Jonah Lehrer Quotes

I've decided to tell my kids things like: 'I love the way each of you tilted back your heads when you laughed.' I will give them specific stuff they can grasp.

Hopefully this movie will help people understand that if a child is never given the tools to know how to love others and love and respect themselves, this is what happens.

A huge part of what a kid learns when they're growing up is social and emotional development. As adults, we take it for granted that other people have emotions that are different from ours, and we can identify what they are, but those are skills that children have to learn.

I'm afraid the parenting advice to come out of developmental psychology is very boring: pay attention to your kids and love them.

No, you're not allowed to be bossy when you're married. You have to learn compromise, and compassion and patience.

For only as we ourselves, as adults, actually move and have our being in the state of love, can we be appropriate models and guides for our children. What we are teaches the child far more than what we say, so we must be what we want our children to become.

The best mother is the mother who adapts, and the best children are the children who adapt as well.

I feel like I'm good with girls. I understand them and am good at loving them. I've always felt like that's been natural for me.

Imaginary friends are one of the weirder forms of pretend play in childhood. But the research shows that imaginary friends actually help children understand the other people around them and imagine all the many ways that people could be.

Kids teach you a lot of patience.

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.

Childish egocentrism is, in its essence, an inability to differentiate between the ego and the social environment.

Love is something that we need to learn.

The early socialization of a child is crucial.

Learning how to have 'healthy' attachments sounds easy, but in fact, for someone like me who had damaged early relationships, it's like learning to be fluent in Chinese.

Children who are respected learn respect. Children who are cared for learn to care for those weaker than themselves. Children who are loved for what they are cannot learn intolerance. In an environment such as this, they will develop their own ideals, which can be nothing other than humane, since they grew out of the experience of love.

I send my kids to school not only to learn how to read and write and do math, but also to develop socially.

Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness.

We are not made for law, we are made for love.

Adults weren’t supposed to understand their children and you were doing something wrong if they did.

You'll never regret writing any letter out of love. However, it's a good idea to reread anything you've written in anger.

Whatever the intellectual quality of the education given our children, it is vital that it include elements of love and compassion, for nothing guarantees that knowledge alone will be truly useful to human beings.

We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.

There should be a course in the first grade on love.

In our relationship with children and young people, we are not dealing with mechanical devices that can be quickly repaired, but with living beings who are impressionable, volatile, sensitive, afraid, affectionate; and to deal with them we have to have great understanding, the strength of patience and love.