Young children...are often uninterested in conversation It is not that they don't have ideas and feelings, or need to express them... to others It is simply that as one eight-year-old boy once told me, "Talking is okay, but I don't like to do it all the time the way grown-ups do; I guess you have to develop the habit."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Indeed, there are no easy correlations between parental ideology, class or race and "successful" child development. Many children ...the world over have revealed a kind of toughness and plasticity that make the determined efforts of some parents to spare their children the slightest pain seem ironic.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The child's mind is much more public property than the adult's. What troubles the child is shared with his family, his teachers an...d school chums. That is to say, the child is going through the educational process of acquiring a "personality" (and, alas, neurosis) while the adult has likely forgotten all the trials--at home or outside--that contributed to the later pain or tension bringing him to analysis. Put differently, the adult is troubled but usually can't "remember" the exact sequence of events that are responsible for the trouble. The child often will describe quite readily what is happening about him, but may well not consider himself suffering or in danger--it is his parents or teachers who are concerned.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »