Child Development Quotes

“Since the earliest period of our life was preverbal, everything depended on emotional interaction. Without someone to reflect our emotions, we had no way of knowing who we were.”
― John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You

“If there is one thing developmental psychologists have learned over the years, it is that parents don’t have to be brilliant psychologists to succeed. They don’t have to be supremely gifted teachers. Most of the stuff parents do with flashcards and special drills and tutorials to hone their kids into perfect achievement machines don’t have any effect at all. Instead, parents just have to be good enough. They have to provide their kids with stable and predictable rhythms. They need to be able to fall in tune with their kids’ needs, combining warmth and discipline. They need to establish the secure emotional bonds that kids can fall back upon in the face of stress. They need to be there to provide living examples of how to cope with the problems of the world so that their children can develop unconscious models in their heads.”
― David Brooks, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement

“No child can be good enough to evoke love from a highly self-involved parent. Nevertheless, these children come to believe that the price of making a connection is to put other people first and treat them as more important. They think they can keep relationships by being the giver. Children who try to be good enough to win their parents’ love have no way of knowing that unconditional love cannot be bought with conditional behavior.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“The path of development is a journey of discovery that is clear only in retrospect, and it’s rarely a straight line.”
― Eileen Kennedy-Moore, Smart Parenting for Smart Kids: Nurturing Your Child's True Potential

“When children can’t rely on their parents to meet their needs, they cannot develop a sense of safety, trust, or confidence. Trust is a colossal development issue. Without the learning of trust in our early years, we are set up to have a major handicap with believing in ourselves and feeling safe in intimate connections.”
― Karyl McBride, Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers

“Sometimes, however, unmet attachment needs have a positive impact on future relationships, if those later friendships are experienced as second chances. Eager to love and be loved, eager to meet those basic needs for caring and affiliation, children can make up for those unmet needs by being outgoing, having strong leadership qualities, and becoming devoted friends. So insecurely attached children are not doomed to a life of desperation, withdrawal, clinging, aggression, or insecurity, but they may need some additional help negotiating the complex terrain of the social world. The deeper a child’s unmet need, the harder it may be to ever have it filled later on. Expecting rejection, neglect, or smothering, the child may respond to peers with passivity, withdrawal, or aggression. Children who are afraid to assert their own needs may follow along with whatever the friend or the group says.”
― Michael G. Thompson, Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children

“It doesn’t always have to be that way, however. Later friendships can offer a second chance to finally get those old needs met. I often ask adults in therapy how they managed to cope with the terrible traumas they endured. The ones who coped best, even ones with horrendous histories of abuse and neglect, were those who found a friend or supporter. Somehow, even through the betrayals and abandonments, these individuals managed to connect with someone, usually a very special person who saw through the child’s surface layer of aggressiveness, withdrawal, or fear and persisted in offering a helping hand. For some survivors of abuse, this connection came from a peer, perhaps someone whose own suffering made them especially empathic. Others were supported by an adult, someone who didn’t abuse or neglect them, but treated them with respect and dignity. Still others were shut out of human connection but managed to find a friend by connecting with a pet, a doll, a character in a favorite book or an imaginary friend.”
― Michael G. Thompson, Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children

“It seems contradictory, but if you want your child to be adventurous, you need to cuddle her more. If you want your child to always be close, you need to applaud her explorations. Some children need a little push out of the nest, but never give the shove without an unlimited free pass for coming back home. Children of all ages need to be able to regress sometimes, pretending to be younger than they really are. They need to know they can cuddle with you or check back with you any time they want. Other children will race away recklessly and need to be held in check a little. Don’t hold them back, however, without a clear message that you’re eager for them to try their wings, once they can do it a bit more safely. Otherwise, the clingy children will just cling tighter or stumble out into the world unprepared. Conversely, the reckless child will just rush out even more impulsively or catch the parent’s anxiety and become fearful.”
― Michael G. Thompson, Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children

“One of the best perks of being a child therapist is that parents think you are awfully clever when their child shows dramatic improvement. Mostly what happens is that the child grew up. He reached a new developmental stage that let him share, control his aggressive impulses, or make a friend.”
― Michael G. Thompson, Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children

“It has to be okay for a child not to be an alpha male or queen bee–otherwise almost everyone is doomed to misery. Set your sights a little lower and look to see if your child has the basics covered. Watch your child with a friend. Are they happy to see one another? Do they engage in reciprocal play? Do they take each other’s feelings into account? Can they resolve conflict without help? Do they have more peaceful time than fighting time? If your child can do these things at least some of the time, you can relax.”
― Michael G. Thompson, Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children

“No matter how old your child is now, try to remember that incredible sociability of infants and toddlers – the way they flirt, smile, pull at our heartstrings. Everything you see now has been built on that foundation. It’s hard to see that happy little guy you raised inside your touchy fifteen year old. But does that little boy emerge when your son is laughing with a group or watching TV with a friend? If so, relax. If, however, you cannot spot any sign of your happy youngster in your older child, if he or she cannot take any pleasure in friends or in a group or is always isolated, then, as a psychologist, I am worried - and you should be too.”
― Michael G. Thompson, Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children

“We can unwittingly undermine the friendship by imposing our adult standard of justice instead of the child’s standard of forgive-and-forget.”
― Michael G. Thompson, Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children

“If your children are popular or accepted, I am delighted for them. They’re going to have an easier childhood than some other kids. However, your work is not done. The daily newspaper provides numerous examples of well-known political or entertainment figures who behave extremely badly toward others. Such misbehavior begins early because such leaders were allowed, when they were young, to use their social influence in any way that they wanted. As we have seen through countless examples in this book, popular and accepted children wield a lot of power over the lives of other children. Some of that power is pretty destructive, so parents have to take every opportunity to be moral leaders. Many potential bullies can be transformed into positive leaders who actually enhance the moral and social atmosphere of a school or a group of children.”
― Michael G. Thompson, Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children

“A wise parent thinks like a root, sustaining not only its trunk but also ensuring that the furthest green leaf is nurtured.”
― Nitzan Hamburg

“Our cultures make it seem as if male children are worthier than female ones, but that is not the case. The value of a child is not a function of what he or she can bring to the family, ability to work in the farm or protect their
clan or community. The value of a child is not in whether he or she will carry on the name of the family. ... All children are worth in the same way, irrespective of gender. ...children are a gift from God, and the worst thing is when the person receiving this gift fails to appreciate its value.”
― Benjamin Nzuki

“When we hurt children, it is God’s plan we
indirectly try to frustrate, since it is for His pleasure that people exist.”
― Benjamin Nzuki

“To a child, whatever is being done by adults is good and worth imitating. Many children have embraced societal vices as they emulated adults, who do not even understand that children are learning from them. Those caring for children should make sure they do what is noble and trustworthy because they are unknowingly training them.”
― Benjamin Nzuki

“Families are setting aside more money to buy school books every year, yet there is no budget for the Bible. Sad, isn’t it! Our children need to be exposed to the word of God when they are young so that they may grow with the knowledge of the same.”
― Benjamin Nzuki

“God wanted parents to train their children in the way of the Lord. Deuteronomy 6:1, 2 says: “These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. So that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.” It was expected that every Jewish parent will have a relationship with God and be qualified to instruct his children on how to relate with the Lord.”
― Benjamin Nzuki

“It goes without saying that people who interact with your children will influence them. If they are godless, they will influence your children in that direction. Parents and caregivers who are serious with the faith will therefore shield their children from the irreligious community by always reminding them of the purpose God has on them.”
― Benjamin Nzuki

“Silence doesn’t always mean peace. Sometimes, it’s a child learning to bury feelings they don’t yet know how to name.”
― P. Pra. Sandhyaya

“Being able to freely explore my identity through aesthetic and expressive play is a joy. Why on earth would we seek to deny that to children, the very people for whom play was not only invented but who are its most ingenious architects?”
― Clementine Ford, Boys Will Be Boys: Power, Patriarchy and the Toxic Bonds of Mateship

“What the normal child continuously needs is not so much isolated moral lessons instilling in him the importance of truthfulness and honesty, or the beneficent results that follow from some particular act of patriotism, etc. It is the formation of habits of social imagination and conception”
― John Dewey, The Political Writings

“Folks that has brought up children know that there's no hard and fast method in the world that'll suit every child. But them as never have think it's all as plain and easy as Rule of Three—just set your three terms down so fashion, and the sum'll work out correct.”
― L. M. Montgomery

“Ain't nobody want to adopt me,' he says. 'I thought if I did good, they would let me get back with my brothers, but when they didnt' I said fuck it.”
― Roxanna Asgarian, We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America

“In some respects, children are better placed to perceive their connectedness to the world around them, and in this respect, adults might learn from them. Here we could recognize the child as being more open to a state of becoming as an intrinsic worldly intelligence, rather than thinking of them on the way to 'becoming' something else (intelligent, for example).”
― Cath Arnold, Schemas in the Early Years

“Perhaps we should sometimes resist analysing what it is to be childish and instead develop ways to be alongside children that allow us to feel a little more what it is to be childish.”
― Cath Arnold, Schemas in the Early Years

“Let us then secure for the children that which we lack ourselves. Let us transfuse from their lives into ours that vital creative energy of child's life which we have lost. Let us learn from our children.”
― Friedrich Froebel

“Moments like these underline the importance of adults reserving their own personal judgments and accepting the child's wishes and actions. Awareness of potential schematic underpinnings also help us value and appreciate behaviors so that we can accept what the child may be showing us. Although firm conclusions can rarely be drawn, reflections remind us of the potentially multiple benefits of schematic actions for a child, and also the value in repetitive behaviors which tend to be labeled as negative. Educators should remain curious about a child's seeds of inquiry and make more such opportunities available to meet this need.”
― Cath Arnold, Schemas in the Early Years

“Noticing the potential message in children's behaviors and responding appropriately and respectfully is our aim. Reflecting upon Becky's enclosing and tying-up of her toys, it is clear that she needed the freedom to safely express herself without judgment and for an adult to interact and not interfere. Many adults seek to control children's play or stop them if they see a child playing in ways they deem inappropriate.”
― Cath Arnold, Schemas in the Early Years