Maria Montessori Quotes

There is one thing you and I as parents cannot do, not do we want to do if we really think about it, and that's control our children's will--that spirit that lets them be themselves apart from you and me. They are not ours to possess, control, manipulate, or even to make mind.

It is easy to substitute our will for that of the child by means of suggestion or coercion; but when we have done this we have robbed him of his greatest right, the right to construct his own personality.

I started my career in parent education with the idea that we needed to let our kids go. I believed that parents were suffocating for their children. There was no room for individuality and personhood.

Everyone is different, and each has to create his or her own path, irrespective of who their parents are.

There is a tension between our desire to get our kids to turn out a particular way versus letting them develop to be their own person. If there were a pill that would make my child turn out the way I wanted, I'm not sure I'd take it.

Children need parents who will let them grow up to be themselves, but parents often have personal agendas they try to impose on their children.

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.

I love my father, but I have worked to develop a separate and distinct identity in different projects I have worked on.

People tell you the world looks a certain way. Parents tell you how to think. Schools tell you how to think. TV. Religion. And then at a certain point, if you're lucky, you realize you can make up your own mind. Nobody sets the rules but you. You can design your own life.

All I can tell you is that you cannot make choices in your own career, either career choices or choices when you're actually working as an actor, based on trying to downplay or live up to a comparison with somebody else. You just can't do that. You have to do your own work based on your own gut, your own instincts, and your own life.

My father raised me to think independently and follow my own path in life.

All I want, and I think all any parent with a semblance of a moral psychology wants, is for my kid to have his own experience, uninhibited.

Don't try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.

My mum has always been quite free-spirited, and she has taught me a lot. I think that is probably why I have the sort of mind that I do.

Don't try to 'fix' the child's boredom - rather, let the child find his or her inner resources.

I think that parents grow up with an idea of what they want their kids to be like - and then their kids grow up to be people of themselves, of their own.

From now on, I'll connect the dots my own way.

Doubt everything. Find your own light.

I tell my son Corey that the greatest teacher is the teacher who says, 'Don't follow me; follow yourself. Because within you there is that kingdom, that life, that force.'

Children have their own mind.

I don't really try to pattern myself after any particular person. I pretty much make it up as I go along.

You gotta do things your own way. You have to find your own path. You have to take what appeals to you and leave all the rest.

I have never been convinced throughout my life that one needs to be imitating others. I even tell my daughters not to look at me as a model.

The adult ought never to mold the child after himself, but should leave him alone and work always from the deepest comprehension of the child himself.

I actually think leaving your children alone to fantasize, to write, to make projects on their own is good for them. Breathing down their necks is a form of control. Children should have their own space.