Adults understandably assume that the level of verbal proficiency a five-year-old displays represents his level of proficiency in ...all areas of functioning--if he talks like an adult, he must think and feel like one. However, five-year-olds,... belie the promise of adult-like behavior with their child-like, impulsive actions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The frantic search of five-year-olds for friends can thus be seen to forecast the beginnings of a basic shift in the parent-child ...relationship, a shift which will occur gradually over many long years, and in which a child needs not only the support of child allies engaged in the same struggle but also the understanding of his parents.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Citizens' Protective League of Denver, founded to "squelch the knocking and blackmailing newspapers in our beautiful but benig...hted city," demanded that no news story, editorial, or advertisement unfit for fifteen-year-olds to read should be published, ....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Toddlers are impulsive. One- and two-year-olds have not yet developed control over their actions. What they see, they want. What t...hey feel, they express. What they think, they do.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I often think about the opening words of Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of ti...mes." I know Dickens wasn't talking about one- to three- year-olds, but his words do capture the extremes of emotion that toddlers and their parents experience every day. Can there be a creature on earth as adorable--and as trying--as a toddler?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Life begins at six--at least in the minds of six-year-olds. . . . In kindergarten you are the baby. In first grade you put down th...e baby. . . . Every first grader knows in some osmotic way that this is real life. . . . First grade is the first step on the way to a place in the grown-up world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The books may say that nine-month-olds crawl, say their first words, and are afraid of strangers. Your exuberantly concrete and sp...ecial nine-month-old hasn't read them. She may be walking already, not saying a word and smiling gleefully at every stranger she sees. . . . You can support her best by helping her learn what she's trying to learn, not what the books say a typical child ought to be learning.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An older child, one who possesses a conscience, will be troubled with self-reproaches and feelings of shame for his naughtiness, e...ven if he is not discovered. But our two-year-olds and our three-year- olds experience guilt feelings only when they feel or anticipate disapproval from the outside. In doing this, they have taken the first steps toward the goal of conscience, but there is a long way ahead before the policeman outside becomes the policeman inside.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Too many existing classrooms for young children have this overriding goal: To get the children ready for first grade. This goal is... unworthy. It is hurtful. This goal has had the most distorting impact on five-year-olds. It causes kindergartens to be merely the handmaidens of first grade.... Kindergarten teachers cannot look at their own children and plan for their present needs as five-year-olds.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Three-year-olds see the world in black-and-white terms.... They have been told that they should be good. They want to believe that... they are good.... Therefore, they weren't the ones who poured jam all over the sleeping cocker spaniel. Denying their culpability is neither malicious nor sneaky; it just reflects the unshaded terms in which preschoolers view the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »