Never raise your hand to your children; it leaves your midsection unprotected.

Never raise your hand to your children; it leaves your midsection unprotected.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.

All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.

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.

A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age.

A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age.

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.

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.

Adolescence is a period of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as read more

Adolescence is a period of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years.

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.