginia M. Axline, Dibs: In Search of Self

“When an individual reaches a barrier which makes it more difficult for him to achieve the complete realization of the self, there is set up an area of resistance and friction and tension. The drive toward self-realization continues, and the individual’s behavior demonstrates that he is satisfying this inner drive by outwardly fighting to establish his self-concept in the world of reality, or that he is satisfying it vicariously by confining it to his inner world where he can build it up with less struggle. The more it is turned inward, the more dangerous it becomes; and the further he departs from the world of reality, the more difficult it is to help him.”
― Virginia M. Axline, Play Therapy: The Groundbreaking Book That Has Become a Vital Tool in the Growth and Development of Children