Pamela Druckerman Quotes

Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.

Children can become self-reliant and self-disciplined by being free to do what they want to do.

Children should have enough freedom to be themselves - once they've learned the rules.

Children who plan their own schedules and evaluate their own work build up their brains and learn to take more responsibility.

I think it is important to let your kids have independence and ownership. Let your kids do what they have a passion for.

No, I do it all, but I do love to play solo.

What a child can do in cooperation today, he can do alone tomorrow.

I am not driven.

In America we tell our parents to bring their child home and put him or her in a crib; as they get older, children sleep in they own room not in Mom and Dad's room. What are we training them for? It's independence, because that's what being empowered is all about.

My mother told me to raise my kids with calculated neglect. They get their self-worth from doing what they can do and not having everything done for them.

Reading is the only area of my life in which I prefer to be non-autonomous.

The finest inheritance you can give to a child is to allow it to make its own way, completely on its own feet.

I'm good at finding things to do on my own, even if it's just reading.

The Frenchman is never at his best unless he is permitted a little personal initiative. He becomes impatient at constant command.

If I was always doing my own thing, I would be bored out of my mind.

I would really want to teach someone how to function without having to have plays called for you.

I ain't going at nobody else pace.

I can entertain myself for hours.

I think I'm a disciplined mom versus a strict mom. But also, that job - the disciplining was from birth until about 12, and at 12, I set my kids free, and they learned to become independent human beings.

When a child is given a little leeway, he will at once shout, "I want to do it!" But in our schools, which have an environment adapted to children's needs, they say, "Help me to do it alone." And these words reveal their inner needs.

The child seeks for independence by means of work; an independence of body and mind.

What the majority of American children needs is to stop being pampered, stop being indulged, stop being chauffeured, stop being catered to. In the final analysis, it is not what you do for you children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.

We must clearly understand that when we give the child freedom and independence, we are giving freedom to a worker already braced for action, who cannot live without working and being active.

children once settled and confident can mostly be left, it seems, to manage their difficulties without us. Only what we must do, always and unalterably, is hold their hand firmly in general goodwill, then they themselves seem to deal with their own particular troubles far better than we can.

I'll handle living on my own. You've got to learn somehow. I'll take it all in my stride like I do everything else.