Maria Montessori Quotes

I think we are doing a bad job of helping our kids understand that they have huge resiliency.

It is better to have some unhappiness while one is still young, for if a person does not experience some bitterness, his disposition will not settle down.

You don't really realize the effect those things have on you when you're growing up but then when you look back you can see how they molded you.

There's a lot of talk these days about giving children self-esteem. It's not something you can give; it's something they have to build. Coach Graham worked in a no-coddling zone. Self-esteem? He knew there was really only one way to teach kids how to develop it: You give them something they can't do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process.

Education has for its object the formation of character. To curb restive propensities, to awaken dormant sentiments, to strengthen the perceptions, and cultivate the tastes, to encourage this feeling and repress that, so as finally to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious nature, this is alike the aim of parent and teacher.

This is the treasure we need today - helping the child become independent of us and make his way by himself, receiving in return his gifts of hope and light.

A family's responses to crisis or to a new situation mirror those of a child. That is to say, the way a small child deals with a new challenge (for instance, learning to walk) has certain predictable stages: regression, anxiety, mastery, new energy, growth, and feedback for future achievement. These stages can also be seen in adults coping with new life events, whether positive or negative.

Situation seems to be the mould in which men's characters are formed.

I've found what makes children happy doesn't always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults.

We pass our values, ideas and moral character on to our children, but we do that knowing that our children are going to revise our knowledge and reshape their values. There's something very paradoxical and profound about being a parent as opposed to parenting. We put in all this effort and energy not so that we can shape a child of a particular sort, but so that all sorts of possibilities can happen in the future.

It's important for survival that children have their own experiences, the kind they learn from. The kind their parents arrange for are not as useful. Good parents are the hardest to get rid of.

One has very little influence upon one's children. Their characters are what they are and one can do nothing to change them.

Affliction is the school in which great virtues are acquired, in which great characters are formed.

In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.

If you can control your behavior when everything around you is out of control, you can model for your children a valuable lesson in patience and understanding... and snatch an opportunity to shape character.

The child becomes a person through work.

I grew up in a refugee camp in Uganda, and I lived there for 30 years. That shapes one's character.

As a child, a person builds up an egoic sense - the child has a name, has an "I," has a mind. But then, to awaken, a person needs to completely transcend that sense of ego.

The question for the child is not Do I want to be good? but Whom do I want to be like?

I think all of us are intrigued to imagine what we as individuals would become, if we were ever tested as hard as that golden generation was.

What matters most in a child’s development, they say, is not how much information we can stuff into her brain in the first few years. What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence. Economists refer to these as noncognitive skills, psychologists call them personality traits, and the rest of us sometimes think of them as character.

We're raising children who have little tolerance for disappointment

We've forgotten what it's like not to be able to reach the light switch. We've forgotten a lot of the monsters that seemed to livein our room at night. Nevertheless, those memories are still there, somewhere inside us, and can sometimes be brought to the surface by events, sights, sounds, or smells. Children, though, can never have grown-up feelings until they've been allowed to do the growing.

To the sky, I rise / Spread my wings, and fly / I leave the past behind / And say goodbye to the scared child inside / I sing for freedom, and for love / I look at my reflection / Embrace the woman I've become / The unbreakable lotus in me / I now set free

Your children are not your children. They are lives longing for itself. They come here with their own destiny. Give them your love. They will find their own way.