Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

Those children who have been most chastised seldom make the best men.

We all want to raise our children well.

And Grandmother Hall really imagines that she can raise Eleanor and her two brothers differently than these children were raised. And if she is very strict and everything is very regimented and ordered and disciplined, that they will become the perfect children who her own children did not become.

The one thing that kids need is consistency.

Where you raise your children isn't as important as how you raise your children.

Parents learn the uses of power and its limits. They can insist on certain outward behavior but cannot change inner attitudes. They can require obedience but not goodness - and certainly not love.

I will have to earn trust and respect from my kids.

The first 3 years of a person’s life determines the next 80 years.

Attitudes about the rearing and education of children vary between two extremes. One, which might be labeled “authoritarian” or “coercive,” rests on an assumption that children are by nature irresponsible and lazy, and will do their schoolwork only if they are penalized for a poor performance. The opposite view might be labeled “progressive” or “democratic.” It rests on the assumption that children who are brought up with love, trust, and clear but kind leadership are eager to grow up and be like their parents, eager to explore, learn, master skills, and take on responsibility; they need guidance but not sternness or punishment.

A capable mother keeps her young people employed and thus out of mischief. She demands from them co-operative helpfulness. She maintains Shelter. She distributes praise and blame. She keeps order. She does not pretend to practice "democracy", the children do not elect their teachers nor determine the methods of family government. Any mother who knows her business is in her home an absolute domestic dictator. It is she who decides what the children shall eat and wear, when they shall get up or go to bed, and go to school, and come home, &c. Her reign extends however, only over the young and her sole object is to fit them to take proper care of themselves later and to make their own way in life

My mam and dad have brought me up well.

My parents have always had this philosophy that overindulging your children is one of the worst things you could do as a parent. It's something that was hammered into my head growing up. And while my mom and dad are not professional authorities on parenting, I can confirm from experience that they had a point.

Honestly, I regret not having spanked my kids.

Let the child's first lesson be obedience, and the second will be what thou wilt.

If I say to my daughter, "Go say 'hi' to Aunt Gertrude," there is a reason there. I'm teaching her manners. I think the idea that she'll say 'hi' to Aunt Gertrude only if she wants to is the biggest crock of silliness I've ever heard. Yet I meet people everyday who were clearly brought up to think that if they didn't want to say "hi" to Aunt Gertrude, that was fine.

Thus parents, by humouring and cockering them when little, corrupt the principles of nature in their children, and wonder afterwards to taste the bitter waters, when they themselves have poison'd the fountain.

Parents who indulge themselves 'in moderation' may have children who indulge themselves to excess.

The best gift from a father to his child is Education and Upbringing.

many tender, delicate mothers, seem to think that to make their children eat, is all that is requisite to make them great.

Parents teach children discipline for two different, indeed diametrically opposed, reasons: to render the child submissive to them and to make him independent of them. Only a self-disciplined person can be obedient; and only such a person can be autonomous.

By learning to yield to the loving authority of his parents, a child learns to submit to other forms of authority which will confront him later in his life — his teachers, school principal, police, neighbors and employers.

Anyone who has brought up children knows that consistency has absolutely nothing to do with discipline.

Reasoning with a child is fine, if you can reach the child's reason without destroying your own.

The prospect of being a father made me ask myself a question. How do you know what kind of adult your child will turn out to be? And how much can you control that?

It's very important that we instill some respect for the parents. In America especially, the kids are unruly, screaming at Mommy and Daddy, running the show.