For a small child there is no division between playing and learning; between the things he or she does "just for fun" and things t...hat are "educational." The child learns while living and any part of living that is enjoyable is also play.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When he was a crawler he left your feet to journey to the sofa and bring you a ball. When he was a toddler he left your side to jo...urney across the grass and bring you a leaf. When he was a pre-school child he left your yard to journey next door and bring you back a neighbor's doll. Now he will journey into school and bring you back a piece of his new world....His journeys are all outwards now, into that waiting world. But he feels the invisible and infinitely elastic threads that still guide him back to you. He returns to the base that is you, seeking rest and re-charging for each new leap into life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A preschool child does not emerge from your toddler on a given date or birthday. He becomes a child when he ceases to be a wayward..., confusing, unpredictable and often balky person-in-the- making, and becomes a comparatively cooperative, eager-and-easy-to-please real human being--at least 60 per cent of the time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our day you will find that you have stopped regarding your baby as a totally unpredictable and therefore rather alarming novelty, ...and have begun instead to think of him as a person with tastes, preferences and characteristics of his own. When that happens you will know that he has moved on from being a "newborn" and has got himself settled into life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In order to become spoiled ... a child has to be able to want things as well as need them. He has to be able to see himself as a b...eing who is separate from everyone else.... A baby is none of these things. He feels a need and he expresses it. He is not intellectually capable of working out involved plans and ideas like "Can I make her give me...?" "If I make enough fuss he will...?" "They let me do ... yesterday and I want to do it again today so I'll...."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You know that your toddler needed love and approval but he often seemed not to care whether he got it or not and never seemed to k...now how to earn it. Your pre-school child is positively asking you to tell him what does and does not earn approval, so he is ready to learn any social refinement of being human which you will teach him....He knows now that he wants your love and he has learned how to ask for it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Your preschool child will chatter endlessly to you. If you half-listen and half-reply the whole conversation will seem, and become..., tediously meaningless for both of you. but if you really listen and really answer, he will talk more and what he says will make more sense.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
True spoiling is nothing to do with what a child owns or with amount of attention he gets. he can have the major part of your inco...me, living space and attention and not be spoiled, or he can have very little and be spoiled. It is not what he gets that is at issue. It is how and why he gets it. Spoiling is to do with the family balance of power.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Your toddler is no longer a baby feeling himself as part of you, using you as his controller, facilitator, his mirror for himself ...and the world. But he is not yet a child either; ready to see you as a person in your own right and to take responsibility for himself and his own actions in relation to you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is not [the toddler's] job yet to consider other people's feelings, he has to come to terms with his own first. If he hits you ...and you hit him back to "show him what it feels like," you will have given a lesson he is not ready to learn. He will wail as if hitting was a totally new idea to him. He makes no connections between what he did to you and what you then did to him; between your feelings and his own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »