things without defense: insects, kittens, small boys.

things without defense: insects, kittens, small boys.

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.

My mother loved children--she would have given anything if I had been one.

My mother loved children--she would have given anything if I had been one.

Many children, many cares; no children, no felicity.

Many children, many cares; no children, no felicity.

Cosmic upheaval is not so moving as a little child pondering the death of a sparrow in the corner of read more

Cosmic upheaval is not so moving as a little child pondering the death of a sparrow in the corner of a barn. -Tom Savage.

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.

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.

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.

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after read more

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation. -Pearl S. Buck.