... the opportunity offered by life to women is far in excess of any offered to men. To be the inspiration is more than to be the ...tool. To create the world, a greater thing than to reform it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
School success is not predicted by a child's fund of facts or a precocious ability to read as much as by emotional and social meas...ures; being self-assured and interested: knowing what kind of behavior is expected and how to rein in the impulse to misbehave; being able to wait, to follow directions, and to turn to teachers for help; and expressing needs while getting along with other children.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Although pretend play is important, it is still the means to an end, not the end itself. Do not make the mistake of thinking a con...trived, pretend drama can substitute for real interpersonal comfort in dealing with important emotional issues.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Even if you find yourself in a heated exchange with your toddler, it is better for your child to feel the heat rather than for him... to feel you withdraw emotionally.... Active and emotional involvement between parent and child helps the child make the limits a part of himself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The most important emotional accomplishment of the toddler years is reconciling the urge to become competent and self-reliant with... the longing for parental love and protection.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Being apart is always experienced by the child, at some level, as the equivalent of being left. There is an unspoken belief, "If y...ou loved me most of all, if I was the most important thing in your life, you would never leave me." The only way to reconcile the child with this unmovable conviction is to provide abundant proof, through emotional availability and responsiveness, that he does not need to be the only important thing in your life in order to be loved well enough and deeply enough.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Much of the emotional turmoil in the second year revolves around the difficult task of integrating the child's will into the famil...y constellation. The child learns that her personal wishes (so cherished, seemingly so right) need to fit reasonably well with what others want. The parents learn that they, too, have to say "no" with firmness and conviction but hopefully without harshness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Even when they cannot be always available, the parents' fierce, unique love for their child makes them different in the child's he...art and mind from all other caregivers. In spite of a long working day, a parent's passion for his or her child retains its many nuances of emotional intensity, ranging from rapture and delight to impatience and even rage, that no other relationship in the child's life can match. Even very young infants are smart enough to recognize this passionate commitment and to reciprocate it in kind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Children are extraordinarily precious members of society; they are exquisitely alert, sensitive, and conscious of their surroundin...gs; and they are extraordinarily vulnerable to maltreatment or emotional abuse by adults who refuse to give them the profound respect and affection to which they are unconditionally entitled.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The purpose of ritual for men is to learn the rules of power and competition. Watching sports together, for example, they see the ...formal enactment of ritual, become loyal to a team, learn to conceal their vulnerability. The purpose of ritual for women (going to lunch together, sharing a favorite salon, etc.) is to learn how to make human connections. They are often more intimate and vulnerable with one another than they are with their men, and taking care of other women teaches them to take care of themselves. In these formal ways, men and women domesticate their emotional lives. But their strategies are different, their biological itineraries are different. His sperm needs to travel, her egg needs to settle down. It's astonishing that they survive happily at all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »