Tags / 60 quotes from 11 sources
#parents
A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Mom
Is domestic life the enemy of creative work?
We’d been expecting a home of books, music, spirited discussion, a salon-like extension of our teacher’s office. Instead, the space we entered was cluttered with makeshift blanket forts, crayons, containers of half-eaten apple sauce, highchairs and cradles and strangely shaped…
Adesso basta (Simone Perotti)
La prima generazione senza sventure collettive
Chiunque, dall’uomo di Neanderthal a oggi, è vissuto in condizioni di forte precarietà, di privazioni almeno parziali, assistendo magari a periodi di forte sviluppo economico, ma sempre viziati da mancanze, lacune, difficoltà diffuse. Noi siamo i primi che, per un periodo…
Brain Rules for Baby (John Medina)
Why human childhood lasts so long
It’s a question that bothers many evolutionary scientists: How come it takes so long to raise a human child? Aside from perhaps a whale or two, we have the longest childhood on the planet. Where did this decades-long sojourn come from, and why don’t other animals have to go…
Parenting, a job that only sends invoices
Yes, you have to teach children everything—even how to regulate their body fluids. And they are built to learn, which means you have to watch even your most cavalier behaviors. Both take a tremendous amount of energy. So evolutionary biologists have to wonder: Why would anyone…
Big brains, narrow hips and the birth of parenting
But why does it take so much time and effort? Blame our big, fat, gold-plated, nothing-else-like-it brains. We evolved to have larger brains with higher IQs, which allowed us to move from leopard food to Masters of the Universe in 10 million very short years. We gained big…
Four sources of conflict for new parents
There is hope. We know four of the most important sources of marital conflict in the transition to parenthood: sleep loss, social isolation, unequal workload, and depression. We will examine each. Couples who make themselves aware of these can become vigilant about their…
Let children see you make up after a fight
Even in an emotionally stable home, one without regular marital hostility, there will be fights. Fortunately, research shows that the amount of fighting couples do in front of their children is less damaging than the lack of reconciliation the kids observe. Many couples will…
The Four Grapes of Wrath
Why will you fight? I mentioned four consistent sources of marital conflict in the transition to parenthood. Left to their own devices, all can profoundly influence the course of your marriage, and that makes them capable of affecting your child’s developing brain. I’ll call…
Sleep loss makes new parents hostile
Sleep-deprived people become irritable—far more irritable—than people who are not. Subjects saddled with sleep debt typically suffer a 91 percent loss in their ability to regulate strong emotions compared with controls. The decline in general cognitive skill is equally dramatic…
The loneliness of new parents
Loneliness, painful and ubiquitous, is experienced by as many as 80 percent of new parents. After the birth of a child, couples have only about one-third as much time alone together as they had when they were childless. The thrill of having a child wears off, but the incessant…
The car keys: children imitate their parents
Couples who know about the Four Grapes of Wrath and who begin preparing in advance are much less likely to trample on them once baby comes home. When conflicts occur for these couples, the effects are usually much milder. I can attest to that. I grew up in a military household…
Empathy needs understanding, not solutions
Research shows that 70 percent of marital conflicts are not resolvable; the disagreement remains. As long as the participants learn to live with their differences—one of the biggest challenges in marriage—this is not necessarily bad news. But differences must be grasped, even…
Talking to children raises their IQ
Speak to your children as often as you can. It is one of the most well-established findings in all of the developmental literature. The linkage between words and smarts was discovered through some pretty invasive research. In one study, investigators descended upon a family’s…
Praising a child for being smart backfires
How can you get that kind of effort from your child? Surprisingly, it’s how you praise him. What you praise defines what your child perceives success to be. Here is where parents make a common mistake—one that often creates the saddest sight a teacher can behold: a bright child…
Growth mindset: praise the effort
What should Ethan’s parents have done? Research reveals a simple solution. Rather than praising him for being smart, they should have praised him for working hard. On the successful completion of a test, they should not have said, “I’m so proud of you. You’re such a bright…
Children don't follow Piaget's stages
The brain appears to go through some commonly experienced developmental stages. But few in the brain science community completely agree on what they are. Developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (who worked for a time with Alfred Binet, the IQ guy) came up with four phases of…
Parenting is not a race
Write this across your heart before your child comes into the world: Parenting is not a race. Kids are not proxies for adult success. Competition can be inspiring, but brands of it can wire your child’s brain in a toxic way. Comparing your kids with your friends’ kids will not…
Handling emotions predicts a child's happiness
Parents face many issues on a daily basis in the raising of kids, but not all of them affect how their children turn out. There is one that does. How you deal with the emotional lives of your children—your ability to detect, react to, promote, and provide instruction about…
Authoritative parenting works best
Authoritative: Just right Responsive plus demanding. The best of the lot. These parents are demanding, but they care a great deal about their kids. They explain their rules and encourage their children to state their reactions to them. They encourage high levels of…
Over-attentive parents smother attachment
Emotional surveillance comes with a caveat, however, for it is possible to give too much of a good thing. In the late 1980s, researchers were somewhat startled to find that when parents paid too much attention to their kids’ cues—responding to every gurgle, burp, and cough—the…
Teaching a child to name jealousy
“I don’t like it,” the 3-year-old muttered to herself as the guests left. Miserable throughout her older sister’s birthday party, she was now growing angry. “I want Ally’s doll, not this one!” Her parents had bought her a consolation present, but the strategy went down like a…
Dismissing a child's grief over a goldfish
How might the attitudes of discouraging or ignoring emotions play out in real life? Imagine that the family goldfish, the only pet your 3-year-old son Kyle has ever known, suddenly dies. Visibly upset, Kyle mopes around the house all day, saying things like “I want fishy back!”…
The three-legged stool of moral upbringing
Families who raise moral kids follow very predictable patterns when it comes to rules and discipline. The patterns are not a behavioral insurance policy, but they are as close as research gets us right now. Many interlocking components make up these patterns; an illustration…
Punishment must be firm, consistent and swift
How not to punish kids? Try the 1979 movie Kramer vs. Kramer. The film is about a divorcing couple and the impact of the experience on their young son. Dustin Hoffman plays the workaholic, unengaged dad whose parenting instincts have the subtlety of dog food. The scene opens…
Warm, explained rules earn committed compliance
Overall, a clear picture emerges about how to raise well-adjusted, moral children. Parents whose rules issue from warm acceptance and whose rationales are consistently explained end up being perceived as reasonable and fair, rather than as capricious and dictatorial. They are…
Rushing baby into a crib (fragment)
want to immediately put their kid in a crib. Frustratingly,
Consistent bedtime rituals help babies sleep
Sleep experts agree that one thing helps babies make this transition: having a consistent bedtime routine. This starts with choosing a time for bedtime, sometime around 6 months old. Around the world, bedtime depends upon baby and culture. Whatever time you choose, the advice…
Nighttime Attachment Parenting
Nighttime Attachment Parenting is an extremely infant-driven style. Advocates encourage feeding on demand rather than keeping to a schedule, both day and night; wearing your newborn in a sling during the day; and sleeping with your baby at night (whether in the same bed or in…
Cry-It-Out and graduated extinction
It is not often a scientist becomes so engrained in popular culture that his name becomes a verb. But that is exactly what happened to pediatric sleep researcher Dr. Richard Ferber, a prominent advocate of the Cry-It-Out method. Dr. Ferber, founder of Boston’s Center for…
Baby is an inexperienced ally, not an enemy
Remember, baby is not your enemy in his struggle to learn to sleep independently, just a very inexperienced ally. Your goals are naturally aligned, after all. From an evolutionary perspective, it is in his brain’s best interest to learn how to stay awake during the day, then…
Real parenting is richer than the data
The real world of moms and dads is a much richer, much more amazing experience than the two-dimensional world of data, including all the stuff in this book. It’s easy to feel like the exasperated new father in the comic strip Baby Blues, who says, “The only time I ever felt…
Children create grown-ups
You may think that grown-ups create children. The reality is that children create grown-ups. They become their own person, and so do you. Children give so much more than they take.
Parenting is about developing hearts
Seeing his personality blossom was truly a gift. This is the message I want to leave you with as we part ways. As a new parent, you may feel sometimes that all children do is take from you, but it is just a form of giving in disguise. Kids present you with an ear infection, but…
Schedule sex after the baby arrives
Schedule sex regularly Yes, the great joy in physical intimacy includes a healthy helping of spontaneity. Problem is, you can kiss spontaneity out the window when you bring baby home. Sexual activity usually plummets after the birth of a child, and the loss of associated…
Dio odia il Giappone (Douglas Coupland, M. Howatson and Anna Mioni)
Svegliarsi senza memoria per reinventarsi
Caro Clone, cosa spinge le persone a fare quello che fanno? Ci svegliamo la mattina, ci ricordiamo chi siamo e dove siamo e a volte ci dimentichiamo il giorno della settimana, oppure la stagione, e dobbiamo fare uno sforzo di memoria, ma prima o poi ci tornano in mente. A volte…
Leielui (italian Edition) (de Carlo, Andrea)
I figli che crescono e si allontanano
Fino all’anno scorso avevano la naturalezza di una piccola tribù di selvaggi: la costante ricerca di contatto fisico e mentale, la sovrapposizione continua di voci e gesti, il parlarsi addosso, ridersi addosso, dormirsi addosso. C’era un fluido meraviglioso che scorreva tra…
Maximize Your Child's Bilingual Ability (Adam Beck)
Daily reflection protects what matters most
If you find yourself feeling frazzled, and your own greater priorities—like devoting time and energy to your children’s language development—getting shortchanged by pressing, but less important activities, then some form of daily meditation or quiet reflection could be helpful…
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen R. Covey)
Psyching up a struggling son
We attempted to psych him up using positive mental attitude techniques. “Come on, son! You can do it! We know you can.
Helping our son without really believing in him
we began to realize that what we were doing to help our son was not in harmony with the way we really saw him.
Principles are not practices
Principles are not practices. A practice is a specific activity or action. A practice that works in one circumstance will not necessarily work in another, as parents who have tried to raise a second child exactly like they did the first can readily attest. While practices are…
Psychic determinism
Psychic determinism basically says your parents did it to you. Your upbringing, your childhood experience essentially laid out your personal tendencies and your character structure.
Focusing on what we couldn't control
As long as we focused our efforts on those things, we accomplished nothing, except to increase our own feelings of inadequacy and helplessness and to reinforce our son’s dependence.
Parents trapped in the management paradigm
I’m convinced that too often parents are also trapped in the management paradigm, thinking of control, efficiency, and rules instead of direction, purpose, and family feeling. And leadership is even more lacking in our personal lives. We’re into managing with efficiency…
Daily behavior betrays how we feel
pressing problems, immediate concerns, and outward behaviors. I become reactive. And the way I interact with my children every day often bears little resemblance to the way I deeply feel about them.
Family as a center undermines the family
Another common center is the family. This, too, may seem to be natural and proper. As an area of focus and deep investment, it provides great opportunities for deep relationships, for loving, for sharing, for much that makes life worthwhile. But as a center, it ironically…
The Book: On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
God the Father has become ridiculous
Frankly, the image of God the Father has become ridiculous—that is, unless you read Saint Thomas Aquinas or Martin Buber or Paul Tillich, and realize that you can be a devout Jew or Christian without having to believe, literally, in the Cosmic Male Parent. Even then, it is…
Society is our extended mind and body
The child is tricked into the ego-feeling by the attitudes, words, and actions of the society which surrounds him—his parents, relatives, teachers, and, above all, his similarly hoodwinked peers. Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we…
Wanting to be admired for trivial tricks
it will often happen that when you tell a girl how beautiful she is, she will say, “Now isn’t that just like a man! All you men think about is bodies. OK, so I’m beautiful, but I got my body from my parents and it was just luck. I prefer to be admired for myself, not my…
The Growth Of Independence In The Young Child
Parents' own childhoods influence childrens development
In this way we come full circle. The emotional disturbances in parents which hinder the natural development of dependence and independence in their children spring almost always from a disturbance in this very function in the parents' own childhoods. Problem children grow up to…
Theories of Childhood, Second Edition (Carol Garhart Mooney)
What children need, money cannot buy
Raising healthy children is a labor-intensive operation. Contrary to the news from the broader culture, most of what children need, money cannot buy. Children need time and space, attention, affection, guidance, and conversation. They need sheltered places where they can be…
Don't bemoan the good old days
In 1899 John Dewey gave a talk to the parents of children in his school. The parents were worried about the changing times. On the edge of the industrial age, these parents of one hundred years ago were old enough to remember the “agricultural era” in the United States. They…
Change brings new opportunities
What Dewey was trying to get his parent group to understand was that change brings new problems but also new opportunities. He urged parents to think of new ways they could all find to help children learn to be socially responsible people, without trying to cling to times gone…
Adults who do too much for children
It is clear that Montessori had strong feelings about the tendency of adults to undermine children’s competence by doing too much for them. She used the word serving in her discussions and cautioned teachers that children remain incompetent if adults do for them what they are…
The death of the grown-up
she describes the parents who are serving their children in a way that is detrimental to their children’s growth and development. Another contemporary writer, Diana West, goes so far as to warn that this tendency is a threat to western civilization. Her book The Death of the…
Attachment: a safe base for exploring
This engaging of adults is part of what we call attachment. It is a special bond between babies and the significant adults in their lives. When a securely attached baby is in the presence of these adults, her sense of security and comfort is heightened. The baby uses the adults…
Holding and responding build trust
Erikson believed that two actions on the part of parents and teachers help babies develop this basic sense of trust: holding babies close and having warm physical contact with them when they are being fed and responding right away to their distress when they cry or fuss. Both…
Learning to cope in small doses
Current studies (Young-Eisendrath 2008) as well as Montessori’s original work on developing independence and Magda Gerber’s 1997 (among her other) work on competence have all stressed the importance of learning to cope. Babies whose needs are consistently met quickly can learn…
Responsiveness is the opposite of spoiling
Erikson’s theory says that babies will develop the strongest sense of security if they know that adults will come running when they cry. Then, when they are a little older, they will be able to cope with delayed gratification of their needs. By meeting their needs quickly and…
Toddlers between holding on and letting go
Erikson believed that toddlers struggle to achieve balance between appropriate holding on and letting go. Areas for these struggles include sharing with friends, relationships with parents and primary caregivers, independent toileting, and making choices. Erikson thought that…
Why The Modern World Is Bad For Your Brain (daniel J Levitin)
Information overload
Our brains are busier than ever before. We’re assaulted with facts, pseudo facts, jibber-jabber, and rumour, all posing as information. Trying to figure out what you need to know and what you can ignore is exhausting. At the same time, we are all doing more. Thirty years ago…