The purpose of loving children is to give those helpless young human beings a rich, stable, safe environment - an environment in which variation, innovation, and novelty can blossom.
Derek Sivers • The Gardener and the Carpenter - by Alison Gopnik | Derek Sivers
I think this is one of the key things in parenting, and the difficulty of raising children in a very, very fast-moving culture: that, again, it’s the difficulty of creating a space where children can actually unfold and where they can be truly accompanied in their journey
John O'Donohue • John O’Donohue — The Inner Landscape of Beauty
... See moreRaising a child puts you in touch, deeply, inescapably, daily, with some pretty heady issues: What is love and how do we get ours? Why does the world contain evil and pain and loss? How can we discover dignity and tolerance? Who is in power and why? What’s the best way to resolve conflict? If we want to give an AI any major responsibilities, then i
(The problem of education hinges on this point. If parents were more developed themselves and rested in their own center, the opposition between authoritarian and laissez-faire education would hardly exist. Needing this being-authority, the child reacts to it with great eagerness; on the other hand, the child rebels against pressure or neglect by p
... See moreErich Fromm • To Have or To Be? (Continuum Impacts)
Winnicott’s crucial insight was that the parents’ agony was coming from a particular place: excessive hope. Their despair was a consequence of a cruel and counterproductive perfectionism. To help them reduce this, Winnicott developed a charming phrase: ‘the good enough parent’. No child, he insisted, needs an ideal parent. They just need an OK, pre
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