Matt Reeves Quotes

The level of communication you can achieve with an infant is really profound.

I just happen to believe that what's at stake in the early child's development is so vital and so important, and I think it is founded in the main, in the broad cultural sense, on the relationship between the mother and child.

Babies aren't savages. Toddlers understand language long before they can talk.

I raised five children. They all have different personalities. All of them have different issues, different levels of success. That was a learning experience for me.

There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable.

Play reaches the habits most needed for intellectual growth.

Adults sometimes think children don't think. That's what propels them to order children around. But children do integrate thoughts and make sense of them. When I was a child, I thought about everything in the universe.

It's vital that we help them get the right start, nurture their development and provide for their well-being.

A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.

I honestly think that kids should not exercise: they should keep fit through play. The most important age is zero to seven, both for the kid and the parent - for parents, because this is the time when your kid learns how to walk, talk and other behaviour.

People tell you not to work with children and animals, and I chose to work with a 7-year-old and several dinosaurs!

Learning to dislike children at an early age saves a lot of expense and aggravation later in life.

By four years of age, the average child in a family receiving public assistance has heard about 13 million words, compared to 45 million for a child from a wealthier family. The disadvantages developed during their first four years are usually still present in high school.

Early childhood education begins early, even before birth.

Children are extremely perceptive and absorb what goes on around them long before they can talk or even comprehend language. They are like finely tuned receivers that pick up much more than is merely said. They are receptive and attuned to every mood, feeling, and change that goes on in people around them.

Having kids has proven to be this amazing - for me, this amazing source of ideas of anecdotes, of examples, I can test my own kids without human subject permission, so they pilot - I pilot my ideas on them. And so it is a tremendous advantage to have kids if you're going to be a developmental psychologist.

One of the many interesting and surprising experiences of the beginner in child analysis is to find in even very young children a capacity for insight which is often far greater than that of adults.

I have to hold a meeting with the rising generation every evening, and that takes time. Henry can say, 'Twinkle, twinkle,' all himself, and Edward can repeat it after his father! Giants of genius! Paragons of erudition!

I believe that the first 8 years are most important and the time in a child's life when parents must be absolutely and completely present.

If you think a child is going to be your accessory... it's not like a micro pig. It's not about putting them in front of the television. You need to read to them at night.

Language just gradually came in, one or two stressed words a time. Before then, I would just scream. I couldn't talk. I couldn't get my words out. So the only way I could tell someone what I wanted was to scream. If I didn't want to wear a hat, the only way I knew to communicate was screaming and throwing it on the floor.

Get to know your kids' minds and how they think.

Children learn to smile from their parents.

While not impossible, it is especially challenging for teenage parents to develop bonds with their children. A high percent of them were themselves children of teenage parents and have never experienced appropriate parenting.

Children frequently sing meaningful phrases to themselves over and over again before they learn to make a distinction between singing and saying.