A society in which adults are estranged from the world of children, and often from their own childhood, tends to read more

A society in which adults are estranged from the world of children, and often from their own childhood, tends to hear children's speech only as a foreign language, or as a lie. Children have been treated. as congenital fibbers, fakers and fantasisers.

Don't take up a man's time talking about the smartness of your children; he wants to talk to you about read more

Don't take up a man's time talking about the smartness of your children; he wants to talk to you about the smartness of his children.

It might sound a paradoxical thing to say --for surely never has a generation of children occupied more sheer hours read more

It might sound a paradoxical thing to say --for surely never has a generation of children occupied more sheer hours of parental time --but the truth is that we neglected you. We allowed you a charade of trivial freedoms in order to avoid making those impositions on you that are in the end both the training ground and proving ground for true independence. We pronounced you strong when you were still weak in order to avoid the struggles with you that would have fed your true strength. We proclaimed you sound when you were foolish in order to avoid taking part in the long, slow, slogging effort that is the only route to genuine maturity of mind and feeling. Thus, it was no small anomaly of your growing up that while you were the most indulged generation, you were also in many ways the most abandoned to your own meager devices by those into whose safe-keeping you had been given.

Children are poor men's riches.

Children are poor men's riches.

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's read more

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong.

I don't know any parents that look into the eyes of a newborn baby and say, How can we screw read more

I don't know any parents that look into the eyes of a newborn baby and say, How can we screw this kid up.

What a cunning mixture of sentiment, pity, tenderness, irony surrounds adolescence, what knowing watchfulness! Young birds on their first flight read more

What a cunning mixture of sentiment, pity, tenderness, irony surrounds adolescence, what knowing watchfulness! Young birds on their first flight are hardly so hovered around.

Every child is born a genius.

Every child is born a genius.

The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them.

The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them.